Huawei P9 review: Ascension
Ascension
Simple gallery
The Huawei P9's gallery app offers a Timeline view, which sorts your images by the date you've taken them. Alternatively, you can opt for the standard Album view with all of your images sorted in different albums.
Opening a single image lets you quickly delete or rotate it, as well as gives you some basic sharing options (including streaming it over DLNA).
The info icon up top gives some pretty detailed information about the image, including a histogram. Pulling down from anywhere on the screen lets you take a quick photo without leaving the gallery. The image comes out in a square 1:1 ratio at 2,976 x 2,976.
Album view • chronological view • viewing an image • detailed info • camera quick access
You can also go into a more capable editor with options for light and exposure adjustments (so you can bring out the shadows or the highlights), filters and beauty enhancements. You can adjust levels and add individual watermarks for time, location, weather, food and mood.
The image editor is quite capable
Video player
When it comes to playing videos, the Huawei P9 default player is pretty basic. Its sole option is playback speed.
Simplistic video player with few options
Music player
The Huawei P9 comes with Huawei's custom music player app. It offers four default playlists - songs, artists, albums, folders. You can create your playlists, too. The background of the app changes dynamically to match the album art, which is a nice little touch.
The Now Playing screen is pretty standard, it offers album art and lyrics. There are no equalizers to speak off, but the app does have a few extra features. It would try to pull album art, song info and lyrics automatically for you.
The music player
The Huawei P9 lacks FM radio.
Audio clarity is decent, loudness disappoints
When used with an active external amplifier the Huawei P9 delivered perfectly clean output, which is par for the course for any flagship these days. The volume levels are lower than average though, which means it can’t quite keep up with its rivals.
Stereo crosstalk worsens by a moderate amount when you hook a pair of headphones, but the overall output is still satisfyingly clean. Loudness dropped even further though, so it’s certainly not a performance worth writing home about. It will probably do for people who haven’t invested in large high-impendance headphones, but demanding audiophiles certainly have better options.
And now here go the results so you can do your comparison.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.01, -0.04 | -97.3 | 98.5 | 0.0053 | 0.0090 | -96.2 | |
| +0.32, -0.02 | -93.0 | 97.9 | 0.0066 | 0.167 | -65.5 | |
| LG G5 | +0.01, -0.04 | -92.6 | 92.6 | 0.0051 | 0.0096 | -93.3 |
| LG G5 (headphones) | +0.05, -0.01 | -92.2 | 92.3 | 0.0029 | 0.037 | -50.7 |
| Xiaomi Mi 5 | +0.01, -0.03 | -95.3 | 95.1 | 0.0034 | 0.0065 | -95.1 |
| Xiaomi Mi 5 (headphones) | +0.01, -0.03 | -95.2 | 95.1 | 0.0027 | 0.013 | -71.5 |
| Samsung Galaxy S7 | +0.01, -0.04 | -92.5 | 92.6 | 0.0027 | 0.0078 | -92.7 |
| Samsung Galaxy S7 (headphones) | +0.05, -0.05 | -91.9 | 92.1 | 0.0044 | 0.063 | -73.4 |
| +0.01, -0.04 | -95.5 | 89.5 | 0.0033 | 0.012 | -94.8 | |
| +0.22, -0.24 | -95.1 | 89.5 | 0.0057 | 0.212 | -59.8 | |
| +0.03, -0.04 | -93.5 | 93.5 | 0.0016 | 0.0075 | -73.2 | |
| +0.10, -0.06 | -93.8 | 93.9 | 0.0030 | 0.101 | -68.2 |
Huawei P9 frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
Reader comments
- Huhuexist
- 19 Mar 2022
- 7WZ
Great phone still works now ended up selling mine as cound get the screen off to replace the battery ended up sold sad tbh
- Antonio CC
- 02 Nov 2021
- LLH
I had it for a couple of years. Great phone, elegant and with a great camera.
- Anonymous
- 28 Aug 2021
- atL
great phone I own it since 2017, the only disadvantage lately is the battery but for a 4 year old phone I guess its the same as with any of the best phones