They say that tablets are done for: more and more technology professionals forecast a quick end for these devices, as their popularity is on the decline. One of the main reasons for this is the appearance of phablets - smartphones with sizes comparable to tablets. These larger handhelds are basically two-in-one devices that make tablets redundant. Huawei's own P8max is one such smartphone: it's definitely big and it can replace a tablet. Read our review to find more about all its other features:
Hardware specifications and packaging
The Huawei P8max arrived in a hard case made from black plastic, with a minimalistic and elegant design. It is a bit unconventional, as it is in fact a wrapper that has every component inside. It has the smartphone's name printed in gold on it and that's about it.
From this wrapper you can slide out two components: another plastic box that holds the P8max and its accessories, and a smaller cardboard box that has a smart cover inside. It is a rare and very welcome sight to see, as very few smartphones come with a cover inside the box, so we were genuinely happy about this one. It is a leather flip cover that has some really neat features, but we'll talk about these a bit later.
The plastic box has a lid that can be taken off, and underneath we can see a design similar to a car CD player: t here is a small gap from which the smartphone slides ou t, which looks like a CD being ejected. After taking out the smartphone, you have to slide another piece of plastic in order to reveal two other slots, which each have a cardboard box inside. One of them holds the smartphone's accessories (charger head, microUSB cable, headset and a small pin for the SIM tray), while in the other you can find the documentation and the warranty papers.
Upon taking out the smartphone, it becomes immediately obvious why the word "max" is present in its name: because it is shockingly huge. I personally use a Oneplus One smartphone and a Nexus 7 tablet everyday, neither of which are small devices, but the Huawei P8max is much bigger than my smartphone and just a bit smaller than the tablet. Seeing this gigantic size we couldn't help but laugh at first, thinking about how we could make phone calls with such a device.
Apart from its size we must note that the first impression is generally favourable, as the P8max is a unibody smartphone that is designed with simplicity in mind. It is available in three colors: Luxurious Gold, Mystic Champagne and Titanium Grey, the latter being the most conservative of the three colors that could appeal to most of the buyers. We had a Luxurious Gold device for testing and, interestingly, in this case this isn't such a flashy, show-off color like at other manufacturers.
As for its specifications, the Huawei P8max has a gigantic, 6.8" LTPS IPS LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and a pixel density of 326 ppi, this being protected with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 coating. No need to explain, at such a huge size, the P8max is much more of a tablet than a simple smartphone, thus being a perfect representation of the phablet category of devices. It's not easy to use it with a single hand (although there are software solutions that help you do so), as it is 7.19 inches or 182.7 mm tall, 3.66 inches or 93 mm wide, but it's still quite slim, being just 0.27 inches or 6.8 mm thick. Of course it weighs quite a lot, more precisely 8.04 oz or 228 grams, so you will most probably not keep it in your shirt pocket. You might even want to forget your pants pocket as well: even if it fits, you won't really be able to walk up or down the stairs, as it will hurt your legs, or you might break the smartphone.
On the inside, the heart of this big baby is Huawei's own HiSilicon Kirin 935 chipset that comprises of two quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU's, one of them ticking at 2.2 GHz, while the other has a clock speed of 1.5 GHz. The graphics are handled by an ARM Mali-T628 MP4 with OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1*, DirectX 9/11, OpenCL 1.1 Full Profile and Google RenderScript support. The P8max is equipped with 3GB of RAM and has 64GB of flash storage space, which can be extended with a microSD card of up to 64GB in size. It is good to know that if you wish to use a microSD card, you have to give up the dual SIM capability, as the microSD card will take up the second, nano-SIM slot.
As we have already mentioned, the P8max is a dual SIM device, with a micro and a nano-SIM slot. These work in dual standby mode, meaning that while you're talking on one SIM card, the other one is in standby, not able to receive calls. Both SIM slots have 4G support, although only one can connect to these high-speed networks at a time.
The device has a 4360 mAh Li-Polymer, which cannot be replaced - this is rather common, albeit unwelcome, practice nowadays, mostly in high-end models. Although the P8max is more of a top mid-range competitor, it still doesn't have a replaceable battery.
The smartphone's primary, rear-facing camera has a resolution of 13 MP, an aperture size of f/2.0, autofocus, optical image stabilization and dual-LED (dual tone) flash and can record 1080p videos at 30fps, while on the front we have a 5 MP secondary camera.
In terms of connectivity the P8max supports all network types from 2G to LTE, although the specific frequencies are not mentioned in its online specifications. We do know however, that on LTE we have a theoretical maximum download speed of 300 Mbit/s (with support for intra-band contiguous Carrier Aggregation, carrier network dependent) and a download speed of 50 Mbit/s, while on DC-HSDPA+ the theoretical maximums are 42 Mbit/s and 5.76 Mbit/s for download and upload respectively.
Of course the smartphone supports WiFi networks as well (using the IEEE 802.11ac/a/b/g/n standards on the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies), has a 4.0 Bluetooth chip with A2DP (which is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 3.0 and 2.1+EDR), GPS/A-GPS/Glonass/BDS (country-dependent) support for location and navigation, a microUSB 2.0 port and FM Radio support that works with a headset plugged in the 3.5 mm jack port.
The full set of hardware specifications can be found here: Huawei P8max specifications.
Based on its technical specifications, the Huawei P8max is a large, phablet-type, mid-range smartphone, with most of the category's generic traits being present. Its size is one of its most important features that set it apart from other handsets, and it is surely the first thing to consider about it when making a purchasing decision.
Design and build quality
The P8max inherits the design principles from its brother, the Huawei P8: this means a unibody smartphone with a simplistic, yet elegant design, that doesn't have many noticeable features, thus maintaining a low-key outlook. Of course the most prominent feature of the phablet is its screen: the gigantic, 6.8 inches touchscreen is extremely large, so you will never be short of space when working with it.
Just above the display you can see the 5 MP secondary camera, the speaker and a light sensor. The frontal camera has no flash, the only other feature on the front of the smartphone is the manufacturer's name, right below the screen. There is no separate, visible row for the default Android keys - they appear on the screen when it is turned on.
On the device's top edge you can see the two connectors: a 3.5 mm jack and a microUSB 2.0 port, that can be used for both charging the device and connecting it to a computer for data transfer. As for the audio jack, the P8max comes bundled with a set of earphones that have an average audio quality and are also used as an antenna for the FM radio.
The bottom edge houses just the microphone and the loudspeaker, while the left edge is basically empty. The right side of the smartphone has many more features, starting with the volume keys on the top. Right below them there is the power key, which is the best place to place it on such a large device. A bit lower you can see the two SIM slots: the one on the bottom is the primary slot that uses a microSIM, while the top slot is a nanoSIM slot, or it can also be used for a microSD card to extend the smartphone's storage capacity.
The back panel is a smooth piece of metal, its most important feature being the 13 MP main camera in the top left corner and the dual-tone LED right near it. In the center of the back panel we can also see the Huawei logo, while the bottom part is a black stripe, made of a different material than the rest of the panel.
The build quality is rather good, although we must note that it would have been a good idea to use a less slippery material on the back panel. As the Huawei P8max is really large and heavy, it can fall from your hands. It's actually quite hard to get a good grip on it, not to mention that you will probably have to hold it with both your hands to be able to properly use it.
The screen has good contrast and it's easy to read even in bright sunlight, although it's obvious that the pixel density is not very high - you won't see pixels or fuzzy edges, but it's not the absolute highest quality. The Gorilla Glass 3 coating will protect it from scratches, but fingerprints will be a problem - it looks like the screen doesn't have oleophobic coating.
The device we had for testing came with a smart cover that is quite possibly the best thing that can happen to the Huawei P8max. It is a flip case made out of high-quality brown leather that not only protects the smartphone from physical harm, but also makes it look cool and easy to hold. It has a dot-matrix front, which makes it smart: with the flip cover closed you can still see time and weather information, as well as incoming calls - you can even answer them, the Huawei P8max recognizes touches through the case as well.
Still, the smart cover has its share of problems too: when the smartphone is in the cover, some apps' notifications have no sound at all. This was the case for Gmail and WhatsApp, but some users have reported the same problem with other apps as well. It seems to be a software bug, as calls and text message notifications have no problem, but it is still very annoying. We can only hope that this issue will be fixed with a software update in the near future - during the time when we tested the smartphone, there were no software updates available.
The Huawei P8max is one big smartphone: being as much of a tablet as it is a smartphone, it surely targets only a small segment of users. Many can be put off by such a large device, but there are times when it does come in handy. Its design is very elegant and it is made of rather high quality materials so, apart from its size, there are no deal-breaker features. The smart cover is a nice addition, even with its share of bugs.
The smartphone experience on the Huawei P8max
Based on its price, the hardware and the features it offers, it is safe to say that Huawei P8max is a mid-range smartphone - do not let yourself be misled by its large size - it doesn't necessarily mean that this is one of the most expensive phones to use.
As we have already mentioned, the display's quality is quite good, the only noticeable flaw is the lower pixel density. Although it has a Full HD resolution of 1080x1920 pixels, due to the large screen, the pixel density is of only 326 ppi. When using the device on its own, one can barely notice this, but if it is compared to a high-end smartphone, it becomes quite clear that the Huawei P8max is a mid-range device with a mid-range screen.
In terms of speed the Huawei P8max fared quite well. Everyday tasks carried out without delays, we didn't experience any major slowdowns. Still, the operating system lagged a bit sometimes, which was mostly noticeable when browsing the web. It is far from being frustrating, but there is a constant feeling that everything could be just a bit faster. Fortunately there were no scrolling lags or screen tears, only the loading times are longer than in the case of higher end smartphones.
Our first experience with audio quality was when the smartphone first rang - and it was extremely loud. It is highly recommended that you fine-tune the ringtone volume, as it can get quite scary. Otherwise the loudspeaker's quality is mediocre: you can listen to music, but don't have any high expectations. Since the screen is large, it can be a good choice to watch movies in bed, but you might want to use a good earphone or headphone. During calls, sound quality was exceptional, there is nothing to complain about.
The P8max worked flawlessly with our mobile network, it didn't lose connection at all, and remember that if you have a nanoSIM card, you can use that as your SIM as well, and have 4G access, but in that case you can't install a microSD card.
Unfortunately the P8max we had for testing had a nasty bug regarding WiFi connectivity. When the smartphone was moved out of range of a WiFi network it was connected to, it couldn't detect ( and couldn't connect to) other WiFi networks, unless its WiFi module was turned off and on again.
So, for example, you are at home, connected to your home WiFi and then go to work. The P8max won't see the workplace WiFi (even if it had been previously connected to it), instead it will still show you the home WiFi and any other networks that were in range back there. Of course, it only takes a couple of taps to turn the WiFi off and on. This is not only annoying but can also cost you money on your data plan. We think this is a major bug, that should be fixed ASAP.
Navigation worked perfectly on the P8max: the GPS module connected rapidly to the satellites and had a stable connection. Given the really large screen, the smartphone can be a top-notch car navigation device.
The smartphone's specifications don't list the expected talk time for the Huawei P8max, but given the 4360 mAh battery we were expecting some really impressive numbers. Of course, the large screen can be a big power drain, but the device still managed to stay on for over two days, which is a very good result. It has its own power saving features as well, but even with automatic brightness, always-on WiFi, disabled Bluetooth, location set to battery saving mode and an average number of phone calls, messages, active push email, and quite a lot of tampering with the web browser, the two-day battery life is really good.
Given the fact that charging doesn't take much more than two hours, it is safe to say that battery life and standby time won't really be one of your concerns, unless of course you tend to check your smartphone every two minutes.
Besides its unusual size and impressive battery life, all of its other features are characteristics of mid-range phones. Which is of course no problem, if you need a mid-range phablet. Its software bugs, however, are not only annoying, but can even cost you money - until these are fixed, they can make your life more difficult.
The camera experience on the Huawei P8max
The Huawei P8max is not advertised as a multimedia smartphone, or a camera smartphone. Of course, it has a rather decent camera, but photography is not one of its main selling points. Huawei used a 13 MP camera on the back panel, while the secondary, front-facing camera is a 5 MP module.
The main, 13 megapixel can take pictures at a maximum resolution of 4160 x 3120 pixels and is accompanied by a dual-tone LED flash. Unfortunately, we found no information available about the sensor it uses. The pictures generally have a rather good quality, but the dynamic range is not very high, the colors are a bit faded and contrast is too low, while white parts can get burnt out easily. Still, there isn't a very high level of image noise, details aren't washed out, and we couldn't observe any chromatic aberration either. The secondary camera is mainly used for selfies and, just like on most smartphones, it has a much lower resolution of 5 megapixels. It also has no flash, so stick to the main camera whenever possible.
The camera has some additional features besides the basic camera modes like HDR , Night pictures and Panorama . For example, it lets you take a series of pictures, then choose the best one from them, add watermark to images, or even use audio notes. You can also shoot time-lapse videos, and there is a Beauty mode , which comes in handy when making selfies, as it lets you add beauty effects to the picture - results may vary.
If you have artistic desires, Light painting mode can be your friend: this lets you capture trails of light by using slow shutter speeds. This way you can take pictures of cars with long tail-light, or waterfalls with foamy water. Of course these aren't very good compared to a professional camera, but it can be fun playing around with them.
Using the main camera, you can record videos at a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels at 30 frames per second. The videos are just as average as the photos: they are not bad, or unusable, but they have a low contrast and saturation, and even look a bit like something recorded at a lower resolution, as many details get lost amidst the visible pixels. Still, if you don't have very high expectations, the Huawei P8max will do a fine job in recording family memories and snapshots, but don't expect to shoot the image of your life with this smartphone.
The Huawei P8max is not a camera smartphone. It has an average quality camera, that can take some decent pictures and record okay-ish videos, so if you don't have very high expectations, it will surely do.
Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, EMUI 3.1 & Bundled apps
Huawei P8max ships with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. There is a planned upgrade to Android 6.0 but at the time we wrote this review, there were no software updates available for this smartphone. Huawei has one of the most highly customized user interfaces, EMUI, and the P8max comes with its 3.1 version.
The EMUI has many modifications, compared to the stock Android experience, one of the most noticeable being the completely modified layout: there is no All apps button, all applications have an icon on the home screen, which has as many pages as you want. Quite iPhone-like, so to say. You can also hide some applications, which can then be accessed by pinching with three fingers on the home screen. The notification panel can be accessed by swiping down from the top, while the quick actions can be accessed by swiping right from this menu. Unfortunately the quick actions cannot be directly accessed from the home screen, you need to do this extra step.
The EMUI is a rather fast and stable user interface that has a minimalistic design, but it also comes with lots of themes: using them you can customize the smartphone's design any way you want, make it simple or very flashy, with lots of animations. The default theme had a strange lock screen, where it was rather hard to unlock the smartphone, as you need to drag across the screen at a very specific location. Fortunately, most themes don't have such a problem, and there a lot to choose from. You can also switch to a simple home screen layout, with large icons if you want.
EMUI has many other small, but rather nice improvements over the default Android operating system. For example, you just need to drag across the three softkeys on the bottom to make the screen smaller - this is really good when you need to use the smartphone with a single hand. Another feature that makes use of the large screen is that you use the apps in split screen mode, you can even resize the two halves.
There is also a floating button feature (called Suspend button ) which makes the main control buttons appear anywhere on the screen - another great feature when using the device with one hand. Smart headset control lets you use your headset's buttons' to issue commands, Smart screenshot lets you take screenshots by knocking the screen and drawing an area to be captured, while Gloves mode comes handy during the winter season, it lets you use the touchscreen while wearing gloves. Other minor features are starting the camera and instantly taking a photo by double-pressing the volume key, muting a call, by putting the phone face down, or answering a call, by holding the smartphone to your ear.
The Huawei P8max comes with a few preinstalled apps, and fortunately, none of them can be considered bloatware. Even if some of them are not very useful, or frequently used, they don't take up much space, so you won't see them as a burden.
The P8max ships with the following bundled applications:
Calculator - a calculator with advanced features.
Files - Huawei's file manager.
HiCare - Huawei's customer support application.
FM Radio - tune in to local radio stations. It requires a headset to be plugged in.
Flashlight - activates the rear LED flash that can be used as a flashlight.
Magnifier - uses digital zoom, but can be useful.
Mirror - a simple mirror. Blow in the microphone for an easter egg.
Notepad - a simple note-taking app.
Phone Manager - a tool for optimizing the performance and the battery life.
Recorder - a simple voice recorder.
Weather - Huawei's own weather app and widget.
WiFi+ - if enabled, the smartphone will monitor the quality of available networks and automatically switch to the network with the best signal and speed.
WPS Office - a free office suite for Android that supports major document, spreadsheet and presentation formats and has a PDF converter.
Besides these, the Huawei P8max also has all the major Google apps installed, so you don't have to worry about getting them.
The smartphone also comes with HiSuite - Huawei's smartphone companion application that can be installed on a computer in order to connect to the smartphone and manage its contents. Unfortunately, in order to make the smartphone work with HiSuite, you will first need to enable USB debugging in Developer options, which is not very user-friendly and in the latest version of the HiSuite software, these steps are not even mentioned, only in the older one, available from their website.
We are usually very content with the default Android user interface and the experience it provides, but it's always good to see when developers manage to create a user interface that adds to the default experience and improves upon it. EMUI is one such user interface that is really nice to use, easy to configure, has some really neat features and also comes with applications that are almost exclusively good ones and that you will certainly use quite often.
Performance in benchmarks
Yes, the Huawei P8max is a mid-range smartphone, but its design, large screen and really good build quality suggest something more. The benchmark results are a good measure of its qualities so let's see how it fares in them. First we tested the CPU speed, using the popular benchmark application, Vellamo. As always, we were first curious about the multicore performance, so we ran Vellamo's Multicore test, which benchmarks the processor's multithreaded capabilities. The P8max had a score of 2003, which is certainly good, placing it at the top of the mid-range smartphones list, surpassing the HTC One M8, and performing almost as well as the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
Of course, the multicore performance is not the only relevant measure of a smartphone's speed, since many applications don't even make use of the multi-core CPU, but can only use a single core. In order to check P8max's single-core performance, we ran Vellamo's Metal test, where the smartphone scored 1492 points, again surpassing the HTC One M8, and finishing not far from the Motorola Nexus 6 and the OnePlus One.
Although you might still experience - although infrequent - slowdowns, the scores show that the Huawei P8max is a powerful mid-range smartphone. In terms of CPU speed it is quite similar to some high-end flagship smart phone s.
We need to mention the large screen again: with such a huge display it would be lovely to play some good games, as they are much more fun than on a small smartphone. In order to test graphical performance, we downloaded the GFXBench GL Benchmark and went on to see how the device fares on the T-Rex and Manhattan 1080p tests.
In the T-Rex Offscreen test the Huawei P8max rendered 744.9 frames, which translates to a mere 13 frames per second. This is a very low score, placing the P8max somewhere at the bottom of the performance list. As a comparison, the Google Nexus 6 was more than twice as fast (1146 frames), although it had almost the same performance as the P8max in other benchmarks.
The Manhattan Offscreen test is even more demanding so, naturally, the device had an even lower score of 449.1 frames, or 7.2 fps. These two results show that the Huawei P8max might not be the best choice for high-resolution gaming, as its graphical processing unit is a low-performance one.
In order to test the real-world performance of a smartphone, it is best to have it run everyday tasks, like web browsing, which is one of the main uses of any smart device. Vellamo has a test just for that, called Explore . This test not only tries to render all kinds of content (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) in a web browser, but it also measures zooming and scrolling performance - tasks you do all the time when you browse the web. Using Google's Chrome browser, the Huawei P8max received a score of 3030 points, which places it near the top of the benchmark results list, on par with the Nexus 6 and the One M8.
As on many other smartphones, Google Chrome was the fastest on the P8max as well. The smartphone comes with a default browser that had a score of 2603, meaning that if you want to enhance your browsing speed, you might want to stick to Chrome instead of that.
All statistics show that if asked what would they change about their smartphone, the vast majority of responders want better battery life. One might think that the P8max's huge screen will drain the battery quickly, but thanks to the huge, 4360 mAh module and some great energy saving features, we managed to keep the device running for over two days with moderate usage. We have also ran PCMark's Work battery life test to see how does the smartphone fare, and that measured a battery life of 12 hours and 57 minutes, this being benchmarked under constant load and active screen. This makes the Huawei P8max a smartphone with a great battery life - we can only hope that the juice will keep flowing for years, as the battery cannot be replaced by the user.
Since the Huawei P8max is a modern smartphone with 4G LTE support, we have also verified download and upload speeds with Ookla's Speedtest.net application. During our tests we were using the Orange Romania mobile network and measured transfer speeds both indoors and outdoors.
The P8max had no issues connecting to the 4G network, but its speed wasn't exactly top-notch, as we have measured a download speed of 27.34 Mbps and an upload speed of 10.42 Mbps. The ping time was great: just 14 ms. The slightly lower transfer speeds might have been due to traffic congestion on the network, but they were still okay.
We don't think that anyone should make a smartphone purchasing decision by relying purely on synthetic benchmark results, but these should also be considered. In the case of the Huawei P8max it is quite evident that it has a rather powerful hardware, as its CPU fared almost as well as some current flagship, high-end smartphones. Still, it struggles greatly in terms of 3D graphics, as it doesn't have a very high performance graphic chip. If gaming is what you want to use your smartphone for, then you should look elsewhere.
Pros and cons
Regarding the Huawei P8max, its most important pros are:
It has a minimalistic, elegant design
It offers good build quality
The smart cover is very useful and also a high quality accessory
The smartphone's performance is more than good enough for most tasks
The smartphone has its share of flaws as well:
It has software bugs that are critical, and should be fixed ASAP
It doesn't perform well in graphically demanding tasks
It's price is a bit too much for what it offers
Product rating3/5
Verdict
With the P8max, Huawei entered the phablet segment of the mobile devices market. The device, being a hybrid of a tablet and a smartphone will surely attract attention to anyone using it: its design is minimalistic, elegant and quite nice, but its sheer size won't go unnoticed. Its physical properties will surely filter the buyers, but if you plan on using it as a multi-purpose work device, then it can be a really good companion.
The Huawei P8max is no gaming device for sure: although its everyday performance is really good, it struggles to deliver a solid gaming experience, due to a poorly performing graphical chip. Its camera is average and can be a good companion on a family trip. It can take reasonably good pictures but don't expect to be featured in National Geographic.
Overall, the Huawei P8max is a good work companion, a likable smartphone that can help you get through your busy day. Its smart cover offers a lovely experience and it might even help the Huawei P8max replace your notebook on some occasions, given its performance, size and battery life. Unfortunately, it has a couple of software bugs that can make your life more difficult, instead of simplifying it. Hopefully, they will get resolved soon.
Discussion (0)
Be the first to comment.