Best known as one of the best android phones of 2016, the Huawei P9 offers the best mobile photography credibility a smartphone has to offer.
I’ve been using the (loaned) handset as my main phone day in and day out for close to a week now, and I’m really tempted to buy one for myself. It fits into my lifestyle so perfectly! The biggest pull factor for me is definitely the superior photo quality.
Co-engineered with Leica, Huawei P9 is a new generation smartphone with dual lens function which allows for photography similar to what can be accomplished with a larger DSLR. One of the 12MP lenses shoots in full colour, while the other in monochrome to make for a vibrant colour photo.
First of all, I love the size of the Huawei P9. The 5.2 inch screen offers HD display and a brightness well above mid-range smartphones.
The aluminium body looks good with clean lines, smooth edges and an unfussy look. It also offers better ergonomics than my current phone.
On the front of the phone there’s an 8MP selfie shooter camera with an aperture of f/2.4. The small aperture means we can finally say goodbye to blurry, badly lit selfies. This was taken this morning with the curtains closed.
I took the phone out to a brunch gathering with bobo and michelle. The girls love how we look so polished and perfect in the photos.
Of course, you can choose to tweak the beauty setting from a scale of 0 to 10. Here’s my selfie at setting 0, 5 and 10.
These are some of the non-edited photos that we took during brunch.
KampungBoy loves it. No more lugging our heavy DSLR around just for nice food shots or instagrammable ootd shots.
Now we can take the perfect food shots from our phones! The shots are vibrant and rich with a natural colour balance to them.
Editing the photos on the go is also made very easy. There are so many functions where you can choose from to get the effect you want, such as trim, crop, add watermark, filters and etc.
All the stickers from the waterwark feature are really cute. You can choose from mood, food, sports, location, weather and etc.
My favourite mode on the Huawei P9 is the wide aperture effect. This is useful for when taking photos with items in the foreground.
It uses both the camera sensors to add depth allowing you to focus on either the foreground or the background of the image.
In the camera app, there is an “aperture” icon on the top. Tapping the icon will activate the mode and you will see a slider where you can simulate aperture opening as wide as f/0.95 and as small as f/16 to blur out the backgrounds.
Here’s f/16, f/4.0, f/0.95 for comparison.
These food photos will go into my next food review.
I can also shoot in different modes according to my mood. If you swipe to the right, there are different shooting modes, such as monochrome, night shot, HDR, video, slow-mo, time lapse, and even “light painting”.
Huawei P9 fingerprint sensor is actually a touch pad and provide very cool additional functionality! I can use it to unlock my phone or to launch other applications.
If you’re still not convince – here’s a video (https://www.facebook.com/MalaysiaKini/videos/10153723002640906/) whereby the public give their opinion on the photos taken by 2 different phones, 1 of them being Huawei P9. There’s also a test that you can take – to see which smartphone actually suits your photography style.
Other Specifications:
Screen: 5.2in full HD LCD (424ppi)
Processor: Octa-core Huawei Kirin 955
RAM: 3GB of RAM Storage: 32GB + microSD card
Operating system: Android 6.0 with Emotion UI 4.1
Camera: 12MP dual rear camera, 8MP front-facing camera
Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fiac, NFC, Bluetooth 4.2, USB-C and GPS
Dimensions: 145 x 70.9 x 6.95mm
Weight: 144g
