Huawei announced their P8 in London back in April, the phone is a great device which has been my daily driver for around a month. The phone is launching in Australia on July 29th with JB Hifi now taking pre-orders for the phone offering a Talkband B2 to people ordering before July 27th. Huawei is also offering a screen guarantee with the phone to guard against lifes little accidents.
JB Hifi will be stocking the phone, and from what we can tell from supporting documentation, it will also be available from Dick Smith as an outright purchase. As far as carrier support, it appears that Vodafone will be offering the handset as well. While we haven’t been able to find out more about pricing from Vodafone as yet, it appears it will launch on or soon after the 5th of August.
The phone by itself is a pretty great spec in a compact body with a 5.2″ FullHD screen, powered by an in-house developed Kirin 930 64-bit octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM. The phone comes with 16GB of storage, but there’s a microSD card slot to add to that as well. The Huawei P8 has some neat camera tricks paired with the 13Mp rear camera, including light painting and options for low-light photography. Spec wise, the phone has :
- 5.2″ IPS-NEO FullHD 1920x1080P display
- Hisilicon Kirin 930/935 64-bit Octa-core in big.LITTLE (A53 4×2.0GHz and A53 4×1.5GHz)
- 3GB RAM
- 16/64GB on-board storage with microSD Card
- 13MP Rear camera with OIS and dual-tone flash and 8MP front-facing camera
- 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, GPS/A-GPS/Glonass/BDS(BeiDou Navigation Satellite System)
- G-sensor; Gyroscope sensor; Ambient Light sensor; Proximity sensor; Compass, Accelerometer
- Radios:
- GRA_L09:
- TDD LTE: B40
- FDD LTE: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B17/B18/B19/B20/B25/B26/B28
- UMTS: 800(B6,Japan)/800(B19,Japan)/850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz
- GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
- GRA_UL00:
- TDD LTE: B38/B39/B40/B41 (2555MHz~2655MHz)
- FDD LTE:B1/B3/B4/B7
- UMTS: 850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz(B8/B5/B4/B2/B1)
- GSM :
- Main card: 850/900/1800/1900MHz;
- Second card: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
The Huawei P8 has some great hardware and is paired with an Android 5.0 base that Huawei has customised with their EmotionUI which has progressed to version 3.1. The launcher itself is a little strange with no app drawer, but apart from that is just as functional as most OEM launchers on the market, with a few nice touches thrown in to aid usability.
Huawei is doing something a little different with the P8, Huawei is offering one free screen replacement for the P8 ‘for any screen damage’ within the first 12 months of purchase for phones purchased before the 31st of December.
JB Hifi is obviously a launch partner for the phone and are offering a pre-order bonus for anyone ordering the phone before July 27th. The pre-order bonus is a black Talkband B2, worth $229. The Talkband B2 is a great little fitness band which also works as a bluetooth headset which will count your steps, track your workouts and sleep and estimate your calories burned.
Our review of both the Huawei P8 and the Huawei Talkband B2 should be up in the next few days, but we’re pretty pleased with both. If you want to learn more about the JB Hifi pre-order deal, you can head over to the JB Hifi website or for more information on the the Huawei P8, check out their product page.
What’s battery life like?
It’s not awful, but it’s not getting me through a full day.
The biggest complaint has been the gpu (video) – and its price too close to samsung s6 and LG G4 with its inferior camera – this is a pretty good price imo – considering the recent price drops of S6 and G4.