The Huawei P8 Lite Review
by Brandon Chester on July 27, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
Display
The Huawei P8 Lite has a 5.0" 1280x720 IPS display. We've seen great improvements to both display resolution and color accuracy in recent years, and you can now get highly accurate 720p panels in devices that cost only $150-$200. Some devices even manage to squeeze a 1080p panel onto a $200 device. Since competing on resolution has become difficult, targeting greater color accuracy has become the next step of display improvements. To evaluate the accuracy of the P8 Lite's display we turn to our standard smartphone display workflow. As always, measurements are performed with X-Rite's i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer and SpectraCal's CalMAN 5 software, with the exception of contrast measurements which are done with an i1Display Pro colorimeter.
At 361 nits, the P8 Lite's display isn't quite as bright as I would expect. Despite this, the black level is fairly high, which leads to one of the lower contrast ratios on record. At this point having your brightness far below 400 nits is really not acceptable, as it makes the device very difficult to use in the sun or with other unforgiving lighting. The high black level also means that the wash out from external lighting is even more noticable.
Greyscale results from the P8 Lite also end up being less than optimal. With a price point of $249, Huawei is within the mid-range segment of the market. Devices like the Lumia 640 have shown that it's completely possible to ship an accurate display even with price constraints. The P8 Lite's display is far too blue, and there's a high degree of error in shades of grey which increases as they move toward complete white.
The P8 Lite again performs poorly in the saturation sweep test. Blue shows some saturation compression, with slight oversaturation until it hits 80% and then undersaturation for the deepest shades of blue. Magenta misses the mark severely, with 20% magenta actually being what would be a very accurate 20% blue. The level of inaccuracy is high enough to be fairly evident throughout the UI, which is very disappointing.
In the ColorChecker test the P8 Lite again doesn't do very well. The inaccuracy with both the greyscale and the primary and secondary colors means there's not much hope of rendering color mixtures accurately. As you can see in the color comparator image, there's a high level of error in everything except the greens and cyan. It's fairly clear when looking at images or videos that they don't look quite right.
Overall, the P8 Lites display is fairly disappointing. We've seen great improvement in display quality in the low end and mid range parts of the market, with $149 devices like the Lumia 640 providing very high accuracy and good sharpness, and the ASUS Zenfone 2 providing decent accuracy and a very high resolution. The 5.0" 720p display on the P8 Lite is decently sharp, but the inaccuracy is significant.
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Pissedoffyouth - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
Why would you do that though, considering the A53 is so low power anyway. It makes no sense at all. Instead of second cluster put a single A57 core in or somethingSamus - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
Every little bit helps.protomech - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
4.5 hours to charge a 8.4 Wh battery at 5W is ludicrously bad.Is the issue that the wall plug isn't actually delivering 5W (5V 500 mA only maybe?) or that it simply takes an age to go from nearly full to 100%?
While the 100% charge time test has its uses, it may be more useful to report 0% to 80% charge time, as this should avoids charge taper near the top and is a better indication of how much charge can be recovered in a short period (airport, etc).
webdoctors - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
Zenfone 2 at $200 makes this phone a flop, especially considering its not even coming with lollipop, wut?!The last paragraph in this review is gold and nicely sums up the entire article:
The P8 Lite wouldn't be a bad recommendation if it was priced a bit lower and received an update to Lollipop. While I don't know if it would be possible for Huawei to reach a price of $150, I would need the P8 Lite to be priced somewhere below $200 before I could really recommend it. At this time there are simply better options in the $200-300 range, and so at its current price point the P8 Lite is a phone I find difficult to recommend.
utmode - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
'Kitkat?'Gee, I began to hate this company
zodiacfml - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
I have a problem with this company. Most of the phones they're selling these days are not in tune with the market based on specifications, build, and/or branding. They're an adequately sized company selling communications equipment but I doubt they are big and experienced as ASUS or Motorola. Gigabyte also makes phones and laptops but they're reasonably priced as they are not a big brand.Anyway, for the specs and review, I'd put this on par or even below a Moto G (2015 and 2014). Yes, it is a thin phone but it ends there.
Buk Lau - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Nah that's a huge misconception. Huawei if anything is many times bigger than Asus and Motorola combined. They provide equipment and build cellular structures for EUs and they are a government company, and hold enough patents in mobile network that can almost compete with Qualcomm. Smartphone is only a one sector of their business and they are just not taking it seriously enoughToTTenTranz - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
I wonder why Huawei hates having a decent wifi connection in their models.ultimatebob - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
Hey Anandtech, the forums are down again. Can you get someone to look at that when you get a chance?Setec - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
Actually, the OnePlus One price was dropped to $249 a few months ago.