Huawei focuses on battery and camera with its flagship P8 smartphone

Our mobile phones together with Social Network has made each one of us a photographer. However, there are few things more frustrating than trying to snap a pic of the perfect moment only to discover that the picture is blurry, out of focus, too dark and essentially useless. The camera on the device has become a key selling point and Huawei has taken notice when designing the new Huawei P8.

Huawei P8 – continuing the P Legacy

Launched in London today the P8 has kept to its P heritage of being slick (144.9mm x 72.1mm), thin (6.4mm), light (144g) and is the next evolution of the successful P7. Global sales of the Huawei P6 have totalled 5 million units in 60 countries. The Huawei P7 surpassed the 4 million sales mark across more than 100 countries in just six months showing a strong acceptance of the Huawei brand which is ready for the Huawei P8.

The P8 runs Android Lollipop with Huawei’s Emotion UI skin on top of that. It has a non-removable back and there are two micro SIM slots and a microSD card slot that can expand the already impressive 32GB of built-in space up to 128GB. There is a single and dual SIM  depending on the country and its regulations.

The Huawei P8 has a 5.2inch touch screen which is a full HD 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution with 424 pixels per inch. Double-tapping a fingertip or even use your knuckle allows the captures of a full length screen, while drawing a circle on the screen quickly captures specific  content.

If you are one of the people who keeps asking “where did I leave my phone ?” you will love the “search phone by voice” function which allows you to call out to the phone and it will respond allowing you to track it.

Connectivity & Battery:

Dropped calls and signal degradation are the pain of any mobile phone user.  The Huawei P8 has proprietary Signal+ technology, that allows the dual-antenna and the rapid switching technology  to work together to intelligently recognize the best mode to use. When one end of the antenna is covered and the signal becomes weak, the Huawei P8 can instantly switch to the other end of the antenna faster than traditional smartphones so you don’t drop the call. This feature significantly reduces the dropped-call rate by addressing the “death grip” user pain point that is a problem for all phones with metal cases. Additionally, the devices Signal+ enhances the call connection rate, even when users are travelling on a train at a speed of up to 300 km/h.

The Huawei has build in Wi-Fi+ which is an automatic way to connect to the best Wi-Fi signal automatically switching for optimal signal.

Having a good signal means there is less pressure on the phone’s battery to keep trying to connect.

Battery life is critical on these smartphones and the Huawei devices are becoming renowned for power management.  The P8 has a 2600mAh battery and with Kirin 930 Octa-Core 64-bit chipset so it should produce a great performance that is said to  “outpaces the smartphone market by 20% and unparalleled standby time.”

If you add the E-Ink cover to the Huawei P8 phone the back of the phone becomes an e-Book. The E-Ink tech uses very little battery power and is perfect for reading books even in direct sunlight. There is even nano-coating on the phone in case you spill your drink by the pool whilst reading.

Getting onto the Camera:

The reason our pics are not perfect it that we tend to snap the night shot in low light areas which means that the camera sensors are not able to make out details in the pic as everything blends into everything else. The P8 camera it looking to take care of this issue by being specifically optimized for low light and high contrast.

The Huawei P8 comes with a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 8 megapixel front facing camera – both cameras are flush with the device and there is no “camera bump”.

The P8 leverages a combination of hardware, software and proprietary algorithms to help users capture beautiful photographs, even in the worst lighting conditions.

• Industry-leading Optical Image Stabilizer Technology: With an OIS of up to 1.2°, the phone can shoot high-quality photos and videos as well as managing camera shake so that images are consistently sharp.
• The world’s first four-colour RGBW sensor: Enhancing brightnesws by 32 percent in high contrast lighting situations, reducing it by 78 percent in low light environments. SLR-level independent image processing: ENABLING noise reduction when shooting and intelligent detection of a high-contrast lighting environment and enabling users to perfectly capture high CONTRAST and low light details in one image;
• DSLR–level independent image processor: Enabling noise reduction when shooting, intelligent detection of a high-contrast lighting environment. Perfectly capturing the high contrast and low light details in one image;

(source: Huawei tweet)

There are 4 professional quality low-light shooting modes, a director mode, and fun creative shooting modes including selfie.

The Light Painting mode, one of the four professional quality low-light shooting modes, leverages the Huawei P8’s manual camera shutter to capture broad swaths of light – imagine a car headlight creating a river of  light behind the car. Users can “light paint” their own freehand pictures using a small torchlight in the dark.

There is even a light check and preview mode (an industry first low light technology). By giving users a preview of what the shot will look like, the Huawei P8 makes it easier to experiment creatively with light sources in the dark.

The Huawei P8’s director mode is the industry’s first professional-level video capture function on a smartphone. It allows the smartphone user to direct and control up to three other Android phones when shooting a video scene from four angles simultaneously and also synchronize video clip editing.

The Huawei P8 also introduces a new selfie mode, which allows pre-set image enhancement settings to capture and customize “everyone’s unique beauty, enabling even more people to get in on the fun”

South African Price and Availability of the Huawei P8:

The Huawei P8 with Dual-SIM will be available in South Africa towards the end of June 2015 across all networks but no word on price as yet.

International pricing was listed as follows as an indication: