Procrastination isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, if you’ve been putting off a decision on which top-end smartphone to buy, your dithering could turn out to be downright inspired.
That’s because Huawei’s new flagship handset, the P8, has just landed in South Africa, offering most of the premium features of devices like the Apple iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6, but without the wallet-walloping price tag.
I attended the Chinese manufacturer’s global launch in London in April and my initial impressions of the P8 were overwhelmingly favourable. But I did wonder whether it would stand up to prolonged scrutiny away from all the glitz and hype.
Well, I’ve since had a chance to test it out over an extended period and I’m pleased to report that the P8 has more than lived up to my high expectations.
Pick up the device and you can tell immediately you’re dealing with a high-quality piece of kit. At first glance it’s quite starkly rectangular, but thanks to some subtle chamfering there are no sharp edges and it feels comfortable, solid and surprisingly light in the hand. That’s because its chassis is milled from a single slab of aluminium.
Although its 5.2-inch display is bigger than that of its aforementioned rivals, Huawei has managed to make the phone slimmer than either, an astonishing 6.4mm to be precise.
This makes for a handset that’s approaching a “phablet” in screen size, which makes it perfect for watching videos, browsing the web, or catching up with your e-mail on the go. At the same time, it’s petite enough to slip into your pants pocket without leaving the kind of tell-tale bulge that invites winks and jokey questions that end in, “… or are you just pleased to see me?”
Although the touchscreen is not as pixel dense nor quite as bright as that of the Galaxy S6, this does mean it gobbles less battery power and brings down the overall cost of the device, a worthwhile compromise in my books.
Speaking of the battery, Huawei has somehow squeezed a pretty beefy 2 680mAh fuel cell into the P8’s slim body. It says this can provide enough juice for a day-and-a-half of moderate use. I’m the polar opposite of a moderate user.
Under the merciless barrage of web browsing, e-mail and social media monitoring I subject them to, I’m lucky if most phones I test last until mid-afternoon. I was, for example, able to drain the Galaxy S6 dry by midday on several occasions. The P8, by contrast always got me through the day, and well into the night, often with plenty of power to spare.
Under the glass and metal exterior purrs a powerful eight-core 64-bit, 2GHz processor. There’s 3GB of RAM. The model I tested had a rather miserly 16GB of internal storage, although I’m told 32GB versions will be available. Samsung and Apple offer models with more storage, but unlike either of them the Huawei’s storage can be beefed up with an aftermarket microSD card of up to 128GB.
Cleverly, the SD card slot can also take a second SIM card, giving its owner the choice of switching between two cellular networks, depending on who offers the best data and voice rates.
The 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation is another big selling point of the P8. Huawei claims it can take better shots than the iPhone and Galaxy both in low light and in bright daylight.
In my experience, the Apple and Samsung retain the edge in the photography stakes, but only by the narrowest of margins. And the P8 has managed to keep up without its camera protruding awkwardly from the rear of the phone as it does on both its rivals – quite the industrial design coup.
The eight-megapixel front facing “selfie” camera is pretty impressive too, although you may want to dial the “beauty” level down from the maximum if you want to avoid looking like a creepy wax doll.
The P8 runs Google’s Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system although it is buried under a layer of Huawei’s own Emotion user interface. And that’s really the only significant gripe I have about the P8.
Emotion removes Android’s app drawer so that all installed apps appear on the home screens. And I found that it sometimes clashed with several Google Now features, including voice search. I’ve also heard from fellow tech journos that Google’s Android Wear operating system, found on many smartwatches, doesn’t work with Emotion.
Unless you’re an avid stock Android or wearable fan, these won’t be deal breakers.
My only other quibble is that there’s no fingerprint reader. Not a biggie, but with fingerprint authentication increasingly set to be used for online and real world purchases, it would have been a great future-proof feature to have included, one I’d have been willing to pay extra for.
On the subject of prices, these weren’t available at the time of going to press. But I have it on good authority that they will start at several thousand rand cheaper than entry level Galaxy S6 or iPhone 6 models.
If you’re on a quest to find the best value premium smartphone, stop right now. You’ve found it.
Alan Cooper blogs at alanqcooper.tumblr.com. Got any questions? E-mail [email protected] or tweet @alanqcooper.