Huawei’s P9 Lite and P9 ready for preorders, hits stores in Malaysia on 28 May

Huawei’s alliance with Leica has finally borne fruit in the form of their P9 series of smartphones that were unveiled to the world in London first and recently in Bali for the Southeast Asia region. The P9 series comes in three different flavours, the P9 Lite, the flagship P9 and the P9 Plus.

For those of us on this side of the pond, you’ll be glad to know that Huawei is taking preorders right now on their Vmall website starting from today till 27 May for the P9 Lite and P9.

The Huawei P9 Lite comes in three different colours – black, white and gold

For the uninitiated, the P9 Lite crams in quite a bit for a phone that’s just a wee bit over a grand. For your money you get a phone with a 5.2-inch 1080P display with Android 6.0 running on a Kirin 650 8-core 2.0GHz processor paired with 3GB RAM and 16GB of expandable memory along with a fingerprint sensor and a 3,000mAh battery crammed into a casing that’s just 7.5mm thin and weighing 143g. Like other Huawei phones, it has a hybrid dual SIM card slot. The rear camera has a 13-MP sensor while the front has an 8-MP sensor for selfies. Unlike its larger siblings, it sports a conventional microUSB port for charging and docking duties.

The local variant of the Huawei P9 will come with 3GB RAM, 32GB of storage and in your choice of three colours – Prestige Gold, Titanium Grey and Mystic silver

The pièce de résistance for Huawei this year, the flagship P9 comes with Leica certified rear cameras. We say cameras because the rear comes with not one but two camera sensors, one that takes colour and the other being a monochromatic sensor. Both are 12-MP resolution and have an F/2.2 aperture. Combined, both cameras offer better low light imaging, sweeter bokeh and better overall image quality. It’ll have a bevy of Leica-centric modes as well laser-assisted autofocus. Camera aside, the rest of the hardware on the P9 is just as respectable in the form of a Kirin 955 2.5GHz octacore processor running Android 6.0, 32GB of expandable storage, 3GB RAM, a crisp 5.2-inch 1080P display, a front-facing 8-MP selfie camera and a dual hybrid SIM card tray. A fingerprint sensor perches on the back on the phone and the phone has a USB type-C port along with the corresponding cable.

The P9 and P9 Lite will arrive in stores nationwide on 28 May as well as on the aforementioned Vmall and on Lazada with the P9 coming in your choice of three colours – Prestige Gold, Titanium Grey and Mystic silver for RM2,099 for the 3GB and 32GB ROM variant. The P9 Lite will retail for RM1,099 at launch and will come in the 3GB RAM/16GB ROM with your choice of three colours – Black, White and Gold.

If you hustle it, the first ten who preorder the P9 on Vmall and who pay up on preorder will get a free Honor Band Z1 smartwatch worth RM269. Better yet, if you purchase your P9 at an authorised Huawei Malaysia store, you’ll get what they call the Standard Premium Service that offers a host of maintenance-centric bonuses for your P9 that include the following:

-One-to-one device exchanges within the 12-month warranty period
-Free Door-to-Door pick-up and delivery service
-Three-month LCD screen warranty from Proof of Purchase (POP) Date – One (1) time only.
-Two (2) free cleaning service within the 12-month warranty period
-Dedicated VIP hotline service – 1800 – 22 – 0086

There’s no word when the P9 Plus which comes with a larger 5.5-inch AMOLED Full HD display will launch in Malaysia and it won’t be arriving with the P9 Lite and P9 but that doesn’t discount the possibility that it will be launched later on in the year.