Huawei P8 Lite 2017 SIM-Free Smartphone - Black

Product Information

Boasting a 13-megapixel primary camera with impressive low-light capabilities, the Huawei Ascend P7 follow-on’s spec sheet is further enhanced by a secondary, 8-megapixel camera up front and a sizeable 2,680mAh Lithium-Polymer battery. Although exclusive to the retailer until the end of the month, Carphone is offering the P8 on a variety of contracts, including those hosted by EE, Vodafone and O2. The device is also available tied to Carphone’s own iD network. We can’t criticise the level of detail on display, with all of our images showing a startling level of clarity. You’ll have to zoom in a long way before you can spot any pixelation or blurring of detail. Huawei’s 1.2-degree optical image stabilisation (twice that of Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus) also helps the P8 take clear, relatively noise-free low light images.

Within hours of its arrival she was declaring it great and, a few months on, it has proved a great choice. Battery life is very good and it does everything a 19-year-old design student has needed. Tesco Mobile’s sim deal is not the absolute cheapest, but it is very competitive, and the company offers the best customer service in the industry (winning accolades from Which? and scoring the best in regulator Ofcom’s complaints league table). The rear-facing 13-megapixel sensor can’t match the Galaxy S6 or One M9 for resolution, but Huawei claims its ‘world’s first’ 4-colour RGBW imaging sensor cuts noise in low light conditions by 78% while providing 32% higher brightness and contrast levels. In our outdoor shots, it exposed the sky and clouds very effectively, capturing plenty of detail and putting other flagship cameras to shame. However, we noticed a tendency to overexpose certain parts of images, leaving them washed out. Colours looked natural outdoors, but became overly vivid when shooting inside.We are really excited to be launching our latest flagship smartphone, the Huawei P8 with iD,” the Chinese manufacturer’s UK Sales Director, Rhys Saunders stated. Arguably Huawei’s most accomplished phone to date, the P8 pairs a 5.2-inch, 1080p Full HD display with an octa-core Kirin 930 chipset and 3GB of RAM.

There was hardly any noise in our indoor shots, but colours were still a little too bright and overwhelming Having a blue light adjustment means less eye strain and there is even an adjustment for bright light conditions. The P8’s Mali-T268 MP4 GPU will struggle to play 3D games at their highest settings as well, as our BaseMark X 1.1 graphics benchmarks were once again a long way behind the competition. On Medium graphics settings, the P8 scored 12,681 overall, averaging just 16.2fps in the Dunes test and 21.4fps in the Hangar test. The One M9 and Galaxy S6, meanwhile, scored more respectable figures of 28,074 and 31,157 on Medium and averaged at least 30fps in each test, making them better choices for mobile gamers. STORAGE Another minor irritation is that Notifications and Settings are separated into two separate tabs when you swipe down from the top, with Notifications always coming up first if you have any waiting. This means you either have to tap the tab or swipe to the side to get to the Settings menu. We’d prefer them to be integrated using the Android 5.0 style. It’s been a while since we last took a look at Huawei’s P8 smartphone, so long in fact that a newer Lite version has since released along with its replacement, the P9. When I first put it through its paces last year, I found that its looks outweighed overall performance and battery life. Whether that outcome still holds true to this day remains to be seen.The phone is slimmer than the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, and is immediately obvious as soon as you take it out of the box. Slotted in sideways, its chamfered edges and rounded corners look stunning against the subtle glistening rear finish. The camera sits flush to the chassis, creating a seamless profile that might make Apple and Samsung owners a little jealous. Huawei’s EMUI 3.1 interface doesn’t have an app tray, so you’ll need to organise all your apps on the phone’s nine available home screens. This isn’t too much of a hassle, as you can create folders to keep apps grouped together, but it’s different from almost every other Android smartphone. You can also change the home screen grid layout from 4×5 to 5×4 or even 5×5, allowing you to fit more apps and widgets on the screen.

A three second push of the on/off button starts the unit and 30 seconds brings you a usable (booted) phone, switch off is 3 seconds. They added: “As a brand Huawei prides itself on creating premium devices at affordable prices and iD share this ethos of quality and value, making them the perfect partner to launch our brand new smartphone.” This should be just about enough to get you through the day, but it pales in comparison to the 13-odd hours we got from the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6. Even the HTC One M9 managed to last another two hours in the same test, and that was already pretty underwhelming.

A brilliantly made phone, yet the P8 wasn't the flagship alternative we were hoping for

Admittedly, Huawei’s EMUI 3.1 interface doesn’t do a particularly good job of selling the phone when you first turn it on, as its muted colour palette and dull colour schemes do little to accentuate the display’s strengths. Fortunately, you can customise the main home theme with brighter, more colourful icons and different fonts, so you’ll probably want to spend a bit of time customising your handset to suit your own tastes. BATTERY LIFE