The Huawei P8 has been officially unveiled, with the flagship phone packing a host of impressive new features.
A direct follow-on to the Huawei Ascend P7, the P8 has touched down at a dedicated London-based launch event with a new, premium design and a raft of high-end components in tow.
From a ‘frameless’ 5.2-inch display to a new 64-bit Kirin 920 processor – via an OIS-enhanced 13-megapixel camera – the handset’s specs sheet puts the device close to competing with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the HTC One M9.
He added: “The Huawei P8 is all about premium, and true value is at the heart of the Huawei P8 flagship.”
Huawei P8 Features
Despite many market leaders having moved to the eye-watering world of 2560 x 1440 pixel 2K displays in recent months, Huawei has held firm with 2014 standards, bestowing the P8 with a 5.2-inch, 1080p Full HD panel.
This screen, a full 0.2-inches bigger than that of its P7 predecessor, has been slotted into a compact body. Doing away with sizeable bezels, the phone features a ‘frameless’ display which helps keep the handset’s overall footprint down.
Huawei even claims the handset has “the most compact screen to body ratio in the industry” with the display accounting for 78.3 per cent of the handset’s front.
Echoing the market leaders, Huawei has even bestowed its 6.4mm thick, water resistant handset, with a new high-end metal unibody design. It takes 810 minutes to craft a single P8 body from a solid block of metal.
This will be available in four colours at launch, Mystic Champaign, Prestige Gold, Titanium Grey and Carbon Black.
Improvements are more than skin-deep however. The company’s latest 64-bit, Octa-core Kirin 930 chip ensures things will run smoothly, while an Emotion UI skinned version of Android 5.0 Lollipop runs the show.
The handset’s camera collection has been bolstered too, with a 13-megapixel, OIS-enhanced primary camera lining up alongside an 8-megapixel selfie snapper.
This primary shooter is further enhanced by a double-colour temperature flash, 4-colour RGBW sensor, an independent Image Signal Processor and a raft of new photographic modes and abilities.
According to the manufacturer: “The Huawei P8 is more than a smartphone with a camera, it’s a tool that unleashes your creative spirit.”
Well, this freeing of your creative side is being prompted by a flurry of software additions, with the handset’s camera collection benefitting from improved low-light shooing, a time lapse capture mode and integrated video editing software.
What’s more a ‘Light Painting’ mode, which will track light movements in the hours of darkness, and an image framing, features softening ‘Perfect Selfie’ option are also present.
Ensuring this collection of imaging abilities are available when they are most needed, the P8 plays host to a sizeable 2600mAh battery which Huawei claims will keep users going for 1.5 days on a single charge under ‘normal’ usage conditions.
The handset will come in two guises, ‘Standard’ and ‘Premium’. The standard model pairs 3GB of RAM with 16GB of internal storage – expandable via microSD – while the premium model hosts a 64GB capacity as standard.
Huawei P8 Release Date and Price
Those keen to get their hands on the P8 won’t have long to wait. The Chinese manufacturer has confirmed that the device is available starting right now.
Pleasingly, the device is set to be (relatively) kind to your wallet, lining up with an affordable €499 (£358) price tag for the standard model and €599 (£430) for the premium edition.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
