Spec comparison: Huawei P9/Plus vs Huawei P10/Plus

The Huawei P10 and P10 Plus launch in South Africa today, so you’d obviously expect the phones to be an improvement over the P9 and P9 Plus

But just how big is the difference between the four phones then? We’ve got a spec comparison for you.

Battery

The P9 wasn’t bad in the battery department, featuring a 3000mAh pack that’s about standard for a flagship phone these days. Meanwhile, the P9 Plus offered a notable 3400mAh battery.

The P10 ups the capacity somewhat, moving to a 3200mAh pack. The P10 Plus sees a jump from 3400mAh to 3750mAh. Combine the slightly larger batteries with more efficient processors and you should get better endurance.

Camera

The Huawei P9 and P9 Plus are two of the more popular dual-camera smartphones on the market right now, packing two 12MP f/2.2 cameras. One camera is a traditional shooter, while the other is a dedicated black and white camera (no software trickery). As for features, the camera setup means that refocusing and simulated aperture adjustments are available here.

The P10 and P10 Plus follow the same fundamental path, but up the ante by increasing the monochrome camera resolution to 20MP. Through the wonders of software algorithms, the phone is then able to spit out 20MP colour photos, fusing data from the colour camera. Otherwise, the addition of an Apple-style portrait mode (in colour and monochrome) and a portrait option on the front camera (via software) makes the P10 stand out from the older phone.

The P10 Plus also differs from the P10 (and P9/P9 Plus) by offering a larger f/1.8 aperture on its cameras. Expect the P10 Plus to stand out for low-light photography then.

It’s also worth noting that the new Kirin 960 chip enables 4K video recording on the 2017 phones. Unfortunately, the P9 and P9 Plus top out at 1080p/60fps.

Display

Are screens a big factor for you when upgrading to a new phone? Well, the P10 doesn’t see a major difference on paper compared to the vanilla P9.

The P9 and P10 both pack full HD screens, with the P10 screen being 5.1 inches and the P9 being a 5.2-inch display.

The P10 Plus sees a resolution upgrade over the P9 Plus though, packing a 5.5-inch 2560×1440 screen compared to last year’s 5.5-inch full HD display.

All four phones use LCD screens, so they’ll get the job done for everything, but aren’t quite as VR-friendly as AMOLED screens.

It’s also worth noting that Huawei isn’t following the trend of thin bezels with the new phones.

Horsepower

The P9/P9 Plus stepped things up in a big way last year, packing a Kirin 950/955 processor and 3GB/4GB of RAM for starters. The Kirin 950 was the first Huawei chip to use heavyweight A72 cores (four of these and four A53 cores), making for a big improvement from the P8 and Mate S chips.

The Huawei P10 and P10 Plus pack 4GB and 6GB of RAM respectively, making use of the octacore Kirin 960 chip too. This new chip features four A73 cores and four A53 cores. So it seems like a marginal difference in the CPU department.

In saying so, the Kirin 960 is a dramatic improvement in the GPU department, featuring an octacore version of ARM’s new Mali G71 graphics chip. This makes for a big improvement over the P9’s Kirin 950/955, which used a quad-core version of the older Mali T880 GPU. In other words, the graphics department sees double the number of cores and new architecture to boot.

To sum it up, the P10 phones offer very similar CPU performance to last year’s devices, but gaming and VR will benefit from the massive graphical upgrade. The addition of 6GB of RAM is also notable in the P10 Plus.

Fingerprint scanner

Huawei’s fingerprint scanners have always been on point, with the P9 and P9 Plus featuring a rear-mounted scanner. Aside from its speed and accuracy, the scanner also doubled as a touchpad of sorts, allowing users to activate the notification panel, swipe through photos and more.

The company moved the fingerprint scanner to the home button on the P10 and P10 Plus, losing the trackpad functionality in the process. But it’s still as fast as ever, we’re finding.

In saying so, the company has also opted to make the home button multi-functional (a press to go back, hold it down to go home, swipe laterally to multitask). It’s in need of polish, but you can always use the legacy soft keys instead.

We pitted the Huawei P10 Plus camera against the LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S8. Check out our comparison here.

This article has been published in partnership with Huawei – read the details here.