The mid-range phone market is getting pretty heated up with manufacturers providing a choice for customers who want to move up from entry level. It is this market that the Huawei P9 Lite hopes to play in. It is a lesser version of the flagship Huawei P9 but it still packs a punch.
I took it for a test drive and these are my thoughts.
Operation
The P9 Lite runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS coupled with Huawei’s own OS, the Emotion UI version 4.1.
It comes with a notification bar that you swipe down to access. Next to it, accessed by swiping right, is some quick settings and access to the full settings.
The phone comes with some interesting features:
1. NFC
Phone is NFC enabled & can connect to other NFC enabled devices.
2. Wi-Fi Direct
This is a faster way of transferring files from one device to another that has the same feature.
3. Fingerprint reader
The phone has a fingerprint reader that when activated you can use to access the phone. You can add different fingers.
4. Do Not Disturb
You can set this feature to block calls at certain times that you determine. You can also set numbers (priority interruptions) that will be able to get through even when this feature is activated.
5. Harassment filter
You can block unwanted calls and messages with this feature. You can use it to block certain numbers, block messages with certain words and even unknown numbers.
6. Storage cleaner
It frees up storage by removing cache storage from apps.
Screen
The P9 Lite comes with a 5.2 inch LCD touchscreen. The screen is HD at 1080 x 1920 pixels (~424 ppi pixel density). The image quality on the phone is quite something.
The auto brightness feature works well to adjust to different lighting. The screen is also very visible in sunlight.
There’s a colour temperature feature that you can use to change the colours as they appear on the screen. I liked it better set on default.
Connectivity
The P9 Lite is a dual SIM phone that is also 4G. It has one normal SIM slot and the second one that is hybrid and can accommodate either a SIM card or a memory card. The phone only takes nano SIM cards.
Calls on the phone are clear on both 3G & 4G.
Battery life
The phone comes with a 3,000mAh battery. The battery allows the phone to do about 10 hours with heavy use.
The Battery Manager feature has three plans; performance, smart and ultra power saving. Performance uses a lot of power as it maximizes performance. Smart is the recommended plan for daily use as it balances performance. Ultra Power Saving turns the phone into a feature phone and is recommended when the phone has really low charge.
To extend power, you can also control which apps remain active when the phone is inactive.
RAM and processor
The phone comes with 2GB RAM and an Octa-core (4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53) processor. The phone works well in general. However, heavy apps like Tumblr, Instagram and Snapchat make it sluggish. It is advisable to activate the storage cleaner and clear the phone cache in case the phone becomes slow.
Storage
The phone comes with 10GB internal storage. It can be upgragradable by upto 256GB via a memory card.
For a heavy user 10GB is not enough so a memory card is essential.
Design
The phone has an aluminium frame. The front has a touchscreen, camera, earpiece and LED notification. It has a charging port and mouthpiece at the bottom. At the top is a headphone port.
At the back is a fingerprint reader, back camera plus flash.
Camera
The P9 lite has a 13 Megapixel back camera and a 8 Megapixel front camera.
The back main camera shoots photos in four resolutions. The highest, and default, one is 4160 x 3120 pixels. The camera also shoots video in five resolutions and two are HD i.e. 1080p and 720p.
The front and selfie camera shoots in four resolutions. The highest is 3264 x 2448 pixels. The camera shoots video in 720p.
Audio
The audio quality on the phone is good. The sound that comes out of it is clean and clear.
Final thoughts
The Huawei P9 Lite is quite something. It might be the lesser P9 but it holds its own and it a definite buy recommendation for me. The phone is retailing at Ksh. 30,000.