The Huawei P8 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 4, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- P8
- Kirin 930
Camera Architecture
Huawei spent a lot of time to talk about the P8's camera as it probably represents the single biggest upgrade over past models. Huawei only recently experimented with an exotic dual-camera system in the form of the Honor 6 Plus, but such a system still brings some disadvantages with it, such as the impossibility to have any kind of optical image stabilization.
The P8 goes back to a more traditional single-camera system, but Huawei opted to integrate a new innovative RGBW sensor coupled with a performant OIS implementation for its new camera module.
We already had experience with non-Bayer (RGBG or RGGB) image sensors in the form of OmniVision's OV10820 sensor in the original Motorola Moto X. So while it's technically true that the P8 sports the first 13MP RGBW sensor, it's not the first RGBW sensor out there.
Source: Aptina
RGBW or also sometimes referred to as RGBC (C for clear) sensors are supposed to be able to increase the sensitivity of the image sensor by repurpusing one of the green sub-pixels of the normal Bayer arrangement with a white/clear one that is more sensitive to luminance than the conventional coloured sub-pixels.
The sensor in the P8 is provided by Sony in the form of the IMX278. We don't have any public information on this piece as Sony hasn't officially announced it yet, but Chipworks has a very recent teardown in which they confirm 1.12µm pixel size and DTI (Deep Trench Isolation). DTI has by now become standard in high-end sensors and both the IMX214 and IMX240 also feature it. Most famously SLSI markets the technology as Isocell in its camera sensors and have seen its use in the S5K2P2 sensor of the S5 and S6.
Sony had previously tried to make an RGBW sensor before in the form of the original IMX135, but the piece was later on downgraded to a traditional Bayer sensor before it was launched in devices such as the Galaxy S4.
The OmniVision sensor of the Moto X suffered from severe colour artifacts and this led to some loss of confidence in the technology as this seemed an inevitable side-effect of the sub-pixel layout. Luckily in my time with the P8 I haven't noticed any such issues, and the IMX278 seems to perform very well in low-light conditions.
The Kirin 920's build-in ISP performance in the Mate 7 and Honor 6 was another huge weak-point that Huawei has since addressed. The Honor 6 Plus already re-introduced an external ISP by Altek, and the P8 again includes a similar Altek AL6010 chipset.
Finally, Huawei claims that its OIS implementation is superior with 1.2° angle of movement, but this isn't as much as an advantage over other devices than it is over the iPhone 6 Plus. LG's G4 camera system now for example offers a 3-axis OIS implementation with up to 2° freedom of movement, making it the current holder for the title of best-in-class OIS system.
On the lens system, Huawei keeps the camera's aperture to F/2.0 as in the Mate 7/Honor6. The 35mm effective focal length slightly rises to 29mm, making the P8's field-of-view a tiny bit narrower than previous models.
On the front-camera, Huawei now uses a larger 8MP Sony IMX179 sensor with 1.4µm pixel pitch with F/2.4 aperture and 26mm equivalent wide angle lens.
Capture latency is average, as it takes a focused target about 708ms from the moment the tap for capture is registered to having the image stored. In everyday usage, the P8 performs well in terms of capture speed and doesn't have any outstanding issues in that regard.
Camera UX
The camera interface of the P8 largely carries over what we've seen on the Mate 7. The basic viewfinder is minimalistic and keeps elements to a minimum. Swiping left/right, or up/down when in horizontal mode will change the capture mode between standard Photo, Beauty or Light-painting mode for still-picture capture, and basic Video and Time-Lapse modes for video capturing.
Huawei exposes the same limited camera controls as on the Mate 7 - meaning a choice of ISO, white balance and further slides that adjust exposure, saturation, contrast and overall brightness. Sadly these options are not true camera adjustment knobs as they don't expose any actual values to the user. Their location deep in the settings menus also make them unusable in every-day operation.
The settings menu option are contextualized depending on the current shooting mode, and it will remember the settings of that particular mode. And interesting option here is the ability to turn on and off OIS for still picture capture. Normally this doesn't make any sense as you would never want to really turn OIS off, but it gives us a rare opportunity to see the impact of OIS on image quality as we'll later see in the still image analysis.
Overall Huawei's camera interface seems outdated - this would have been a nice UX 2 years ago, but since then other vendors have continually raised the bar, as seen in LG's G4 or Samsung's Galaxy S6. It is a pity because the P8's camera hardware would definitely deserve a software worthy enough to take full advantage of its capabilities.
Video Performance
Again going back to the video performance of the Mate 7 and Honor 6, Huawei presented one of the worst video quality available at the time. This was undoubtedly due to limitations of the SoC's internal ISP, especially aggravated in HDR and EIS modes.
The P8 manages to improve immensely in video capture quality in all modes as long as you don't enable the EIS mechanism:
1080p30 - No stabilization
1080p30 - Optical image stabilization
1080p30 - Optical + electrical image stabilization
Note 4 reference: [ 1080p30 , 1080p30+EIS , 1080p60 , 1080p60+HDR ]
Mate 7 reference: [ 1080p30 , 1080p30+EIS ]
The image quality when not enabling EIS is good but seems to be severely limited by the native encoding of the video files, as it caps out at 9566Kbps on a AVC Baseline L4.0 codec. Audio is recorded at stereo 96Kbps 16bit 48KHz in an AAC encoding. As with previous Huawei devices, the audio quality is excellent and among one of the best devices in terms of clarity.
As mentioned in the UX section, Huawei allows one to disable OIS in the settings for video recording. This might be useful for niche users who would like to do their on software stabilization: the stock OIS still has issues with image yaw, as we see the 2-axis gyro doesn't perform too well in that regard. For practical uses, one would never want to disable OIS as the improvement to the non-stabilized image is clearly evident.
Enabling EIS on top of OIS makes it possible to alleviate the image yaw, but the cost in image quality is too drastic. Here we see again the same drop in image resolution as presented in the Mate 7: the SoC's ISP reserves itself margins on the border of the video stream for EIS compensation, with the resulting video frame no longer being the full resolution that the sensor captured, but a badly upscaled and processed version of the video frame from the ISP. One loses not only a lof of detail due to the upscaling, but also the field of view is narrower. In general I don't see why anybody would ever want to use the EIS (Labelled as "Stabilizer" in the options) mechanism when a phone has OIS at hand.
Another missing feature that is in need of mentioning is the lack of any 4K recording capabilities. It seems that technical difficulties caused by the raw amount of data captured by a camera's sensor makes 4K video still a super-premium feature that has yet to hit the mainstream devices.
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Peichen - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
I am an iPhone 6+ user but I have no problem this review uses Galaxy S6 camera for comparison as the S6 have an excellent camera. The SONY RGBW sensor in this camera might be used in the upcoming iPhone 6S in September and it will be interesting to see with SONY and Apple's refinement how it will stack up against Note 5 and G4.serendip - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
Huawei should really stop with this Kirin nonsense. The modem sucks power, the SOC's power management is a joke, yet Huawei are crazy enough to charge flagship prices for a midrange phone that struggles to keep up with much cheaper offerings. A Mi Note is a cheaper and better option.TekDemon - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
I know this isn't a nexus review but these charts would look rather different if a nexus 5 running 5.1 and a nexus 6 on 5.1 were used since Lollipop 5.1 finally brought a lot of changes into android that were manufacturer dependent. The nexus 5 on 5.1 posts better random writes than any of the phones on this list for example.OOwl - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
I do agree with you in terms of 5.1 improvements. I am currently testing a small upcoming Motorola handset and although it's not a monster in terms of power and should be on paper lower powered than the processor in the P8 Lite, it is soo much more responsive. Battery life is also rather underwhelming on these Kirin SoC powered handsets...R3MF - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
just picked this up on contract for £21x12, or looked at another way; ~£250 for a phone with 300m/5000t/1gb.for that price its flaws pale into insignificance.
sunnohh - Sunday, June 7, 2015 - link
Jelly, 1 year contracts across the pond! Extremely low rates. Don't tell me you get reliable service everywhere.R3MF - Sunday, June 7, 2015 - link
i live in a rural area, we never get reliable service. :)sunnohh - Sunday, June 7, 2015 - link
I pay 45$ for unlimited call text and 5gig data through wal mart's plan that uses an AT&T sim. Nexus 5 is about 97% reliable, but it's bring your own phone. Which around here is the exception rather than the rule. The rule being Verizon near 100% reliability and exhorbinate rates and long contracts with obscene break up fees.Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
Jeeezus anandatech u made me sweat PROPERLY I finished this mega ,tera hexa .. eem .. NO !I will go rather other way ...
It took me over and hour to finish this mini, micro , nano , piko , errr.. I'll skip rather all metrics and I'll jump directly to deep ATOM review I have EVER seen in my life ..
ALWAYS when it comes to Huawei devices especially to find EVERY single NEGATIVYTY to their products..
I will say you are MOST weirdest website in actual WORLD ..
But that's fine that is your probably style to do autopsy to find weakness..
To summarize your (in few ways) misleading review to pull people off buying phone bcos of bribed by apple or who knows who doesn't bother me .. but u are cowards anyway ..
we can start :
1.introduction and design:
* ''only supports UE Category 4 LTE speeds, reaching up to 150Mbps downstream and 50Mpbs upstream.''
-So u claiming that this phone supports LTECat 4 only ?? u liying or u have wrong info as this phone supports LTECat 6 !
*''We had some very harsh words for Mate 7’s camera performances, as both featured very disappointing photo and video quality.''
-Ecxuse me ?? I have feeling that u HAS no experience of taking pictures at all I own Mate 7 and everybody says that my pictures on phone are amazing WTF u trying to say weirdos?? liars! isheep!
*''This is the second kind of implementation RGBW (Or RGBC) after the OmniVision unit found in the original Moto X.''
-yeah why u higlighting it IT WAAS second?? why nobody been talking about it THEN in crappy fail moto x ? what u trying to protect ? or put itno negativneses ?? so WHAT if it''s second ?seriously!
*''It should be noted that the black frame surrounding the actual screen makes it seem as if the device’s size-bezels are much smaller than what they really are, something which is very visible on the lighter coloured models.''
-yeah u picked white version so what u been expecting ?? so stupid every phone which is in withe color must have black borders jesus christ u are unbelieveable .. did u mention this in crapple iphone 6 review? you need more knowledge that if u have black screen version u don't notice any borders! mentals..
*''Huawei called the design a “single audio chamber speaker system”, but in practice the right grill is essentially just for aesthetics and only serves as a housing for the bottom microphone. Covering up the left grill will completely dampen the audio output of the device.''
-eem excuse me and what is the problem that phone has simetrical grills which gives better look ?!?
on your crapple phone wht is there 5 holes on right side and 2 on the left how rubbish crap looking !
dampen audio ?? oh yeah even iphone 5 or 6 or s6 or edge has dampen audio bcos everybody covers holes so obviously sound will be dampen WTF u mentiong this SHT??1?!!? ar u nuts?
* camera module seems to be still 1.5mm underneath the glass.
-ar u serious with this mention ?? jeezus christ .. u are total weirdos FOR REAL ! ATOM REVIEW!
*''he only gripe I’ve had with it is that it seems to have some empty space underneath the back of the phone as if you try to squeeze it will flex inwards by up to 1mm''
- Whaaaaa??? OMG what THE HELL are you doing with smartphones seriously u need HELP !
2.Software - EmotionUI 3.1
*''Huawei continues the choice of not including an application drawer with the EmUI launcher, so all installed apps are placed on the launcher screens.''
-So what? BETTER NOT complain here as u wud have to complain to your beloved iphone so u rather stayed quiet right ?
*''It would be appreciated if Huawei had at least included the option to disable app-icon framing throughout the OS''
-I NEVER EVER heard in my life that SOMEBODY wud comes up with this NON-SENSE sht called ''app-icon framing throughout '' trully u are word inventors ! ... app icon framing .. jeezus christ ..
*''I've praised Huawei's inclusion of a per-app permission manager in the Honor 6 and Mate 7, and it sadly seems that the P8 drops this practice as it no longer is exposed to the user''
-the reason why they didn't include this feature anymore was because all constant annoying remind to close all important apps and services which needs to be running and users been complaining by not receiving notifications , locations not found ! in other phones never been why it bothers you now???
*Although the P8 lacks a fingerprint sensor ''
-trully who uses it?? nobody .. only gay geeks with their glasses 200 bioptries
*''a feature where one would double-tap or draw with a knuckle to capture a screenshot''
-I believe if u root the phone which is easy to do so .. u can nicely disable this feature in file systems (eg build prop)
3.CPU & System Performance
I really NOT going to break down this section as there are 1000 negativeness I would be here till next christmas..
Simply your bars, graphs and compares ARE TOTAL POINTLESS/USELESS t
Completely obsolete as I browse or edit on my mate 7 or on P7 perfectly no problems as any other phone.
I noticed that If iphone or any other phone you adore has less or shame/laughable results u simply not include it in your graphs .. u cowards ..!
4.GPU Performance
Same as above no comment on useless completely not REAL world results as everybody plays games on the phone without any issues .. or play films.. on P7 we normally watch youtube vids in 1080p or 720p without problem ..
yeah your pathetic iphone can be on top but good luck it its even crappier battery which will stay last half a day or less !
5.WiFi Performance and nand
I really don't understand another pointless tests of wifi performance ..
it is clearly USELESS /POINTLESS to have strong wifi another battery drain ??
Wake up, u measuring NETWORK speed instead of INTERNET speed ! What u wanna tell me now u playing multiplayer over smartphones behind desks like idiots like onPC where wifi network speed is inevitable
Pleease DON'T be naive, Huawei instead of you THINK and don't implment stupidly highest wifi module tuner radio JUST for pointless network speed which nobody will NEVER use it for every day use ! Everybody needs fast internet download speed for quick loading pages or downloading files don't you think ? And this P8 managing at best ! Yu fkin thanks god u didn't unsolder wifi chip to check if it's OK or what.. myyy gooosh ..
* While the new eMMC doesn't break any records, it's now among the "average" performing devices out there, as opposed to the horrendous performances of the Mate 7 and Honor 6
-horrendous .. wow so dramatic? I never noticed any horrendous like u oddly describing - bitching !
6.Display Measurement and power
*''together with a NovaTek NT35695 display controller IC''
-jez so u mentioning controller wt-hell and u can tell us brands of capacitors and resistors too ? i think that is important too n ?
*''I noticed a very weird behaviour of the display's brightness that cannot be explained by usual mechanisms such as CABC. The OS clearly alters brightness depending on the application - for example using a browser such as the stock one or Chrome, along with other random applications such as Dropbox or FX Explorer will cause a dimming in the display, if one opens up the recents menu or goes back to the home-screen then one can see how the backlight brightens up. One would think this can be explained with by assuming the default launcher and OS elements are allowed a higher luminosity than other apps, but I've discovered that many other apps don't dim the display.''
- Right here is ONLY first thing right now I can agree with this issue ... yes I have noticed dimming in chrome but u didn't consider it is caused by app ? the chrome app causing this and some others because when u open chrome it auto changes resolution don't thik that you surfing in 1080p ...
this happens to me with my mate 7 so i just increase brightnes a bit and volia .. problem solved..
*''Huawei P8 backlight bleed''
Every phone with ips screen has bleed it is caused by stress which is put by phone frame where screen glass lies .. i means that you will NEVER craft housing middle frame bezel 100% straight by machine .. it would have to be laser machine NOT CnC .. so when screen is placed into frame there is significant bend , squeeze of glass ass glass is slightly bendable elastic
Huawei's GREAT feature which NO ONE phone has it is white Color temperature
In this case , I will call it ; this new case (new and new IPS technologies comes across) this neo-ips screen it seems that is not playing together with color temperature feature..
As it perfectly works with M7(mate7) P7 I have color temperature set nearly to max about 85% !
Looks like due to new IPS technology and that RGBW or RGBC feature in LCD has conflict !
In this case (as been this explained in warm results and cold results) It is necessary that once user will be watching films or photos will have to change color temp to warm and WHEN will be surfing on internet and reading text definately slide it to the cooler side ... (not max as it result bluish distortion)
7.Battery life and charging
Again your beloved iphone has to be on top.. aaahh well ...
I truly doubt it is better than mate 7 .. rubbish .. ppl saying it has not great battery at all ..
I won't comment this
In my real world battery life on my mate 7 is nearly two days and on my GF's P7 is whole day ..
I don't genuinely believe your iphone or others has better battery .. NO chance !
For charge I don't mind as I charge phone over night so in morning all is ready ...
8./9.Camera and video
Only to say that seen couple vids on youtub or pics on parena or Garena and ppl managed to make nice, great photos so don't really understand your AGAIN so much hatress to this phone
I agree video recording is not good part but pictures are very good and even at night ..
10.
DISASTER ... ANANDATECH ....YOU are ICON of the internet
I will name you KINGS of WEIRDO-GEEKS ... :DDDDD
Huawei haters from unknown reason ... bribed by apple ? to keep your site above water..? as everybody corrupted smartphone sites..
Remember Huawei phones ARE NOT for any performance .. you are brainwashed by your fixed bug in head that all in the world HAS to be highest, fastest, best... you are all wrong..
Huawei manuf. they DID described it what they phones are for.. for what use
Firstly for elegance , then smart look, for smart ppl not for kids like you type; aah that is sloow that is crap I don't want it gpu and cpuu is sloow..
This smartphone is for grown ppl grown man in suits , for managers, for social women in beautiful dress they love nice and sleek and slim light design, which they will stick this review into your ass and we will say ''WE SIMPLY DO NOT CARE'' if it's not highest specs. GTFOOO
|You GLASS-GEEKS
CIAO
hmdqyg - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
The "T-Rex Offscreen Power Efficiency" is pretty useful. Could you perform the same test on Tegra X1, Tegra K1, A8x, Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 801?