Huawei Announces P8, Its New Flagship Smartphone

By Gulshan Naz: Huawei has decided to pull off an Apple in its latest flagship launching. The company announced, not one, but three new phones, two of them being capable flagships. The first one among them was the Ascend P8.

It is good to see that Huawei has placed more emphasis on the details rather than just specs here. The display is a 5.2” IPS LCD panel with 1080p resolution. Crucially, there are almost no bezels alongside it. The design is cool-looking too, with a 6.4mm frame and full aluminium unibody.

The camera is also a major part of the package. It is a 13 megapixel sensor, but is the first in a smartphone to use four types of sub-pixels: Red, Green, Blue and White, which help with the brightness and also in low-lighting conditions. There’s OIS with just anti-shake degree of just 1.2 degrees. Then you have a discrete DSLR-quality image processor and a true-tone flash and you know that these people are serious about this. Oh, and unlike the iPhone 6 Plus, there is no bump at the back.

Underneath, you get Huawei’s own Kirin 935 64-bit processor with 4 Cortex-A53 chips clocked at 2 Ghz and another four at 1.5 Ghz. Accompanying it is 3 GB RAM and 16 or 64 GB worth internal storage. MicroSD is supported in the second SIM card slot, of up to 128 GB.

Connectivity includes 4G LTE, NFC, Wi-Fi+, Signal+ (which adds two antennas, one at top, another at bottom to the phone) and GPS. Battery is said to last 1.5 days on heavy usage. The phone will be offered in four color options.

Huawei has also added a few nice tricks. You can bang your knuckles on the display twice to take a screenshot, or you can crop a section to select part of the snap. There’s also a Director Mode which allows four P8 owners to record a video simultaneously. There is a terrific e-ink cover accessory which adds a low-energy 4.3” display to use in sunshine, which is quite cool.

The phone will be available for 499 Euros for the base 16 gig version, or 599 Euros for the 64 GB version. It will be available in the coming few weeks.

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Huawei P8 Specifications:

• CPU: 2 Ghz quad-core Cortex-A53 + 1.5 Ghz quad-core Cortex-A53
• Chipset: HiSilicon Kirin 935
• OS: Customized Android 5.0.2 Lollipop
• Supported Networks: 2G, 3G, 4G LTE, dual-SIM
• Design: Full aluminium unibody and frame, 6.4 mm thick
• Display: 5.2” IPS LCD with 1080 x 1920 pixels
  • 78.3% screen-to-body ratio
• Memory:
  • RAM: 3 GB
  • Internal: 16/64 GB
  • Card slot: expandable by 128 GB
• Camera:
  • Primary: 13 megapixel with OIS, dual-tone flash, 1080p video
  • Secondary: 8 megapixel
• Connectivity: NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS with GLONASS
• Battery: 2,600 mAh
• Price: 499 Euros (16 GB), 599 Euros (64 GB)