*** Huawei P9 ***

insane200 said:

Little bump.

Almost close to upgrade time and this is still top of my list.

Those that have owned it for a while what do you think now ?

Also is anyone using the 7.0 test rom as it looks like Emui 5.0 is going to be more like stock with a App draw and better running apps screen, plus the notification shade looks more stock like.

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I have one and I like it. I managed to change the icons to look more stock with "stockify for emui" because by default emui puts borders around every icon but sometimes they don't look quite right. There are some customization options in an app called "theme editor" that stock android doesn't have without rooting; It let me change the background of my notifications and stortcuts.

One thing that is really bad is that things like lastpass "fill helper" and "whatsapp" don't run in the background properly by default. You have to make them protected apps in the phone manager app.

Emui is smooth and fast. XDA developers have said it has some of the best performance of any android phone software, up their with One Plus 3's software and HTC's Sense. Touch Wiz they said is still one of the worst.

It has a harrassment filter built-in which I think is a nice touch, so you can block/filter calls and texts. Phone manager can also block any app from using wifi or mobile data, so if you don't trust an app you can block it from accessing the internet.

The camera is pretty good. The best by far I have had on a phone, but I guess samsung is obviously the king of low light performance.

One thing that might make you stop buying the P9 is the Honor 8. Honor is huawei's value sub-brand. And the Honor 8 has 4GB's or ram instead of 3GB, an IR blaster for a remote control and a more customizable finger scanner. I don't think it looks as nice as the P9 but they still managed to make the Honor 8's glass back very nice by using 15 layers, so it reflects or refracts light all over the place.

Battery life is OK, I just kinda wish the trend were for fatter phones with bigger batteries.

The finger scanner is great, it has only ever failed to unlock my phone when my fingers were wet and that's a normal problem for finger scanners and it's also very fast.

Oh btw did you know that the new Geekbench 4 benchmark, which is suppose to be more accurate than Geekbench 3, rates the Kirin 950 as being faster than the Snapdragon 820 in single-core performance? and multi-core performance is still much stronger. The only thing bad about the kirin 950/955 is the GPU performance but if you are having some lags in a game, you can go into the phone manager and change the resolution to 720p and it should roughly double the frame rate. I tried it and it actually doesn't look too bad at all. Most games run well in Full HD but there are some that are able to make the 720p option useful imo.

Hope this helps you decide

Edit: One other thing that is a tad bad about emui is that it likes to notify you whenever an app is using a lot of power, but things like chrome and games always use a lot of power, but you can turn the notifications off in the phone manager.

"Stockify for emui" removed the icon borders

"Theme Editor" let me change the background of my shortcuts and notifications (picture taken with P9)

Cheers for the reply, I have a P8lite at the moment so I'm used to Emui, probably should have said.

I agree with the notifications of app using battery can be annoying, hopefully Emui 5 will do this less.

The Honor 8 looks lovely, but is a massive fingerprint magnet and i would have to buy it to use on EE whereas the P9 will be an upgrade.

The video i watched of the 7.0 upgrade it looks really nice, and shows the app draw icon but he never goes into it, also is mentioned even though it supports quick charge it does not come supplied with a quick charge plug.

insane200 said:

Cheers for the reply, I have a P8lite at the moment so I'm used to Emui, probably should have said.

I agree with the notifications of app using battery can be annoying, hopefully Emui 5 will do this less.

The Honor 8 looks lovely, but is a massive fingerprint magnet and i would have to buy it to use on EE whereas the P9 will be an upgrade.

The video i watched of the 7.0 upgrade it looks really nice, and shows the app draw icon but he never goes into it, also is mentioned even though it supports quick charge it does not come supplied with a quick charge plug.

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I have seen a video of android 7 and emui 5 running on a p9 too, I think it looks great. It's true that the P9 does support fast charging but doesn't ship with a fast charger =( But the honor 8 does ship with one annoyingly (why huawei?!). But huawei said that they will be selling their fast charger by itself soon. Right now I think it's impossible to buy one and you can't use a different brand of charger because huawei use their own fast charging technology.

The P9 is still a great phone and it is a little thinner than the honor 8 and the honor 8 can't take native black and white photos like the huawei p9 can, even though they have the same cameras. I guess honor just decided to nerf that feature. Also, the honor 8 is apparently super slippery in the hand so would defo need a case imo.

You can turn the battery notifications off in emui 4.1 now btw.

About to have one of these delivered on Monday. How are people finding the battery life? What's kind of screen on time is everyone getting?

Yeah to be honest I would probably go for the honour 8 as it's cheaper and has extra ram. Had a very brief look at the p9 yesterday and the menu system looked very similar to miui on my Xioami.

SAM81 said:

About to have one of these delivered on Monday. How are people finding the battery life? What's kind of screen on time is everyone getting?

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I find the battery life to be fantastic in all honesty. I've had three days out of mine (just), but two days is easily possible and almost the norm for me under most circumstances.

Anyone have the P9 Lite?

paradigm said:

I find the battery life to be fantastic in all honesty. I've had three days out of mine (just), but two days is easily possible and almost the norm for me under most circumstances.

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Sounds promising. Lets see how I get on

£229 with o2 refresh at the moment when you pay £109 upfront. Just done this myself, taking delivery tomorrow.

Liking it so far. Feels nice in the hand and the build quality is lovely. The UI skin (whatever it's called) doesn't seem too bad at the moment but it's clear they've taken heavy inspiration from ios. Does anyone know if this is due to get android n anytime soon?

SAM81 said:

Liking it so far. Feels nice in the hand and the build quality is lovely. The UI skin (whatever it's called) doesn't seem too bad at the moment but it's clear they've taken heavy inspiration from ios. Does anyone know if this is due to get android n anytime soon?

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Read Nougats rolling out in parts of Europe a week or so ago, so my guess the UK update shouldnt be too far behind.

Probably best keeping an eye on the P9 XDA forums

As someone who has only had iPhones and a bad experience with a Nexus, I'm a fan of the UI. The lockscreen photos are a bit random and there is some ugliness that appeared when I installed the simcard.

Slightly annoying that I set up the phone without the sim in, apps etc, then it restarted once I put the sim in and moved all my icons around.

Trying to import SMS, Whasapp messages and organise my contacts this evening.

bloodiedathame said:

£229 with o2 refresh at the moment when you pay £109 upfront. Just done this myself, taking delivery tomorrow.

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How does this work then? Do you select the 109 upfront tariff with 500MB data, sign up, pay the upfront and then call o2 to pay the rest of the device and cancel the tariff? Are the phones locked to o2?

I just popped into an O2 shop to ask about this and the sales adviser had no idea what I was talking about. He said that any agreement taken on the O2 refresh plan could not be cancelled until the device was paid in full and the term of the agreement was complete (i.e. 24 months).

I checked this on o2 http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Mobile),CASE=21629 which seems to concur that you can terminate at any time with no penalty as long as the device is paid off.

Is he just being thick or am i missing something here?

kaktus said:

I just popped into an O2 shop to ask about this and the sales adviser had no idea what I was talking about. He said that any agreement taken on the O2 refresh plan could not be cancelled until the device was paid in full and the term of the agreement was complete (i.e. 24 months).

I checked this on o2 http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Mobile),CASE=21629 which seems to concur that you can terminate at any time with no penalty as long as the device is paid off.

Is he just being thick or am i missing something here?

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Step by step guide for this deal
- - -
1) Follow the get deal button, purchase the £35.50 + £14*24 tariff.
2) Receive your brand new phone and sim card.
3) Put the sim card into your phone and go onto myO2 (app or website) and from there request the unlock code.
4) Call 202 from the same sim card as it will make things much easier, go straight to the I want to leave o2 department or something like that (I think it's thinking of leaving us? Press something) as that will connect you with the right people much quicker.
5) Tell the person you want to pay your device in full and cancel the airtime. They will ask you why, tell them you don't think the airtime is a good value for money, but you want to keep the phone because you think it's an outstanding value for money. They will ask you for card details, you tell those details and that's it, they cancel it for you in about an hour.
6) You own the phone from that point, assumed that you have done this straightaway, there won't be any charges, otherwise you will have to pay as much airtime as you have used.
7) Unlock code will come through in about 2 to 48 hours.
8) In first month they might take the airtime from your bank account through direct debit because they generate the bill the next day you apply for a contract, don't be scared as this will be refunded the next month, if not, call them again.

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Was for the s7 deal but its the same process
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/samsung-galaxy-s7-brand-new-395-99-o2-refresh-2499564

Mr_Cool said:

Was for the s7 deal but its the same process
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/samsung-galaxy-s7-brand-new-395-99-o2-refresh-2499564

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That's handy - thanks

Out of curiosity, those who take advantage of o2 refresh regularly I wonder if you'd be able to shed some light on what shows up on your credit file if you buy the handset at the full price?

for example, for the Huawei P9 there is right now 0 upfront or 129 upfront or the full cost 250 upfront. If you pay the 250 upfront I'm assuming the only thing that appears on your credit file is a credit-check for telecom services and not a 'Loan Account' for a handset.

Can anyone confirm this?

It's my understanding that refresh contracts are classed as a loan, and so taking out a refresh deal is registered as a loan on your credit file.

bigcee said:

It's my understanding that refresh contracts are classed as a loan, and so taking out a refresh deal is registered as a loan on your credit file.

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That's a shame, definitely not putting a loan account on my credit file for the sake of a 250 quid phone :/

Anyone got this through giffgaff ?

I'm really liking the look of this phone, especially from what I've heard it tries to mimic the iPhone which I don't mind as I prefer iOS. Although that could just be bias and maybe I wouldn't mind standard android.

Either way, dimensions, weight, screen size etc it's what I've been looking for so will pull the trigger soon.