p9
Latest
Huawei P9 review: New phone, familiar tricks
Huawei still isn't a household name in every corner of the world, despite having ousted Microsoft last summer to become the world's third-largest smartphone manufacturer. The company might not have the pedigree of LG, Sony and others, but there are few greater endorsements than being recruited by Google to deliver a Nexus device. That was more than six months ago, but it's with that kind of exposure in mind that we welcome Huawei's latest flagship, the P9, and see what it has to offer.
Of course Huawei is making a Gear VR rival
Huawei may have just announced the fancy P9 and P9 Plus smartphones in London last week, but it actually saved a little surprise for its Shanghai launch today. Well, we say "surprise" but it's also very much a "me too" thing at this point. Simply dubbed Huawei VR, this headset series will initially come in three flavors to let you slot in the company's most recent flagship devices: the two P9 phones and the larger Mate 8. Given their mere 1080p screen resolution, don't expect any crisp video quality through those goggles, but Huawei claims its VR solution is the first to offer 360-degree sound field on the go, as long as you have the right content loaded and your own headphones plugged in.
Huawei's P9 flagship phone has a Leica-endorsed dual camera
Thanks to its affordable and often feature-packed devices, Huawei has firmly entrenched itself as the third biggest smartphone manufacturer, behind Apple and Samsung. Over the past six months or so, the company has added new handsets to its bigger-screened Mate range and it's crafted the Nexus 6P on Google's behalf. But it's time to turn our attention back to the flagship P series. It's been a year since the P8 debuted, after all, so it's with barely any surprise whatsoever that we welcome the Huawei P9 today. Or the P9 family, we should say.
Pictures of Huawei's dual-camera P9 surface
It seems like just last week we were at Mobile World Congress in Spain checking out all the new phones. Oh wait, that was last week. Then why in the hell didn't Huawei show off the P9 handset there instead of having a leaker steal its thunder? The world may never know, but VentureBeat has photographic evidence of the new handset and some of its key specs, regardless.
Huawei's fight to fix its image and conquer the smartphone world
"Man, China gets all the good phones." This is the kind of comment we've been hearing a lot lately. But, very few of those Chinese smartphones make it to Western markets. Besides, some folks remain skeptical of Chinese smartphones -- either due to bad experience in the past or because of fears over spying by the Chinese government. Huawei in particular has taken quite a bit of heat, with the spotlight set on its founder, Ren Zhengfei, who served in the People's Liberation Army until 1983. Yet Ren has explained -- more than once -- that he was just an Engineering Corps officer who helped set up a synthetic fiber factory to tackle the country's clothing shortage, and his team was disbanded soon after completion. But that hasn't satisfied everyone and, as the world's third-largest smartphone maker plus one of the largest telecom equipment vendors, Huawei needs to prove its critics wrong.
