Huawei P9 review - the ultimate dual-lens camera?

In a world filled with different camera technologies, from DSLRs, bridge cameras, mirrorless cameras and pocketable compact cameras, there’s no shortage of choice. Even with this multitude of options, though, no wiser words have been spoken than that  good, old saying, 'the best camera you have, is the one you have on you'.

While I own and use a DSLR and have a full camera bag of lenses and accessories, lugging it around every day isn’t really an option. Needless to say, this means the best, and often only, camera I regularly have to hand is my smartphone - as is the case for many other people, too.

The Huawei P9, then, seems like a smartphone that's been designed just for me. Even the partnership with the century-old, and much revered, German camera and optics manufacturer Leica immediately indicates this is a smartphone with serious camera credentials. While Sony has long used optics from Carl Zeiss, coincidentally another German optics manufacturer, this is quite a coup for Huawei as Leica isn’t known for collaborating.

So what exactly does this Leica collaboration mean? Turn the P9 over and you’re greeted by two intriguing camera lenses on the rear with Leica branding. The camera enthusiast in me wishes Leica’s actual famous red logo was used, rather than simply typed out in a non-descript typeface, but it’s a minor bugbear.

This isn’t the first flagship to include dual-lenses - the HTC One M8 had a Duo Camera and, more recently, the LG G5 has two rear lenses as well - but the P9 utilises its dual-lenses in a completely different way. It captures images at up to 12-megapixel, but one is a standard RGB sensor, while the second is monochrome-only. Leica’s had a long history of creating monochrome-only cameras, its most famous being its $8,000 M Monochrom camera, and it brings a number of benefits when it comes to capturing more light and improving the camera's contrast levels. 

This is because the sensor isn’t encumbered with having to capture RGB light levels, and Huawei claims its monochrome sensor can capture up to 200% more light. It also creates a truer result when compared to black and white film photography, and a superior end result compared to converting an originally colour image into black and white.

That's not all, either, as it can also be used in conjunction with the colour-capable sensor to combine the light information from both cameras, supplementing the colour sensor with the added contrast and image detail from the monochrome sensor.

It does have a few downsides, however. For instance, each pixel only measures 1.25um in each sensor, which isn't quite as large as the 1.4um pixels found on the S7. Larger pixels are important for capturing more light, resulting in better pictures under low lighting conditions. The P9 also doesn't have any optical image stabilisation, which you might have expected given the emphasis Huawei's placed on the camera. 

The f/2.2 aperture lenses also aren't the largest we've seen recently, as the Samsung Galaxy S7, for example, has an f/1.7 aperture lens. A lens’ maximum aperture not only lets you get more creative with background blur, also known as ‘bokeh’, but it also limits how much light is able to reach the sensor. In the case of the Galaxy S7, the lens diaphragm is able to open wider allowing more light to reach the sensor, improving low-light performance.

Camera Performance

As for the quality of images captured by the P9, the Leica collaboration has really paid off. Our outdoor test shots were incredibly vibrant with plenty of colour saturation, and that extra contrast captured by the monochrome sensor is particularly telling, too, with photos appearing punchy. The brickwork in our test shots that is so often lacking in detail is clearly discernible.

^ A breakdown of the same shot in HDR (left), Auto mode (centre) and monochrome (right)

However, our indoor test shots showed some of the P9's limitations, particularly when it comes to low-light photography. It did well keeping noise levels down, but shooting without flash resulted in some rather soft photos due to a bit of camera shake. The flash helped with the shutter speeds but resulted in less natural colours. With our studio lights turned on, image quality fared much better, with excellent colour reproduction and plenty of detail.

^ The P9's indoor photography was good, but detail was rather lacking, resulting in some very soft low light shots

There’s no shortage of additonal modes, either. Some are more useful than others, but the Aperture mode is by far the most useful, as this lets you take photos with different depths of field. Once you tap an area to focus, you can then use a slide adjustment to change the aperture all the way from f/0.95 to f/16. This is a purely software-based adjustment, however. As mentioned earlier, the lenses only have a true aperture of f/2.2 that is non-adjustable due to a lack of an actual lens diaphragm.

Overall, the mode works well for the most part, although the extremely shallow f/0.95 aperture makes for a razor thin focus point, meaning it’s much more prone to misfocusing. Of course, a software-based aperture adjustment does nothing to change the shutter speeds attainable under low-light conditions.

Tellingly, the Aperture mode isn’t available when shooting using the Pro settings in the camera app. This is available by sliding up from above the on-screen shutter button and gives you manual exposure adjustments you would expect from a fully-fledged camera. These include ISO adjustment, exposure compensation, shutter speed, metering mode, autofocus mode and white balance. 

^The Camera app has settings sliding in from every direction

As for the Pro shooting mode, the array of adjustments will leave those well-versed in manual photography feeling at home, but using the onscreen adjustment dials themselves can be slow and fiddly. There’s a reason why professional SLRs have multiple adjustment wheels. There’s no onscreen exposure metre to try and judge exposure, either, although the live view does adapt to reflect your changes. You will, however, find the RAW capture mode in the Pro's right slide-in menu, which gives you better options for post-processing without nearly as much image degradation as shooting in JPG. 

Design and Fingerprint sensor

The camera isn't the only part of the P9 that catches the eye, however. The full aluminium chassis is another gorgeous piece of Huawei design, and it very much feels like a premium, flagship handset. It's nicely weighted, and its 6.95mm edges are delicately chamfered. It might sound like a trivial observation, but I liked the way it slid in and out of my pocket with ease.

If it’s important to you, the P9 is a good size for one-handed use. There’s a fingerprint sensor on the rear found in a small recessed cove, and this proved easy to use and was quick to unlock. Like Huawei's Mate 8, it can be configured to perform different functions aside from unlocking the phone. You can use it to answer calls and silence alarms, but the option I found most useful was having the notification shade open and close with a swipe of the sensor, which assisted one-handed use.

Otherwise, there are the now familiar Huawei Emotion UI Android customisations in place, complete with the same grievances we’ve aired on several occasions. The lack of an app tray still means that your home screen can become a cluttered mess without careful management and the notification pane always feels like it’s overly-populated.

Display

The 5.2in display on the P9 is excellent and dominates much of the front of the phone thanks to its thin bezels. Its 1,920x1,080 resolution isn't as high as other flagships this year, resulting in a pixel density of just 423 pixels-per-inch, but text and images still looked perfectly sharp and crisp.

Colour accuracy at 99.2% of the sRGB colour gamut was also fantastic, giving it one of the highest colour accuracy scores we've seen this year. Black levels of 0.39cd/m2 were a little more mediocre, but a maximum brightness level of 489cd/m2 is good enough to use outdoors without issue. Its respectable contrast ratio of 1,246:1 also does plenty of justice to the punchy photos captured by the P9’s cameras.

Performance and Battery Life

With both a high-quality camera and display, the chipset used for the P9 is far more modest. Powered by 3GB of RAM and one of Huawei's proprietary octa-core Kirin 955 chipsets, which has four cores running at 2.5GHz and another four running at 1.8GHz, the P9 had exceptionally quick CPU speeds but terrible graphics performance. This has been a long-running theme with Huawei's Kirin chips, and it showed in our benchmark tests.

For instance, its Geekbench 3 multicore score of 6,309 puts it just behind the Samsung Galaxy S7, inching just in front of the LG G5 and Huawei's own Mate 8. Its single core score of 1,774, however, was considerably less impressive, as this was almost 400 points behind the S7 and more than 600 points behind the G5, showing it's not terribly efficient at low-level tasks. 

You'll probably want to buy a different phone if you like playing lots of demanding games, too, as the P9 only managed 1,024 frames in GFXBench GL 3.0’s offscreen Manhattan 3.0 test, which amounts to just 12fps. The P9 also found itself lagging behind the competition when it came to browser performance as well, managing just 1,115 in the Peacekeeper browser benchmark. That's around 500 points behind the lightning-quick LG G5, and 700 points behind the S7.

Fortunately, Huawei's made several improvements to the P9's battery life this time round, as it managed a much more respectable 11h 24m in our continuous video playback test when we set the screen brightness to our usual measurement of 170cd/m2. While still not great for a 3,000mAh battery, at least it reaches double figures this year, which is more than can be said of the 7h 26m we managed with last year's P8. Just be aware that the P9 has a USB-C port rather than a regular micro USB port, so you'll need to take its bundled charging cable with you if you need to top it up during the day. 

Conclusion

For many people, camera quality is right up there with battery life as one of the most important considerations when choosing a new smartphone. In both regards, the Huawei P9 acquits itself well, and its camera performance in particular is very good indeed. If the camera's your main priority, then the Leica collaboration can be considered a success, and Huawei should be commended for trying to innovate, even if the overall execution of the P9 overall doesn't quite deliver. Huawei’s Emotion UI still proves to be a sticking point, however, and the P9’s general performance isn’t particularly stellar, especially around gaming.

It is, however, much cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5, with SIM-free prices starting at around £450, while contracts are currently available for around £30-per-month. This is £10 less a month compared to the S7 and G5, which might be preferable for those with more limited budgets. In my book, I'd probably prefer to pay a bit more for a better all-rounder, but if you're looking for a great camera without breaking the bank, then the P9 is a good choice.