The year 2017 in the smartphone market begins quite brightly. And the company Huawei decided to participate in this celebration of life and released a novelty – Huawei P8 Lite 2017. What is this smartphone for $ 220, I’m going to understand today.
Huawei P8 Lite 2017
Classic P8 Lite was released in the second half of 2015, as a lightweight version of the flagship Huawei P8. This medium-budget smartphone came out very successful and became popular among buyers, thanks to its excellent design and balanced characteristics. Inspired by good sales statistics, the manufacturer decided to revive this model in a new reincarnation in 2017. What has emerged from this, we read in the review.
Design
Design Huawei P8 Lite 2017 can be characterized by one phrase: the device looks at the same time modestly, but stylishly. The smartphone immediately sinks into the soul thanks to smooth contours, pronounced symmetry and refinement of form. Outwardly, the phone is very neat and nice to hold in the hand.
We have a white smartphone on the test. Also Huawei P8 Lite 2017 is offered in black and gold.
The back and front panels of the smartphone are covered with a protective glass with rounded edges. At first glance it seems that the side faces are made of metal, but they are not. The body is completely plastic.
Above the screen there is a talking speaker, front camera and sensors. Below – only the Huawei logo.
On the right side there are buttons for volume and power. On the lower edge is the microUSB connector, main speaker and microphone, on the left side you will find a “hybrid” tray for two SIM or one SIM card and a memory card, on the top is a 3.5 mm audio jack.
On the back is a round fingerprint scanner. Believe me, you will not have to look for it and find it for a long time. The finger immediately goes there and gets used to the location of the scanner instantly. The sensor works quickly and unmistakably, for which Huawei can only be praised.
In general, you just want to show off to your friends such a smartphone, the attention of whom he will undoubtedly attract.
Display
Huawei P8 Lite 2017 is equipped with a high-quality 5.2-inch screen with an IPS-matrix resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. The screen is covered with a protective 2.5D glass, but, unfortunately, you will not find any oleophobic coating. Therefore, you will often have to wipe the screen from accumulated dirt and prints. And also to beat the hands of annoying friends who will definitely want to touch your new phone to evaluate the novelty.
The viewing angles of the P8 Lite 2017 are very good, the range of brightness of the screen and color is also pleasing, but unfortunately I was not satisfied with the work of automatic brightness control at all. No one likes the sharp and completely unreasonable jumps in the level of brightness.
Camera
Huawei P8 Lite 2017 is equipped with a 12 megapixel main camera with a f / 2.2 aperture. There are as many as 5 aspherical lenses in the lens of the camera, and the phase autofocus, previously available only in the flagships, works quite quickly.
The quality of the photo is very good. But it seemed to me, as the inveterate instager of this camera, was not enough. Well, I can not take a picture of the sunset as it should. The pictures are normal, not more. Maybe I just make too high demands on the camera, but I do not have enough “artistry” or something… A typical “average” user, most likely, should like it. In fact, you can evaluate the examples of photos and video on the link below and draw your conclusions on the camera.
Again, lighting plays a big role in the quality of the photo. If it’s good – the Huawei P8 Lite 2017 camera will make an excellent shot. If there is not enough light – the photo will also be successful, and quite light, but the sharpness and detail will suffer.
In the end: I did not experience a huge delight from the camera, but for ordinary everyday needs it was enough for me. And digging around in the settings and discovering the manual shooting mode, you probably get exactly the photos you want. In general, the camera is good, but not outstanding. But here it is worth remembering the price of the smartphone and everything falls into place.
The front camera received an 8 megapixel module. The pictures are good and with sufficient detail. In addition, there is a built-in mode to improve selfie in the camera software, which stores personal settings and makes your face always beautiful in the automatic mode. So nothing will prevent you post some “selfies” in the social network.
Separately worth noting Huawei’s proprietary software for working with the camera. It is simple and clear, there is a manual shooting mode with manual settings, switching modes and applying effects.
Hardware and performance
The smartphone is built on the basis of the eight-core CPU Kirin 655. The manufacturer confirms that this chip is much faster and more energy efficient than its predecessors. Also in the phone there is a coprocessor Sensor Hub+i5, which takes most of the background tasks, starting with the light sensor, the fingerprint scanner and ending with the player when the smartphone is locked.
There are 3 GB of RAM, built-in memory – 16 GB. If the latter is still not enough for you, then you will have to sacrifice the second sim card, since the slot, as I already said, is combined.
The performance of the smartphone is quite enough for comfortable surfing on the Internet, browsing, social networks and even for pretty heavy games. All applications run very quickly and the interface works without lags. Simply put, for its price, the Huawei P8 Lite 2017 is a smartphone with excellent hardware, which ensures fast operation of the device.
Software
Huawei P8 Lite 2017 received Android 7.0 and a new version of the original shell – EMUI 5.0. Its emphasis is on the neat design and light blue-and-white color gamut of applications inspired by the depths of the Aegean Sea and the palette of nearby cities. It looks, again, very nice and stylish.
For convenience, a separate application menu can be turned on the shell, if you do not like to place all the programs on the desktops.
Read also: EMUI 5.0 by Huawei – updated proprietary shell review
ТAlso, Huawei P8 Lite 2017 is not just a smartphone that performs the tasks you set – it can think and follow you. Calm down, it’s not some terrible Big Brother out there, no, we will not scare you. The phone simply remembers which applications we use most often and in which order and based on this information optimizes the operation of the RAM. In theory, if you usually check social networks in the order VKontakte-Twitter-Instagram, while you go to your favorite VKontakte and answer the mountain of messages, the smartphone is already preparing to launch Twitter.
That is, new smart technologies of machine learning provide an increase in the speed of the device.
Battery life
The P8 Lite 2017 is equipped with a 3000 mAh battery, which was enough for almost 2 days. And as a user, I’m pretty active. In general, I was very pleased with the autonomy of the smartphone, the only drawback – a very long charging of the device. Quick charging mode is not available, unfortunately. I am glad that it is still needs quite rare to charge it. During the use of the smartphone, I had about 5-7 hours of active screen with two days of total work.
Conclusions
Well, let’s sum up the results for Huawei P8 Lite 2017! This is quite a smartphone of 2017. A stylish design, an excellent screen, a decent camera, fast device operation and good performance will delight you for more than a month after purchase. A capacious battery allows you not to carry around a charger or an external battery. You can safely leave the house with twenty percent of the charge, several hours the smartphone will still work.
We can say with confidence that Huawei P8 Lite 2017 is an excellent choice for its price, especially given official support and warranty from the manufacturer. In my opinion, this smartphone is one of the best, if not the best purchase in its price category at the beginning of this year. Competitors, tremble!