Osborn

Excellent cell phone, I like it .

The device is nice, beautiful and it works as it is.
As soon it arrived got my 2 sim cards into the device and start working smooth, no problems what so ever, so bu it if you need to have 2 active/active sim cards.

Jacob

best phone I've seen

Simply the perfect Huawei Smartphone with quality and power. For a 5.0" screen, the phone feels very comfortable in your hands. the screen takes up most of the front face with top and bottom borders. The camera is excellent for the price range.

James

very good phone

I had never heard of Huawei before I saw it on Vine and did some research on it. Huawei is a Chinese company that is apparently set to take the Android world by storm. Currently, only the P8 Lite is available in the Americas, but China has a P8 and a P8 Max (akin to an iPhone 6 regular and iPhone 6 Plus). A lot of the reviews talked about the luxurious feel, thinness and quality.

In my opinion, it actually feels cheap and the casing all around is plastic and feels plastic-y when handling it. In fact it actually feels like rubbing some Tupperware, complete with the squeak. Yes, it is super-thin, but that actually introduces a problem with taking landscape photos with the camera. Due to the thinness and sensor placement, your fingers are more likely to wrap-around towards the front of the camera lens and block your camera shot. The Lumia 1020 never has this issue since the lens is in the center and our iPhone 6 doesn't either, even though its lens is in the same general vicinity. The iPhone 6 is a bit thicker and the lens itself has a raised ridge and is spaced further from the edge than this P8 Lite. Sure, you'll get used to it, break old habits and probably not have that happen again, but just sharing my initial usage impressions. In terms of great-design, you should be able to pick something up and use it and not have to make accommodations. [Update: Tonight I took my wife's iPhone 6 and purposely tried to wrap my finger over the camera shutter and block the picture and it was very difficult to do so and had to really stretch my finger to make that happen. The reason is probably because the iPhone is thicker and the P8 lite ironically, is too thin.]

But the saving grace are the stats and Yes, it is unfair to compare it to $500-$600 phones; this is a $249 (as of this writing) UNLOCKED, LTE, Dual-Sim, Android phone with expandable microSD ! And once you get used to the photo-snapping in landscape mode, wow, this is quite a phone.

But I will state it has probably the best low-light camera I've used, even compared to the pinnacle of cameras in phones, the Lumia 1020 41mp camera!

One note of caution and I don't know how "update-able" it will be, but it comes with Android 4.4.4 "Kit Kat" NOT Android 5 "Lollipop". This was a very surprising find as I'm not sure why the manufacturer would ship it out like that as a new phone?? The phone-pics are a bit deceptive. Those navigation icons at the bottom are fake Android 5 icons! They do the functionality, but it is still Android 4.4.

Speaking of updates, this is skinned/themed with their own Emotion UI, I just don't know the upgrade path for it; I did just click, Check for Updates and nothing was found.

I appreciate all phones, iOS, Windows Phone and Android and my household has all 3. For ease of use out of the box, integration across everything(iMessages/Facetime built in), device sync, the iPhone 6 definitely wins. For ultimate business-productivity, *amazing* and unmatched *true* handsfree Bluetooth usage in a car, the Windows Phone takes the cake easily. For a value-phone, given the price and features and unlocked, the P8 Lite is a fantastic buy.

Maybe because it was a Vine item, but it came in a generic white box with zero instructions or cards with URLs or links or any printed information, it was a little surprising. Only from another review did I find out you can take a pic while it is locked by swiping the camera-icon (there's no shutter button). (Update: My wife tells me that is exactly how her iPhone 6 takes pics while locked, too; I compared and it is practically identical, including 90% of the camera UI) Though there are apps out there, it has a built-in All-Focus mode that is similar to those full-field-of-vision cameras where you can take one pic and change the focus. The Camera portion is very iPhone-ish. Overall the Emotion UI skin doesn't bother me, it is still Android and I can simply re-arrange things to make it exactly as I please.

*One thing to note, yes it is dual-sim and yes it CAN have expandable storage via microSD, BUT, not at the same time. To have expandable storage, you give up dual-sim. To have dual-sim you give up expandable storage. So keep that in mind, most vendors do that today anyways. Give me a phone with dual-sim and simultaneous expandable-storage and that would be awesome!

Until then, the stats are on the wall - unlocked, LTE, $249, dual-sim*, Android, 1280x720 display, 7mm thin, great low-light camera, 5" display, expandable microSD*, pretty hard to go wrong here and I was comparing it to $500-$600 phones.