The quick take
Huawei's newest flagship phone — the P9 — isn't the most inspired design you've ever seen. It's sort of your basic smartphone. But this is the best iteration of its EMUI software yet, full of features you might want in a third-party launcher. Huawei's Kirin 955 processor sings, and Huawei's new dual-camera setup works very well.
The Good
- Much-improved software
- Excellent camera and fingerprint sensor
- Slim, with a great display
- Good battery life
The Bad
- Pricey, starting at €599
- Sheer amount of features is overwhelming
- Annoying power management alerts
- Occasional software lag
From China, with love
Huawei P9 Full review
Ask anyone of us who have used the Huawei P9 what we think, and we'll quickly tell you that it's the least broken of Huawei's phones that we've used. And while that's accurate — it's not really fair. There's a whole lot going on with this phone from a company that — let's face face it — non-nerds in North America haven't heard a whole lot about.
Huawei has made some really good (if not necessarily inspiring) hardware for some time now. The Nexus 6P. The Mate series. Its Honor sub-brand. It helped spread good fingerprint sensors to the whole of Android. It's had above-average cameras for a while now. The anchor dragging it down has always been its EMUI software — its iOS-inspired user interface.
That had as much to to with how EMUI was implemented as it did the fact that it's simply different than what most of us on Android are used to. No app drawer. A different sort of notification drawer and quick-settings scheme. And in the process of changing all that, things were broken — particularly when Huawei's phones were sold outside China and Google's services were added back in.
In fact, we need to change "least broken" to "really good." Pretty much all of the showstopping bugs we'd experienced before have been fixed. Even the still-niche Android Auto works out of the box — something we can't say for some of the major phones being sold in the U.S.
That's not to say this is a perfect phone, or maybe even the best Huawei has done. But it's probably the most complete thought from the Chinese manufacturer.
This, then, is our full Huawei P9 review.
Press play
Huawei P9 Video review
The little things
About this review
We've been using the Huawei P9 (EVA-L09) exclusively for more than two weeks. This is the lesser spec'd of the two P9 options, with 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM, as provided to us by Huawei. It's running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with EMUI 4.1.
Immediately before publishing this review we received the "B135" update. The changelog doesn't appear to address any issues we had during our review time, but we'll update should we see something new.
We had the P9 connected to an LG Watch Urbane for the entirety of this review.
It's a smartphone
Huawei P9 Hardware
You can say this about Huawei: It's among the more consistent manufacturers when it comes to its industrial design. You can read that as "boring" if you want. But if you're looking for a solid, basic sort of smartphone, Huawei does this very well. (And has for a while.)
A well-built, if not overly inspiring design.
There's nothing particularly exciting about the design — it's your standard smartphone slab, with nicely milled aluminum. It's pretty light at 144 grams and comes in at just under 7 millimeters in thickness — surprisingly thin for something with as big a battery as the P9 has.
Metal and glass. Glass and metal. Fingerprint reader on the back, buttons where you'd expect to find them on the side. It's all in a really good size with a 5.2-inch screen. No too big, not too small. That display is excellent outdoors and in my eyes is better than what you get on the LG G5 or HTC 10, by far, with none of the polarization issues when wearing sunglasses. The top and bottom bezels maybe feel al little big, but some of that is the contrast in color between the colored metal and black screen.
The headphone jack's on the bottom, along with the single speaker. It's surprisingly loud, but it's still just a single smartphone speaker, so you're not going to get much bass out of it. But it's fine for casual music playback and calls.
The P9 also is using the new USB-C port. The SIM card tray doubles as the microSD card slot, which is useful for augmenting the 32 gigabytes of internal storage. It's perfectly milled into the phone, too — something that too often isn't 100% nailed on a lot of phones.
Where things get more interesting is on the back. Two cameras — one monochrome, the other full color — outputting 12-megapixel images. They work together as well — and you end up with some really good pictures because of it. Indoors, outdoors, low light — straight into the sun — you name it. This camera does most things really well.
- 5.2-inch IPS LCD
- 2.5D glass
- 1920x1080 resolution (423ppi)
- Dual 12MP (color & monochrome), ƒ/2.2 lens, Leica certified
- 8MP front camera
- 3000mAh capacity
- Non-removable
- Huawei Kirin 955
- Quad-core 2.5GHz
- 3GB or 4GB RAM
- 32 or 64GB internal storage
- microSD slot
Storage, processor and battery
As you can see from the specs, there are a couple versions of the P9 floating around out there. We've got the one with 32 gigabytes of storage and 3GB of RAM. We've got about 25 gigabytes to use for apps and pics and stuff. (And after a couple weeks we're down to 16GB of that still free.)
You can (and probably should), of course, slot in a microSD card. We've been using a 128GB card without issue. Like a number of other manufacturers, Huawei is not using Adoptable Storage, so you'll be able to stick the card in a computer or another phone to move things around as you please.
Kirin 955 builds on the strengths of the 950, but 4GB of RAM should be standard.
The 3 gigabytes of RAM is really the only questionable hardware decision for us at this point. While Huawei's software is extremely aggressive about memory management — and the Huawei Mate 8 with the Kirin 950 processor was pretty darn smooth — we've been running into a little bit of lag with the P9. Maybe not quite enough to sound the alarm at, but there have have been too many times where apps are a little slow to load (especially the camera), and we have to wonder if 3GB of RAM is enough for EMUI 4.1.
Otherwise, we've not got any real complaints about the newer Kirin 955 processor, which has been updated with a number of tweaks for the dual camera.
As far as battery life goes, it's pretty much same as it ever was. A 3,000 mAh capacity is pretty standard at this point, and it's good for pretty much a full day's use. More time spent on LTE will chew away at that, of course. But if you're on good Wi-Fi, you shouldn't have a problem getting from sunup to sundown.
You will, however, miss out on quick charging. Huawei's included charger (we got a European brick, so we're talking theoretically here) does things at 5V at ~2A. Not exactly a trickle charge, but not the new (and disputed) hotness.
Best EMUI yet
Huawei P9 Software
It's time to stop turning your nose up at Huawei's EMUI software. There are a ton of features (some new, some still hanging around) in EMUI 4.1. The launcher (that is to say the user interface) is so full of options, in fact, that you could spend a couple of weeks with it — which we have — and still find something new, which we are.
The number of features here can be intimidating, but they're also as powerful as any other launcher.
Loads of lock-screen options. Plenty of ways to arrange your home screens and place widgets. Multi-page folders. Even an entire section dedicated to apps you want to hide from the main view. And while it's cool these days to complain about the lack of and app drawer, the simple fact is that this is the best version of EMUI we've used. If you can't make it work for you, that's not the phone's fault. It DOES take a little extra work to move things around — and you absolutely should move things around. But I've forced myself to not run to my usual launcher, and EMUI is serving me just fine. But if you don't like what Huawei's doing here, you can switch to your favorite launcher just fine.
Notifications look different — and the icons are so small in the nav at the top of the screen they might as well not be there. But all in all this a very useable user interface. It just looks different than what you're used to.
Huawei still has a "Phone Manager" app that gives easy access to, well, phone management options. There's system optimization, which attempts to clean up memory and empty out other files you might not need anymore. We generally let Android just do all this on its own. But if it makes you feel better, you can use it. Huawei's overly aggressive power consumption tool is here as well. And it's as annoying as ever. And just do yourself a favor and don't bother with the Swype-based keyboard.
There's a traffic manager so you can see what apps are using data — and when they're using data. There's a "harassment filter" for blocking unwanted calls and messages. You've got quick access to the battery manager, and its three power management plans, and an option for lowering the screen resolution even further to 720p. And you can lock individual apps behind a password or your fingerprint — which is something we want to see on every phone at this point.
So, yeah. There's a ton of stuff on the P9.
Two lenses, no waiting
Huawei P9 Cameras
There's a ton of stuff going on with the cameras, too. Again, we're talking about dual f/2.2 lenses on the back that feed into 12-megapixel sensors with 1.76-micron-equivalent pixels. (The real physical pixel size is 1.25 microns.) So not the widest aperture or the largest pixel size we've seen, but that's pretty decent. The real power of this camera is in the processing, and in the camera app itself.
It's all kinds of busy — pretty much any feature you could hope for is baked in here. A swipe left gets you to 14 modes, including HDR, beauty, panoramas, light painting, time lapse, slow motion, watermarks, document reading, audio notes, night shots, video, black-and-white — you get the idea. A swipe the other direction gets you to the world of settings, including a bunch of film modes. Pull up from the bottom and you'll get full manual controls, including the option to shoot in RAW.
While the P9 is just fine in automatic mode — absolutely among the top cameras you can find in a smartphone — this is a pretty intimidating camera app. There is a LOT going on here.
Selfies look great, too, thanks to all that processing, and an 8-megapixel sensor. And they've still got that beauty mode the kids are into, if the real thing just doesn't do it for you.
One word you might have noticed we've kept from saying so far is "Leica," which has lent its name to the camera system in the P9. It's really not any more than a branding thing, and that's not uncommon for smartphone features. You see it all the time with audio in a phone — it's just that with Leica you usually expect some sort of hardware tie-in. With the P9 it's more of a "certification" thing.
The end result? Some pretty good pictures. I'm not really a fan of all the film modes Huawei included here. (Other manufacturers have been doing that as well.) And I'd prefer to switch the top-level macro button for HDR, as the aperture control is really aggressive and looks over-processed, like what we'd get from the single-lens cameras through software a few years ago. (As in the out-of-focus parts are really out of focus.)
At the end of the day this is still a smartphone camera. But it's still a REALLY good one, with tons of options.
And same goes for video. The P9 tops out at 1080p and doesn't shoot in 4K, but that's probably just fine for 90% of the population. You still get manual controls, and top-level access to all those film filters. What you do really miss out on is optical image stabilization, and the microphone was pretty quickly overwhelmed by wind noise.
So you can shoot video, and it's decent. But not fantastic.
The bottom line ...
Should you buy it? Maybe
There's a lot to like the Huawei P9. And it's probably the company's most finished phone, too. (That's aside from the Nexus 6P — which while very much a Huawei product sort of doesn't count in that context.)
This is the best mainstream phone Huawei has made.
The biggest problem for us at this point is availability, and price. You still can't get phones running Huawei's own Kirin processor in the United States. While the P9 is launching in a whole bunch of other countries, it's not necessarily cheap there — the retail price starts at €599 Euros (about $680 U.S. dollars) for the 32-gigabyte storage option, and ramping up to €649 Euros ($737 U.S. dollars) for the 64-gigabyte option with 4 gigs of RAM. That's a lot of money (though price does vary some depending on your country) and it puts the P9 in the same range as the Galaxy S7 or a top-spec'd iPhone — which is exactly the league Huawei wants to play in.
And you know what? The P9 holds its own. It's different. It's maybe a little overpowering, with all those options in the UI and in the camera app. But the end result is a very useable phone and an excellent camera setup.
And it's an excellent effort from Huawei.
Where to buy the Huawei P9
If the Huawei P9 sounds like the phone for you, and you'd like to check out its pricing, hit up the retailers below.
See at CPW (opens in new tab) See at Vmall{.shop .cta} See at O2 (opens in new tab) See at Vodafone (opens in new tab)
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Pre order arrives Friday plus free Huawei watch. Win win Posted via the Android Central App
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Definitely a good deal.Are you in the UK? Posted via the Android Central App
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Yep. Vodafone still have the deal on. 20GB contract is about £45 and no money down. Posted via the Android Central App
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I'd love to see it available in the US and a free huawei watch would be excellent. Congratulations Posted via the Android Central App
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Jack- Do you know if Vodafone will carry the 64gb in the UK? I have a friend who is going to get it for me and send it over to the US but all I can see everywhere is the 32gb version. I wonder if the 64gb is Asia only or something?
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That's an awesome deal.
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Free watch. That's a nice watch. Wow. Who did you have to sleep with at Vodafone. I'd do it.
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Brilliant deal - I have the Huawei watch - you won't be dissapointed.
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I Pre Order from carphonewarehouse, I don't know when phone arrives...
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while camera is pretty good
but note that if you clean memory it will stop services apps like download manager and applock gps logger. etc -
Been using P8, it's solid and I love it, i think Huawei moved to the right direction Posted via the Android Central App
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Looks like EMUI has most of its kinks sorted out. I might consider giving one of their devices a shot if we can get these Kirin-powered devices in the States soon (I remember saying they are doing so later in the year. Not sure if this still holds up now).
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Huawei is like new super car company, trying to invade Ferrari and Lamborghini territory. They made a Nexus device and now trying to charge big $$$ for their product!!! "Fake possessor", "Fake camera" is it bad? NO!!! But if you going to charge sub $800 for a cellphone, at least put the time proven and top brand internals. Or at least be like Hyundai, make a full size big sedan, compare it to 7 Series BMW power wise and comfort wise, charge HALF THE PRICE!!! Again I'm not saing it is a bad phone, but it is not a Lambo nor Ferrari, but priced as equal. Just my 2 cents
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How is making in house processors fake? Are Samsung processors fake because they are not Qualcomm?
Also, since this isn't available in the USA you have no idea what you are talking about with pricing.
GS7 sim free £559.99
P9 32GB £449 About 20% cheaper is a big deal. Posted via the Android Central App -
1st of all learn to read and understand the content you read. And be more respectful with your comments "online super hero"
I did't comment to Insult Huawei, nor any of their fans. There's nothing wrong with in house processors. Samsung bakes them for decades and Huawei started "3.5 days ago" and wan's same glory. And if I have a name Leica on my phone, I want it be more than just a logo, but actual product. And when it comes to price, it is £599 for 4GB ram version ( again if we comparing to Samsung ) witch is steep for Hyundai for a price of BMW. -
That was an insult to Huawei. Calling their product lesser because it's lesser known. That processor is as fast as the 820. The camera is good, and the phone works well. Phones are not cars. They've reached a peak and all have worked well since 2H13. Get real. AT&T Galaxy Note 4
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Urmm. HiSilicon has been making processors since 2004? And they're the largest IC designer in China? Please educate yourself before you comment on the internet. It's as simple as a few clicks and pressing a few keys! And also, the Leica camera, even though not built at Leica factories, are supervised by them and manufactured to meet their standards! So I don't understand why you are whining!
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I understand you are a fanboy. That's ok. Just remember you are not getting paid for the product you paid and defending like your country ))) There's companies make chips on Intel scale, are they better? LOL>>>... Leica supervised and approved it? I have a Serval cat at home and he just laughed like real human... Let me give you a business 101 (and please don't get all insulted and offended) Huawei comes to Leica and say here is 10 mills I want your name on my product... Leica goes what? you crazy... ok just put "ok" camera on your product and make it little different (like ad the second camera that makes only BW pictures for no good reason, just for the hell of it. we will say that's the Leica retro style) and you will pay 100 mills BTW. Oh yea and we defiantly supervised it and blessed it... Ravindu Thimantha Gamage>>> Leica doesn't give a flying Saucer about cell phone cameras. It's just business... cheers.
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Let me guess, you're american right? ^^
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Um, I think you missed the fact that Kirin processors are actually better than Qualcomm processors. Check out these benchmarks on Anandtech. The Mate 8 with the older Kirin 950 beats the Galaxy S7 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 in most CPU tests AND it's more efficient! And the Kirin 955 in this phone will only beat the Snapdragon 820 worse! Looks like you're the only blind fanboy here lol. http://www.anandtech.com/show/10120/the-samsung-galaxy-s7-review/3
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You sir, do not know what you are talking about. Posted from my Nokia 3310
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I read occasional software lag and that was it. I don't pay big bucks to see my phone chug along. I have seen many buys of mine lag while the reviewers said that the phone was buttery smooth. Now if they are pointing out the "occasional lag", I'm pretty sure this will remind me of the Gingerbread days.
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Yup, that killed it for me. It's strange too because most reviewers said the Mate 8 with Kirin 950 was the fastest and smoothest Android phone they had ever used and this has a newer, better Kirin 955 chip. So I guess the latest version of EMUI is just really poorly optimized. It could be fixed in an update, but if it's not perfect at launch it's not worth risking it to me.
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I got mine a week a go. I live the camera has tons of filters a crap to play with. Just got a big update yesterday
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Sounds very impressive. Also those pictures are pretty good too!
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Why are all the best specs saved for the smaller phones?
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Lol what? Posted via the Android Central App
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I think that might have been sarcasm. I think. Posted from one of my various Nexus devices.
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Filters in stock camera apps need to die. I don't care if it's Huawei or HTC or anyone else... Just no. If I want filters I'll put them on afterwards with a different app. I don't need that stuff bloating up the camera app. Posted via the Android Central App
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Best video review I've seen. Very well done. Posted via my LG G5
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Phil's getting pretty good with the video reviews.
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htc 10 all day! htc One M8
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What's the brand is the car in the gallery ? Posted via the Android Central App
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Tesla I think
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"It's time to stop turning your nose up at Huawei's EMUI software." Sorry, no. When the phone gets monthly security updates like a Nexus phone then it may be time, until then it worthless crap that gets in the way.
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CON
"Sheer amount of features is overwhelming" Really? -
Nobody makes a rectangle more boring than the Chinese. Posted via the Android Central App from my S7 edge
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I'd be ever so happy to have seen the P9 at my TMO store. Holding out hope that Huawei, Xiaomi and the rest bring their best to US carriers. Posted via the Android Central App
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I would add 2 things to this review: 1. Black-and-white pictures have much less noise in low light (huge difference) because there are no obstacles to the sensor like filters in the color module. 2. Audio is very quiet on the headphone jack so you may have problems driving more demanding headphones. This is important factor for me because even with the bundled headphones you can hear the difference in loudness and it also helps when you have silently recorded music. I would very much welcome measurements in Volts of the headphone output in reviews, unfortunately as of this moment only 1 portal I know adds it to their reviews.
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its only a matter of time for the fools to get fooled with this crap from where else.. china LOL
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Hey Phil, that's so racist of you. While mentioning the countries in the end in video review, you completely and deliberately skipped on Pakistan (a country with a population of 180 million) where it will be officially available from May 2nd, and perhaps the lowest price around the globe i.e, 520 US$ . Next time please check either phones' global availability or contact OEMs regarding regions.
Thanks. -
Wait, was it deliberate or did he just miss it by not contacting the OEM about it? Which is it? You can't accuse him of both. Answer the question, Frank!
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with first class hardware at least throw in Touchwiz any day and I'll take a bite of HUAWEI Posted via the Android Central App
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Huawei has been producing great phones for a few years now. Their flagships are something to look. I have to agree, the standard rectangle on this is kinda boring though but at least the camera is good. UI can be improved to be better hopefully they'd add an appdrawer next time around. I kinda feel like their approach is prone to a ton of clutter. If compared to the HTC 10 though... May choose this mainly for the camera but for everything else I'd go for the HTC 10. Just my thoughts.
https://versus.com/en/huawei-p9-vs-htc-10 Anyhow, great review! -
Looking forward to your review of the camera. Is it also possible include the high res unedited copies straight right out from the phone?
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Funny how 3GB wasn't even standard but you are already calling for 4GB as the standard. I don't disagree.. but Im not really convinced that 3GB was even maxed out yet.
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How does the cam performance compare to the S7 edge, the Note 5, the V10 and G5?
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So what's the point of the dual cameras? Just to take better black and white shots? Also, those first images taken at the baseball game look terrible, like bad shot from a 2001 point and shoot digital camera bad. Was that a failure of the system's auto mode that you decided to include on purpose? *edit never mind. It says "full zoom", I guess that explains it.
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BW camera takes in light information, while standard camera takes in color. They're able to get a really good dynamic range out of it, at least that's what some camera reviews say.
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Any protective case is going to have to have an extra hole in the front / back for that finger swipe...
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I'd recommend you take a look at the real spec... http://consumer.huawei.com/uk/mobile-phones/p9/
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Huawei P9 or Nexus 6p? I want the P9 for the SD820 and dual cameras. I want the 6p for the software updates.
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I meant the Kirin 955, not SD820
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I will get excited when my Huawei Honor 5X is updated with Marshmallow...ask me then. Its been promised now for months...still waiting!!!
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@kaymay Why wait? Hop on over to XDA-Developers and pick up the Marshmallow 6, drop the dload folder onto your Honor 5X SD Card and click Local Update and Presto! Welcome To Marshmallow!
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I am seeing review that the camera on Samsung S7 or Note7 is better than as of Huawei P9 or P9 plus? Is this true? Im kind of puzzled what to purchase between these two
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Android Central,when you reviewed this phone you must have had earlier software. My P9 is definately not slow and never have I had any lag whatsoever,it really is a fab phone and camera
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please note
on huawei when you clean memory it will stop services apps like download manager and applock apps -
Thanks for this review! I'm planning to get a Huawei P9 for my brother and this review gives me an hint of what to expect from this phone.
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