Huawei P9 Leica camera test – vs Samsung, LG & Oppo

It was only a couple of weeks ago I took a few cameras into the City of Sydney and tested them all head to head. The result was interesting, the $400 Alcatel batted way above his average while the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5 were top of the class.  So, with the all new Huawei P9 with dual lens Leica camera on board in our hands, we took a few phones on a little tour of our resort in Bali.

The selection was similar to last time, featuring the latest phones from the big names, plus a mid-range device from Oppo – the newly announced R9.

Our approach was simple, find things to take photos of!  I tried to find some bright areas, high sunlight, loads of colour, detail in the picture.  As well as seeking out close up shots for foreground and background focus.

So let’s take a look.  We’ve watermarked each photo so you can slide through and compare – to make your own mind up.

Then there’s the all important selfie.  Something that bugs me here are the mirror images?  What’s the deal with that folks?  And let’s pay attention to the Oppo R9 here, they are pushing their super high quality selfie-front camera.

These are pretty boring photos, but what I did here was stand in the shade, and shoot up – intentionally framing to get the sun through the leaves.  An interesting look at how the camera handles that bright spot on the sensor & lens.

What about close up on a flower – then the same frame with the background in focus.

Going out to a gala Huawei dinner that evening, the perfect time to test some interesting lighting situations.  Sadly, I don’t have any LG G5 images to share here – wiped that device for return to LG before I got them off!

Now look, that’s a lot of photos to look through.

So like with our last test, there’s one other key thing to look at.  How do they perform on social media?  We uploaded each photo from the device it was taken on to Instagram.

Here’s the first bunch:

And something with a whole lot more colour:

So again, really tough to set them apart when you see them on the same screen in the environment where probably 90% of photos are shared – Social Media.

For your edification, the cameras above are:

1. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
2. LG G5
3. Oppo R9
4. iPhone SE
5. Huawei P9

As far as I’m concerned the Huawei stands proudly at the top of the list there outperforming all others overall, but its clear that in many cases it’s hard to set them all apart.

The Oppo R9 does well, but is outperformed when put under pressure.  Outside of that, there’s some stunning photography coming from all these cameras – and we didn’t even try any of the manual settings on the Huawei.

All in all, Huawei have found a way to match the big guys here, but on your view of things – what’s the rankings here?  Which would you buy on camera performance alone?

Trevor Long travelled to Bali for the P9 Regional launch Conference as a guest of Huawei– Click here for Full details of commercial interests and disclosures