Huawei P9 is official — twin Leica lenses eyeing to be the world’s best

After making its rounds in the rumour mill, Huawei has finally unveiled the P9 and its bigger sibling, the P9 Plus. Touted to reinvent smartphone photography, the twin lenses mounted on the rear of the P9 and P9 Plus are designed to emulate the human eye.

Sounds promising. But while it does have Leica certification, the camera maker’s role in the development of the P9’s cameras is a little vague.

On the surface of things, Huawei’s P9 seems to keep up with the rest of the flagship smartphones that have come out this year. Dominating the front of the metal-bodied P9 is a 5.2-inch full-HD IPS display boasting a pixel density of 424ppi. Being powered by the Chinese company’s own Kirin 955 processor (four Cortex-A72 cores and four A53 cores) mated to 3GB/4GB of RAM on the inside, the P9 should be a monster when it comes to performance.

It’s also got a modest 3,000 mAh battery to keep the smartphone going, along with a USB Type-C port located at the bottom of the device for charging and data transfer. Apparently, storage options will vary depending on the market. In Europe, the P9 will come with 32GB of internal storage but have an option for expansion via a microSD card slot. On the other hand, China’s P9 will receive the 64GB variant of the P9 but have its microSD card slot replaced by a second SIM slot.

The P9 looks like a gorgeous smartphone with a premium build. It’s pretty amazing how they’ve managed to cram a rather sizable battery and two camera modules (no camera bump!) into a device that’s only 6.95mm thick. In terms of looks, it shares many similarities to the P8 that it succeeds, but the P9 seems to be more rounded and more comfortable to hold.

The P9 Plus shares many of the P9’s specifications barring a few tweaks that give the device its name. Being the bigger of the duo, the P9 Plus will pack a 5.5-inch full-HD AMOLED panel on the front, instead of the IPS LCD display found on the regular P9, which should translate to better contrast and deeper blacks.

Inside, it’s also powered by the Kirin 955 processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage (China is also getting a 128GB variant). The P9 Plus also gets a pressure sensitive display called Press Touch (much like one of last year’s Mate S variants) and an IR blaster. It’s also got a larger 3,400 mAh battery to power the larger screen.

Both the P9 and P9 Plus will come running Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Huawei’s EMUI 4.1 running on top. The duo will also sport Huawei’s rear-mounted fingerprint sensor which history tells us should be pretty stellar. The smartphones also share an 8-megapixel front camera with AF for selfies.

In the eye of the beholder

Much of the hype built around the P9 duo comes from Huawei’s partnership with Leica. A team-up between the legendary camera maker and one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world is the stuff of dreams when it comes to advancing smartphone photography. But, it seems that the German camera-maker may not have had such a big hand in designing the P9’s snappers.

On paper, the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus sport two 12-megapixel Sony IMX286 sensors on the back mated to a pair of Leica Summarit H 1:2.2/27 lenses (f/2.2 with a 27mm focal length). But, as The Verge reveals, there is slightly more to the cameras and Leica branding than meets the eye.

The biggest hint is the fact that Huawei consistently claims that the P9’s dual cameras are “Leica certified”. Not Leica engineered or Leica developed, simply Lecia certified. According to The Verge, when they pushed Huawei to define what that meant, the Chinese company said that the cameras were developed through a “co-engineering process”, which is rather vague if you’d ask me.

Could it just be Leica simply stamping its brand on a smartphone?

That said, the P9’s primary cameras are pretty interesting. Of the two 12MP snappers, one of them is a monochrome module. Apparently, when the monochrome unit works together with the regular camera unit, the two sensors can improve contrast in photos by 50% while tripling the light information taken by the phone. This is due to the monochrome sensor’s ability to soak up more photos because of its lack of an RGB light filter that its colour sibling requires.

How this actually translates into real-world photography remains to be seen, but I can tell you that I’m more than excited to test the cameras out.

The P9 Plus is said to be available in May in both Asia and Europe while the smaller P9 will go on sale in both continents by the end of this month. The P9 will be priced at EUR599 (around RM2,660) for the 3GB RAM/32GB storage version while the 4GB RAM/64GB storage variant will go for EUR649 (around RM2,882). The P9 Plus, on the other hand, will set you back EUR749 (around RM3,330) for the 4GB RAM/64GB storage model.

What do you guys think of this smartphone? Are you sold yet?

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