The mid-priced smart phone segment is a hotly contested one, with phone manufacturers trying to capture the attention of consumers not wanting to shell out more than $1000 on a phone.
Keen to roll with the momentum created by its top-end P8 smart phone, Huawei have released the P8 Lite, a budget priced phone that shares a name with its fancier sibling but is essentially a less specced version of the P8
[Note, I haven’t reviewed a P8 yet so I can’t compare the two directly.]
The P8’s 5-inch 720p IPS screen is powered by a 1.5 GHz octa-core processor, 2GB RAM and 16Gb of built-in storage. It’s packing a 13 megapixel main camera and a 5MP front-facing camera.
The P8 Lite is a nice looking phone that feels comfortable in the hand, and it’s solidly constructed with a sleek profile. It looks exactly like the flagship P8 – so Huawei have done an excellent job there – but instead of the brushed aluminum back plate of the more expensive P8, the P8 Lite has a plastic panel with a brushed aluminum look to cut down weight (and cost).
The phone has the normal buttons you’d find on a smart phone and two speaker grills at the bottom edge. For some strange reason, though, only one of the grills contains an actual speaker, which will muffle audio playback, depending on how you hold the phone.
The camera produced good images and video and while call quality was good, colour reproduction just wasn’t as sharp as I’d have liked. The P8 Lite is packing a 720p display which compared to other smartphones on the market is a little disappointing.
The P8 Lite is running Android 5.0.1 (Lollipop) which Huawei has customized with its own Ui over the top. It’s smart looking enough but there’s still slight lag (it’s barely perceptible) when you swipe between screens. It’s not major but I noticed it.
One great thing about the P8 Lite is the price: You can pick it up for around $350 [probably less if you search online] so it’s a good price for a budget smart phone, especially if you want something for yourself or a teenager that looks smart, does what it says on the gox and won’t break the bank.
Huawei’s P8 Lite is segmented into a competitive price point and consumers have a lot of better phones to choose from. The P8 Lite had some things I really liked and some things I didn’t. Overall, it’s a good phone that does the job but it doesn’t do enough to stand out from the crowd.