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Battery life
- Same 3,000mAh battery as flagship P9
- Nightly charges a must
One area where the Huawei P9 Lite matches the flagship Huawei P9 is battery capacity, with both devices running 3,000mAh power supplies. Sadly, the Huawei P9’s battery life was particularly average, and the P9 Lite has followed in this vein too.
Just 12 minutes of playing Hill Climb Racing 2 took 8% off the P9 Lite’s battery. Although the phone’s entertainment skills are enough to make it a commute killer then, you’re going to want to watch those battery levels in order to make sure you’ve still got something in reserve for your journey home.
That can be said for a lot of devices though, and compared with handsets in a similar price bracket, there’s little to separate the P9 Lite from the rest.
Using the phone heavily, we were always able to eke out a full day’s use with the dreaded ‘low battery’ warning not kicking in until sat at home, enjoying an evening Facebook browse.
Like the Wileyfox Swift 2 X, nightly charges will be a must for all but the lightest of users. The Moto G4 is a touch nicer on its battery, but whatever you pay you’re not going to get more than a couple of days on a single charge.
Running our standard battery test - which involved playing a 90-minute video on full brightness with notifications enabled - the Huawei P9 Lite lost a sizeable 23% of its battery.
To put that into context, the Moto G4 Plus lost just 17% of its power during the same test and the Honor 6X only 15% of its battery life. The only rival handset to have fared worse is the Wileyfox Swift 2 X, which lost 27% of its charge.
Recharge times are underwhelming too, with no quick charge features, meaning you’ll need to plan pit stops rather than plugging your phone in for 10 minutes to secure you a half days’ worth of power.
Camera
- 13MP primary camera paired with 8MP selfie snapper
- Extensive shooting options
- Huawei’s Beauty Mode is still creepy
When flagship phones birth affordable spin-offs, one of the first features to usually fall onto the chopping block is the camera. Sadly, that’s still the case here. The Huawei P9’s dual-lens, Leica-enhanced camera was the phone’s main talking point, the P9 Lite, however, is a little bit more ordinary.
A 13MP camera has been squeezed on to the phone’s rear, with an f/2.0 lens joined by the now customary autofocus and LED flash skills. It’s a step down on the G4 Plus’s 16MP offering, but pixel count isn’t everything.
In ideal shooting conditions, the Huawei P9 Lite’s 13MP camera is accomplished but far from the best snapper we’ve seen, even at this price. Focus can be slightly off, with edges often washed out rather than razor sharp.
The phone is more than capable of capturing share-worthy shots, but you’re not going to get away with printing many snaps out or making this your only camera.
These issues are only further compounded when the lights come down too. A night time-friendly camera this is not. In the hours of darkness, images are often overly noisy and areas of light overblown and lacking in punch or clarity.
What the P9 Lite’s camera lacks in finesse, it more than makes up for in shooting options. There are loads of them. Swipe in from the side of the camera view and you’re treated to more than a dozen shooting tools and camera configuration options.
As well as being able to tinker with brightness and contrast levels, and activate object tracking and a smile shutter, the camera can be controlled via your voice and there’s a burst mode.
Dynamic range is what’s lacking though. Areas of light and dark blur in the middle to create shots that lack detail and definition. These issues are compounded by the lack of a dedicated HDR (high dynamic range) shooting mode.
Things get better though. Upfront, the P9 Lite features an 8MP selfie shooter with an f/2.0 lens. This is one of the better offerings in the price bracket, capable of impressively well rounded shots.
It’s let down by Huawei’s Beauty Mode though. The smartphone version of plastic surgery and an addition best left alone by the majority of users, this manipulates your vanity shots to worrying levels. You can disable it or reduce the levels, but it just creates an unwanted layer of faff around taking a simple photo.
