Design and Build Quality
Design and Build Quality
The Huawei P9 is available in various versions including aluminium and ceramic white. One of the aluminium versions is Haze Gold which has a brushed hairline metal finish and comes in 64GB storage and 4GB of RAM (this version is not available in Pakistan), There are 32GB+3GB models in aerospace-class aluminium which are available in Prestige Gold, Titanium Grey, Mystic Silver colors. The Ceramic White version is also added to the lineup which, according to the company, is “smoother than the painted bodywork of premium cars” – Huawei
Here we got one from the line up which is the aluminium version (EVA-L19) in Mystic Silver color. The aerospace-class aluminium is really well polished with diamond-cut chamfered edges, on both the front and the back, that help a lot in handling the smartphone and make it very less slippery – at least I never faced an exception. In addition, if you don’t get bored of hearing some good stuff about a brand you don’t like, The matte finish of aluminium is really nice to hold. On the front it’s a 2.5D curved glass meeting at the thin frame before the unibody chamfered edges.
It’s really nice in hands and when you look at it, Huawei P9 is no doubt one of the best looking smartphones Huawei has ever made that also gives comfort in your hands as well in your pockets with its compact size that too with a wide range of deliverables. With 144 grams, it’s as light in weight as you won’t expect before experiencing it.
The back of the phone hosts now-familiar antenna stripes through all the way from sides of the phone until they touch the front screen frame. Impressed, how Huawei technically camouflaged the upper antenna stripe by making a fully-wide camera housing embedded right into the back panel.
Not visible though, Huawei P9 has three antennas “virtual Triple antenna” inside the P9. Huawei claims to cover more situations where handling the phone could impact signals. – Huawei
On the back, another thing is the fingerprint scanner that Huawei always thinks the most suitable place for it. I believe it too. When handheld, the index finger can access the fingerprint scanner without struggling – better than using thumb on the scanner embedded into home button. Huawei P9 has one of the fastest fingerprint readers due to their always-on nature. We’ll cover it later in software section.
As we are still on the rear view of Huawei P9, so lets finish this side first. A fully wide camera panel is covering the top most portion of the back – right above fingerprint scanner. It’s not a single but a setup of two 12 megapixel cameras that work altogether to bring most out of a smartphone camera system. It’s co-developed with the German camera makers, Leica Camera. So the Huawei P9 is labeled with Leica branding and lens specifications too. There is a dual-tone flash and a laser component for focusing below the flash.
We’ll see how the camera performs against the competition later in this review.
Coming over at the front side you get the usual components, the earpiece above the screen which is center-aligned. Along at the left of the earpiece there are sensors inside (the proximity and ambient light sensors probably) then at the end, it’s the front-facing camera that has 8 megapixel sensor for video calling or most commonly for selfies.
The navigation keys are on-screen and Huawei didn’t waste on the hardware/capacitive touch nav-keys which sure has its fan following. But on-screen keys are always flexible to re-arrange according to your preference (depending on the software) as well as they get hide when not in use or not usable as they can reappear on your call – just swipe through the edge, the hidden status bar and the nav bar reappear on top of the interface you are currently on; that’s the software side anyway.
The most common controls are on the right side of the phone including the metal volume rocker and the power/unlock button. On the left side there is merely a SIM/microSD card slot. As the phone we have, is a dual-SIM model hence the same slot will serve for the second SIM as well where you have to sacrifice the microSD expansion. The possible combinations are [SIM1+SIM2] or [SIM1+microSD]. Single SIM variant also has the same design except the second SIM place. Instead, it has one dedicated place for microSD card and the other one for a SIM.
Huawei has gone with one sided components approach on Huawei P9 by providing everything down to the phone that you use little frequently to connect the phone to other devices – that is the 3.5mm standard audio jack and the USB Type-C port. Along side, there’s a loudspeaker grille – it’s a single/mono speaker. What’s remaining is the main mic/mouthpiece right between the audio jack and the USB-C port. The top side of the phone hosts a secondary mic for noise cancellation and for stereo audio recording.
Display
As you would already know, the Huawei P9 features a 5.2 inch display and offers full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels in the era when most of the manufacturers have moved to QHD resolution on their high-end smartphones. Huawei seems to be promised with the moderate resolution in favour of gaining more better battery life. An easy math tells that it makes a pixel density of approximately 424ppi, while screen-to-body ratio is approximately 72.5%.
Update: Huawei V8 is the chain breaker being the first smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer maker offering QHD resolution.
More to technical note, the display panel on Huawei P9 is an IPS-NEO developed by JDI which is an evolved form of the conventional IPS LCD panels and provides better viewing angles as well as the true/deep blacks which IPS LCD couldn’t have provided for a long time. To what we have experienced, Huawei P9 is indeed an example that can show the IPS-NEO is better than traditional IPS LCD displays.
Comparatively, P9’s display gives is a good contrast ratio but not up to what we have seen on Mate 8. But still much better than most IPS displays out there – you can’t compere it the AMOLED ones. However the maximum brightness is much impressive and it’s greater than the one we saw on Mate 8 recently. Outdoor legibility is also much better than most IPS displays.
The official Huawei P9 specifications claim 500 nits of brightness and 96 percent colour saturation.
Regardless of having an improved form of IPS display, Huawei P9 still stands in the line of smartphones that feature the IPS panels. In that sense, P9’s display outperforms other IPS LCD displays. DJI’s IPS technology can be said as better; no wonder Huawei has been choosing this to tag better prices than the ones with AMOLED units.
So in simple words, Huawei P9’s display is not really that you need to worry about. It’s much better in all types of lighting conditions and viewing angles. It’s sharp and vivid.
