Huawei announces P9 flagship phone with Leica-certified dual camera

PanARMENIAN.Net - Huawei unveiled Wednesday, April 6 its new flagship smartphone with a pair of Leica-certified cameras, the Verge reports.

The 5.2-inch Huawei P9 has a traditional 12-megapixel camera, but right next to it is another, monochrome 12-megapixel module. Working together, the two sensors can improve contrast in photos by 50 percent and triple the light information taken in by the phone.

The P9 has an aluminum unibody case, a 3,000mAh battery, a USB-C port, and an octa-core Kirin 955 processor of Huawei's own making. In spite of the two camera modules and sizeable battery, the Huawei P9 is only 6.95mm thick. In Europe, the P9 will have space for a microSD card, which in China and other Asian markets will be swapped for a second SIM slot. There are a couple of other specification splits between Europe and China: the rose gold P9 won't be available in Europe and neither will the 64GB version of the handset. All P9s come with 3GB of RAM, but European models will have to limit themselves to 32GB of built-in storage, the Verge says.

A 5.5-inch Huawei P9 Plus is also being announced Wednesday, coming with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage by standard, with China also getting a bumped-up 128GB variant. The Plus model expands the battery to 3,400mAh and switches the display technology to Super AMOLED from the regular P9's IPS, both sharing a 1080p resolution. The P9 Plus will be available in May, in both Europe and Asia, while the smaller P9 will be on sale on both continents by the end of this month, the Verge says.

Huawei refuses to either confirm or deny any launch plans for the P9 in the United States, though the company is already on the record as having said that it plans to launch a flagship smartphone in the US this year.