Huawei P9 Full review

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.

• • 5.2-inch IPS LCD
  • 2.5D glass
  • 1920x1080 resolution (423ppi)
• Cameras:
  • Dual 12MP (color & monochrome), ƒ/2.2 lens, Leica certified
  • 8MP front camera
• Battery:
  • 3000mAh capacity
  • Non-removable
• Chips:
  • Huawei Kirin 955
  • Quad-core 2.5GHz
  • 3GB or 4GB RAM
  • 32 or 64GB internal storage
  • microSD slot