[Review] Huawei P9 Plus – Power Phablet with Pluses Aplenty

Performance & Camera
The hardware implemented in the P9 Plus is currently the best that Huawei can muster for this generation of phones with their HiSilicon Kirin 955 octacore processor, a generous 4GB RAM and 64GB of onboard expandable storage via a hybrid SIM tray.

The P9 Plus’ 5.5-inch 1080P Super AMOLED display isn’t as sharp as some competing phones that come with much sharper panels though the provision of Super AMOLED tech means that colours are punchy and vibrant with superbly deep blacks. Text and videos are pleasantly crisp and vibrant with good viewing angles all around. What makes the panel on the P9 Plus different is the addition of pressure sensitivity which their boffins have dubbed as ‘Press Touch’. Like the iPhone 6S, pressing the screen hard yields different effects.

Pressing hard when viewing an image means bringing up an image zoom while doing so to certain stock apps can bring up a shortcut action that you’ve predefined or rather, in the P9 Plus’ parlance, starred before such as the phone’s camera mode where you can predefine the starred shortcut to access Pro Camera mode, mono mode, video or selfie mode. There’s also shortcuts such as knocking the screen twice with your knuckles to take a screen capture via what they call Knuckle Sense tech. All this comes in handy though it’s not something that is automatically ingrained in muscle memory and likely won’t radically change how you will use the phone. It takes quite a bit of getting used to as well.

Novel shortcuts aside, the P9 Plus is amazingly smooth and a joy to use with nary a hint of lag. The Kirin 955 processor and generous 4GB RAM go quite aways to ensuring that performance remains silky smooth. Even with demanding games like Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade and Modern Combat 5 : Blackout, it ran in a buttery smooth fashion without any unwelcome warmth or heating issues. GeekBench yielded a solid multi-core score of 6,288 and a single core score of 1,629. Audio was good too on the external speaker with clear, loud audio without distortion even when maxed out though it still doesn’t match up to something like HTC’s BoomSound speaker setup.

The fingerprint reader on the P9 Plus is fast and responsive with an unlocking speed measured in seconds. The reader is not only able to unlock the phone, it can also act as a shortcut to take snaps, answer a call or stop an alarm. It’s a novel idea and one that ought to be implemented in future phones.

Like the smaller P9, the P9 Plus comes with a pair of 12-MP f/2.2 rear cameras, one of which takes snaps in colour, the other in monochrome with the former to capture colour data and the latter to capture depth details and for mono shots. Shots off the bat on Auto mode, like the P9, are well lit with great colours and good detail along with spot-on skin tones. Accessing the plethora of filters and a handy bokeh mode is via sliding the left edge of the screen up. Selective depth on images is convincing, allowing even camera novices to snag some convincingly good snaps. Monochrome mode, which relies on the camera’s sole mono camera sensor showed excellent detail and gradations of black to add quite a bit of drama to shots. There’s also a car trail mode if you’re fairly patient and able to stand in a spot for a few minutes with a tripod to yield some pretty sweet light painting and light trail snaps.

Shots indoors were competent and low light snaps were pretty good as well. If you’re so inclined, it’s also able to capture snaps in RAW format as well. This is a very competent camera that holds up to stiff competition.