Huawei P8lite hands-on review

I got to spend a week with the latest Huawei P8lite and my overall impression is very positive for the budget-friendly price tag at between K3199 and K3400.

It’s very lightweight but does not give that slippery and fragile feel that most smartphones are coming with lately so you don’t have to think of buying a rugged cover case for it. You should anyway, just to avoid scratches on its plastic body. The P8lite also had good battery strength when I used it. At 2200mAh and connected to a 4G network, you would expect faster battery consumption but in power saving mode and using my main apps like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and Gmail almost continuously, the P8lite gave me about 6 hours of work-time. It comes with Huawei Emotion UI (user interface) that makes multitasking very easy without draining much of the battery. It also runs on Android KitKat, upgradable to higher versions.

The P8lite also had good battery strength when I used it. At 2200mAh and connected to a 4G network, you would expect faster battery consumption but in power saving mode and using my main apps like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and Gmail almost continuously, the P8lite gave me about 6 hours of work-time. It comes with Huawei Emotion UI (user interface) that makes multitasking very easy without draining much of the battery. It also runs on Android KitKat, upgradable to higher versions.

The volume and power buttons are on the right side of the P8lite and easy to reach, and the entire phone can fit in the palm of your hand (note: I have small hands) effortlessly. The nano and micro SIM card slots are also further down on the same side, right next to each other. You can also insert a microSD card up to 32GB in capacity f you need more storage than the inbuilt 16GB.

Its camera, seeing as we are in the selfie generation, gave some really great shots in beauty mode:

How would I rate it? I’d give it 4 out of 5, for its really great value for money. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to buy their first smartphone or switching to Android from other operating systems for the first time.

These are all its features:

Dimensions, screen and display: 143 x 70.6 x 7.7 mm with 5.0-inch HD having 1280 x 720Display

Weight: 131g

Colour variants: comes in black or white

Processor, operating system and RAM: Hisilicon Kirin 620 CPU Octa-core 1.2GHz running on Android KitKat with 2GB RAM

Memory: 16GB inbuilt, expandable to 32GB by microSD card

Camera: 13MP rear camera and 5MP front camera (the latter comes with beauty, perfect or panorama selfie options). It also has low-light adaptations that enable you take photos that focus on your subject and reduce the noise around it to give a very clear picture.

Battery: 2200 mAh, giving you atleast 8 – 10 hours of continuous use if you’re not running too many data-consuming applications.

Price: Ranges between K3199 and K3400 in Huawei retail partner stores.