At an event in London last evening, Huawei made official its flagship device for 2015: the P8. The most notable thing about the device even before you see it is the name. There’s no “Ascend” in that name. Ascend has been Huawei’s own”Galaxy” or “One”, the branding used by its competitors Samsung and HTC respectively to identify their smartphone line ups. Huawei has followed the route LG took two years when it dropped the “Optimus” branding from its devices for a more simplistic naming scheme for its mobile devices.
Away from the names, there was another pleasant surprise: Huawei dropped a bigger version of the P8, the P8max. The Max is large. Very large. Actually so large that it dwarfs the 5.7 inch Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and makes every other big phone in the market (like the Nexus 6 or Huawei’s own Ascend Mate 7) look like child’s play. The P8max has a 6.8 inch full HD display and is 7.19 inches tall. The P8 itself has a similar display but at 5.2 inches, it is slightly bigger than the 5 inch full HD panel on last year’s Ascend P7. At such a size, the P8max can be thought of as a small tablet more than a big phone. In fact, Huawei is fronting its own Talkband B2 or your own choice of Bluetooth headsets for use when making calls as it is very awkward to put a 7 inch (eer 0.2 mm shy) slab on your ear.
Huawei is still sticking with its custom Kirin processors with the 64-bit Kirin 93x that has a somewhat strange octa-core setup (8 Cortex A53 low power cores with the only difference between them being that half of them are clocked at 2.0 GHz and the other half at 1.5 GHz and Huawei refers to them cheekily as Cortex A53e cores). Huawei says the chip helps the devices be 20% more efficient performance-wise while still going slow on the battery.
Besides the impressive screen-to-body ratio and thinnes of both devices, the P8max stands out for not just that extra screen real estate but also the claims Huawei is making regarding the battery life. Users of the device are expected to get at least 2 days when using it moderately and a day or so with heavy use. We’ll have to use the device to confirm those claims though.
Here are specs of the two devices:
| Huawei P8 | Huawei P8max | |
| Size and weight | 144.9 x 72.1 x 6.4 mm, 144g | 182.7 x 93 x 6.8 mm, 228g |
| Display | 5.2 inch Full HD LCD – 424 ppi – protected by Gorilla Glass 3 | 6.8 inch Full HD LCD – 326 ppi – protected by Gorilla Glass 3 |
| Memory | 3 GB RAM, 16 or 64 GB internal storage (expandable to 128 GB. microSD slot also doubles up as SIM 2 slot in versions of the device with dual-SIM support) | 3 GB RAM, 64 GB internal storage (expandable upto 64 GB. microSD slot also doubles up as SIM 2 slot in versions of the device with dual-SIM support) |
| Camera | 13 MP main with OIS, 8 MP selfie | 13 MP main with OIS, 5 MP selfie |
| Processor | Octa-core Kirin 930/935+Mali-T628 MP4 GPU | Octa-core Kirin 935+Mali-T628 MP4 GPU |
| OS | Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with Emotion UI 3.1 layered on top | Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with Emotion UI 3.1 layered on top |
| Battery | 2680 mAh Li-Po (non-removable) | 4360 mAh Li-Po (non-removable) |
| Network | 3G, LTE | 3G, LTE |
| Other | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, microUSB 2.0 | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, microUSB 2.0 |
| Singe-SIM, Dual-SIM | Singe-SIM, Dual-SIM | |
| Colour options | Titanium Grey, Mystic Champagne (16 GB model) Carbon Black, Prestige Gold (64 GB model) |
Luxurious Gold, Mystic Champagne, Titanium Grey |
The P8 and P8max are available in two versions: a standard version and a “premium” version. We are not sure what exactly is the difference between the two features/specifications-wise but they’ll have a €100 price difference between them with the standard model being the cheaper one, selling at €499 for the P8 and €549 for the P8max. Surprisingly, the standard model P8 is what Huawei will be selling in the United States. There are several other countries lined up to get the P8 initially. These include China, Columbia, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, UAE and the United Kingdom. Besides missing out on the “premium” version of the P8, the US market will also not get the larger P8max.
