China's best phone yet: Huawei P8 5.2-inch money-saving Android smartie

Huawei’s P8 has finally rolled into UK shops, the latest wave of China’s assault on Tier One Android flagships. Huawei P8 Huawei's P8: set to give South Korean phone makers sleepless nights If you don’t know the Huawei proposition, here it is. You won’t get all the bells and whistles from a phone that arrives on a £40-£50 …

[N13L5]

Re: Sadly it doesn't run iOS.

Well, iOS would be even worse for doing things the way you want rather than the way the manufacturer wants.

But Android 4.4 is plenty bad enough.

The author conveniently forgets to mention that in Android 4.4 you can't write anything to the SD card, making things terribly cumbersome in daily use if you're doing anything more than making phone calls and fumbling around on Facecrook.

Stability or not, at least Android 5 fixes that major issue.

[Morten]

Re: Sadly it doesn't run iOS.

So the question is if enough people will buy it to make it common enough to have a good xda community with custom firmware. CyanogenMod, SlimROM or some other option would be nice. Then nobody would care about that fuggly interface and android version it comes with. Android 5.1.x is starting to be pretty nice and a lot better than the disastrous 5.0 release.

This phone and a mainstream custom ROM could be a very good budget option.

[Yugguy]

Re: Sadly it doesn't run iOS.

The ONLY thing lollipop has going for it is the ability to move apps to SD.

The rest is pointless change and lost functionality.

I'd love to revert my Xperia to Kitkat. It can be done.

[James Cane]

Good hardware

But sadly it doesn't run iOS.

[arnieL]

Re: Good hardware

So, two things going for it!

[Shadow Systems]

Ok, all well & good, but...

How does it sound? Does it render voices accurately, clearly, & loudly, or does it muddle them, muffle them, & do all but mute itself in shame?

All the other bits are nice, but if the call quality blows monkey spunk, what's the fekkin' point?

Seriously, it's a phone. Audio quality should be the Number One item on the review list to determine. If it's shit then the rest of it doesn't matter; if it's top notch than other issues can be dealt with. So let us know if it sounds like something we could hear clearly without having to resort to a pair of headphones crammed into our ears, or have to shout at for the other party to hear us, that sort of thing.

<Sarcasm>Don't _MAKE_ me reach through this monitor & flick you in the forehead.</Sarcasm>

*Grin*

[Andrew Orlowski]

Re: Ok, all well & good, but...

Fair enough! It sounds fine, no wobblies on the noise cancellation. We'll add this to the review.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ok, all well & good, but...

> Fair enough! It sounds fine, no wobblies on the noise cancellation.

And the one I tried has a rather sexy TTS voice ('merkin English though).

[Alan Brown]

Re: Ok, all well & good, but...

"Seriously, it's a phone."

It's a personal computer which happens to make phone calls - and the audio quality is ok (I've briefly tested one), which is one step up on the iphone.

[leon clarke]

Some comparison with the OnePlus One please

OK, so it's much better value than South Korean flagships, but people wanting to save some money by getting a Chinese flagship already have a few options. OnePlus are probably creating the most media chatter, and I'd have thought the One is the obvious phone to compare with this.

I'd suspect the OnePlus One would be a better bet - slightly cheaper, hardware maybe a bit better depending on what metrics and benchmarks matter, and (most importantly) it comes with a more vanilla Android.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Some comparison with the OnePlus One please

Worth bearing in mind the Huawei will likely be available from normal UK suppliers eg Amazon etc. Warranty will then not be an issue. The OnePlus on the other hand "I'd like to send this recorded delivery to China please Mr post office worker" see you in 6 weeks if I'm lucky.

[TeeCee]

Radios.

These features crank up the rate at which the chipset looks for a Wi-Fi........signal

So, does it have the Achilles' heel of the P6 in this area? Bluetooth streaming cuts out every time it sees a Wi-Fi signal due to the cheapskate use of one 2.4Ghz transceiver running multiple stacks. Should be even worse with that feature if so.

A right PITA (and illegal, cough) if you're already on the motorway and have to juggle the bloody thing one-handed to turn off WiFi so the music works without interruption.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Radios.

You could do without music until you arrive at a safe place to stop and fiddle with your phone rather than endangering everyone else on the road.

But hey, your music stopped so fuck everyone else, right?

[Lamont Cranston]

Re: fuck everyone else, right

Or the phone could be configured by the manufacturers so that it doesn't inconvenience the user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Radios.

> you're already on the motorway and have to juggle the bloody thing one-handed to turn off WiFi so the music works without interruption.

Took me a while to register what you were trying to say. Are you streaming music over Badtooth? Doesn't you car have a hard drive, SD slots, or at least a USB socket? Or WiFi, for that matter? A cassette player? 45 RPM Vinyl? 33⅓? Phonograph? Slave with a sitar?

[Aitor 1]

Very nice

But a Jiayu S3 Advanced is 100 quid cheaper, and has more processing power, same amount of sensors.

It has also more battery, and a better camera sensor, but no OIS for it.

[Missing Semicolon]

How the heck can they sell this in the West...

... without getting splattered by the special-forces-ip-lawyer brigades in Cupertino?

[Antonymous Coward]

Re: How the heck can they sell this in the West...

There's rather more to "the west" than the land of the "free"

[Youngone]

Re: How the heck can they sell this in the West...

I was wondering the very same thing, but then I made these assumptions:

Huawei is a Chinese company, and like all Chinese companies ownership and financial dealings are pretty opaque.

If the Chinese government has a shareholding in Huawei which seems likely, then Apple may have been warned off. I'm pretty sure that the Chinese government would put it's own interests before rule of law, no matter what they say publicly.

I may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

[Andrew Orlowski]

Re: How the heck can they sell this in the West...

Huawei is employee owned. These things aren't hard to find out, you know.

[oneeye]

Re: How the heck can they sell this in the West...

Paranoid no,prudent yes! Any Chinese hardware and or software is inherently vulnerable. Why you ask, well Great Cannon is why. All Chinese kit will call home,just like all others,but those others don't have data crossing the Great Firewall of China. The attack on GitHub is all the warning any smart security conscious person needs. Even if those connections are sent over https,(which most are not) the Chinese have the ability to intercept and send back something nasty. So,go ahead and use that cheap stuff,and while you are at it,just send them all your personal stuff in advance to save time.

Here is the link to the analysis of the "GREAT CANNON" (don't say you weren't warned)

https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/

[Adam 1]

Re: How the heck can they sell this in the West...

It is fine. It has sharp corners.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont be tempted

At least, not by the cheaper prices offered by buying directly from China.

Not only do you risk getting sold a fake, but even if genuine, trying to get a repair if it goes wrong is a nightmare. I picked up an Umi last Christmas, but sent it back because the GPS wasnt working; they only admitted receipt of it last week, and I still have no idea when they replacement will arrive.

(Yep, that is me looking rather ragged as I limp on with a borrowed old phone ... waiting.............)

[cegueira]

I managed to get this phone on a 12 month contract for £21.50/m. It is a good phone, I was slightly worried about the emotionUI as I was used to CM11. I updated to the latest firmware, unlocked the bootloader and rooted. Installed Apex launcher and set it as default launcher, installed SwiftKey, sideloaded a Black theme and then removed the bloat with Root Explorer/Titanium backup.

The screen really is impressive, as is the camera and I get very good battery life 30+ hours with 5 hours screen time, mostly on Wi-Fi.

[Andrew Orlowski]

What bloat?

Just curious.

[cegueira]

There were quite a few games and demos, the Huawei highlights app, todoist, WPSOffice. There was also loads of crap in /data/dataapp like vkontakte, there was also WhatsApp and a version of Opera mobile. Their keyboard is unnecessary of you use a different one.

[Anonymous Coward]

> What bloat?

The operator's? He said he got it on a contract.

One of my girlfriends got this phone from Vodafone. I borrowed it for a week and it works just fine--as the person above says, battery life is impressive and the pictures are good.

But it was loaded to the brim with crap from Vodafone, mind.

Interesting to know about the SD/dual SIM combination! I wonder if the second IMSI would also be blocked on contract phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC1

>"One of my girlfriends.."

Eh?

Got a couple to spare?

[cegueira]

There was no operator bloat on mine. I got it on the ID network (MVNO on 3, run by Carphonewarehouse) didn't even have their Android app on which was a pleasant surprise, as well as not being network locked. I wonder if the lack of operator bloat is because they're fairly new and haven't had time to 'develop' it.

[Anonymous IV]

@ cegueira

So not just a matter of taking it out of the box, then!

[cegueira]

For most people it probably would be, especially if you were coming from an iPhone. I would do the same with any non-stock android phone. Instead of emotionUI it would be Sense, touchwiz etc. You can just get away with installing a different launcher, but I prefer to set the phone up as I want.

[Alan Brown]

@ Anon IV

If you want a decent UI on android it's never a matter of just taking it out of the box, but you don't generally have to root to replace the desktop manager (Running Goo's desktop on my GN4 instead of touchwiz)

[Anonymous Coward]

around £380 SIM free

thanks, saved a couple of minutes!

[Fotis_Greece]

Wrong battery specs

Hello, the battery is mentioned here as 3450Mah capacity. This is wrong, it's 2680.

Thanks

[drand]

Re: Wrong battery specs

3450 is a reference to a Blackberry the author is comparing the P8 to.

"

Note that the P8 doesn’t support either Fast Charging or any kind of wireless charging. In fact, the phone was the slowest charger of any I’ve tried, bar the BlackBerry Passport.

But that beast has a stonking 3450mAh battery, and you’d expect that to take a lot longer to power up.

"

[Frederick Tennant]

Its about time...

Its about time someone did this, for years we have had overpriced phones using an unfinished OS this is what we need to take on Apple a cheap phone which hits almost all the spots lets hope they bring out a Google edition soon. At this price its worth a look.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Its about time...

"for years we have had overpriced phones using an unfinished OS"

You may like the IoS launcher. Many don't.

[Dan 55]

Need moar reviews

It's nice to have dual SIM but with this phone you sacrifice your SD card when you go abroad.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to review phones by European-based rebranders like bq and Wiko. They don't add much to Android itself but they do throw in a lot of features for the price, including proper dual SIM.

Also El Reg still hasn't managed to review the Jolla phone.

[Andrew Orlowski]

Re: Need moar reviews

If Jolla send us one, we'll review it. Maybe they don't think it's ready?

[CRConrad]

Re: Need moar reviews

Your operation is too tiny to actually BUY a dang fone to review? Or just too snotty?

[Duncan Macdonald]

Overpriced

For comparison the THL 2015 4G phone is available for £160 (octa core 2GB/16GB + up to 32GB microSD) and the TECA N52W is at £166 (octa core 4GB/16GB +up to 64GB microSD).

(Both from commercial UK sellers on eBay).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Overpriced

And are they like the cheap Android tablet I had that became useless after about 12 months (a common issue on the cheap kit)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Overpriced

> For comparison the THL 2015 4G phone is available for £160

Are they still using that hideous Mediatek chipset though? The GPS used to be all but unusable on those, and the camera left rather a lot to be desired. On the other hand, it was pretty much stock Android and easily rootable. And cheap for the features.

I've no idea what kind of idiot would downvote useful information, btw.

[DrXym]

Does it still have that hateful front end

I bought a Huawei and discovered it had combined the all apps view with the desktop view. It made it impossible to customise properly because new app icons got plonked in the next available space rather than having a separate All Apps view like a sane handset. Is this still the case? That one feature alone would drive me nuts, and even if I could swap out the launcher I'd still resent that it was there at all.

[David Paul Morgan]

Re: Does it still have that hateful front end

agreed.

I've always hated that ios/copycat look of all the programme icons spewed over the home screen.

that's where the widgets are supposed to be.

It's also how they displayed the samsung devices in the apple vs samsung court cases, to make sure that the supposed copycat device looked like the apple interface.

[John Smith 19]

"demand far more privacy and security features "

Perhaps Western buyers should do that too?

Do you want a valuable comms device or a spy-in-your-pocket.

I know which I prefer.

[Geoff Campbell]

No, I don't think so

I just bought a Galaxy S6 for £430. I don't see that all the compromises in this phone justify a price tag only £50 less than that.

GJC

[sawatts]

Three times the price I paid for my 6" device - which seems perfectly adequate for calls, text, browsing, and watching films without eye strain.

[Jon Massey]

£200 more than a OnePlus One?

Seems a bit pricey to me!

[gv]

No ac WiFi?

Considering that most of the time my phone is on a WiFi network, it seems strange it does not support 802.11ac.

Also, you can pick up an LG G3 with a QHD display for about £150 less than this.

[CaptainBanjax]

Still using...

My Galaxy Note 3. With Lollipop. Had it over 3 years now I think.

Its fast and solid. Never had any problems, battery is still going strong.

It has bo cover, ive dropped it loads of times and there isnt a scratch on it.

Im starting tobturn intonthat dude in the Nick Cage movie that keeps trying to smash up his own ambulance.

This phone is a warrior, it wont die.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Still using...

Seems to have some keyboard problems, though.

[Cuddles]

Money saving?

You can get a Galaxy S6 on Amazon for £400. If this thing actually was £200 cheaper than a big name flagship phone then maybe it would be worth a look, but since it's actually only £20 cheaper I can't imagine why anyone would even consider it.