Huawei has sent me the P8 lite to check out. Huawei’s not a very familiar brand here in the US but that might be changing here very soon. Their name looks like Hawaii but I can assure you its pronounced Huawei. Just throwing that out there. But this is the lite or budget-friendly version of its flagship smartphone, the Huawei P8 smartphone; which Cam reviewed not too long ago. It’s definitely worth checking out. So let’s just go ahead with the unboxing of the P8 lite.
This box looks to be already opened and there’s only a handful of items in here. We first have the Huawei P8 lite sandwiched in the middle here between two compartments on either side. One of the compartments looks to hold the setup guide and warranty pamphlet and all that info. But it’s empty. The other compartment holds a SIM card ejector tool, there’s a micro USB charging cable, and then a US wall wart. And that is about it. So really simple stuff here.
But let’s take a look at the star of the show—the Huawei P8 lite. It has a pretty solid form factor and it does scream simplicity as it features a plastic build construction and a simple square-ish design. No rounded edges, it’s all flat and abrupt. It kind of reminds me of the Sony Xperia Z2 a little bit.
Taking a look around the device, we have nothing on the left hand side, there is a volume rocker and a small power/sleep on/off button and a microSD card slot, which is pretty nice, and then a dual SIM card slot here on the right hand side. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack up top and a micro USB charging port on the bottom with a loudspeaker on the bottom as well so it’s not on the front, it’s not on the back. But it’s here on the bottom which is probably the second best place for a speaker.
On the front, we have a 5MP front-facing camera sensor and ambient light sensors. There’s a 5-inch IPS LCD 720p display below that which does make it look like there’s an edge-to-edge display but there are some black bars on either side. I just thought that is worth mentioning. The P8 lite does rely on software navigation buttons that do mimic the look of Android Lollipop even though this device is running Android 4.4.4 KitKat out of the box.
On the back, we have a 13MP camera sensor with a dual LED flash. There’s a Huawei logo below that plastered on the plastic back cover so unlike the standard P8, this device is constructed with plastic. There’s plastic on the back and plastic on the sides but Huawei did look to include metal buttons, which are very nice and tactile and clicky. So overall, this device doesn’t feel terribly premium but it doesn’t carry the premium cost since the P8 lite retails for just $250 off-contract.
The display is a 720p IPS LCD panel and it has pretty solid viewing angles. It doesn’t get very bright, the colors look very good. It’s not a bad display but considering the competition has 1080p resolution displays or higher, it does look noticeably less sharp and detailed.
The software is Android 4.4.4 KitKat unfortunately so I’m sure we will see Android Lollipop but I’m not sure when. But this OS is heavily skinned. We don’t have an app drawer so all of your apps will be displayed on the home screens. But if you don’t like that, you can always go ahead and download a third party launcher. The apps themselves carry rounded square icons that I’m glad to see don’t have a ton of bloatware here. We have some top apps here that include a few added apps but you can uninstall most of them, which is good.
The Huawei P8 lite also does feature a 64-bit Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor, which is a very capable processor that really does wonders for budget devices so you get smooth scrolling and multitasking that’s really no problem here. And overall, it works pretty well. I would say my biggest concern with this device going forward mostly has to do with the dated software, that being Android KitKat, and not Android Lollipop as well as the heavy skin on top of Android KitKat that does alter the experience that I’m used to. One thing that I did do right when I unboxed this device is increase the font size from normal to large since the font Huawei uses is very thin and small, it’s pretty hard to see.
But this is the budget-friendly version of the Huawei P8, the Huawei P8 lite. So for $250 off-contract, you can buy this smartphone and it does support all GSM 4G LTE networks here in the US. Let me know what you think of this device by leaving me a comment down below.