In front of me I have the Huawei P9.
The android smart phone with dual Leica camera lenses on the back.
I do durability tests on cell phones.
If you are outdoorsy, rock climb, do construction, hike, or have a generally active lifestyle...
You need to have a phone that will withstand any accidents.
Out of 30 Phones that I have tested so far...
only 4 have catastrophically failed.
One of which is the Huawei Nexus 6P.
This phone, the Huawei P9 was released 7 Months after the 6P.
Will it have the same weakness, or crinkles near the power button?
Or were those 7 months sufficient to correct any design issues.
Lets find out if the P9 is stronger than the 6P.
Lets start with the scratch test.
This screen has something called 2.5D glass.
Which means it has a very slight curve along the edge.
Not as much as the S7 Edge, or Blackberry Priv, it's a very subtle curve.
I have a set of picks that let me know where the screen falls on Mohs Scale of Hardness.
Not all glass is created equal.
Phones like the Droid Turbo 2 and the Galaxy S7 Active scratch at a level 2.
The Umi Super phone scratched at a level 4... but this phone, the P9 scratched at a level
6.
And a deeper groove with a level 7 pick.
This is the norm for smart phones these days.
So you wont have to worry about keys or loose change damaging your glass screen.
Thumbs up for this durable glass display.
So whats the fuss with these dual Leica cameras?
Well, theoretically, the left lens takes monochrome pictures, which are black and white, and the
right lens takes color pictures, and the software combines them together to form one 'higher
quality' or more detailed image.
This feature doesn't work while recording video though.
As we saw in my camera test yesterday.
It also turns out that Leica nor Huawei, manufacturers this camera.
Its a third party Chinese company called sunny optical.
Ill talk more about that during my teardown video... if this phone survives the bend test.
The Important thing is that the lens is made of glass, and is scratch resistant.
Plus it will allow you to catch Pokemon in 'Pokemon Go'.
That's really all that you need from a smart phone camera these days.
I initially thought that the back panel was going to be plastic because of how thin and
light the back panel feels, but you can tell by the sound it is making... and the silver
shine, that it is indeed metal.
The fingerprint scanner Is painted metal, which is normal.
I scratched it pretty heavily to test its functionality, and while it still worked after
being scratched, it only responds about 50% of the time.
The LGG5 fingerprint scanner was scratched far worse than this, and still functioned
100 percent of the time.
So, don't let your fingerprint scanner scratch.
The sides of the device are made of metal, and aren't coated with any plastic or primer.
The volume button is also metal, as well as the very textured power button.
If we flip the phone around to the sim card trey, it is metal, even the earpiece is metal.
I'm very glad when manufactures stay consistent with their materials.
Now onto the flame test, on this IPS-Neo 1080p display, This tells us how thick the glass
is and how much heat the screen can take before reacting.
The Huawei P9 lasted about 10 seconds before the pixels went black and turned off.
Normally the screen would still function over the next few seconds with the black pixels,
while they cooled down and recovered.
But this digitizer stopped working.
I turned off the screen, and turned it back on again to restore functionality to the phone.
And It did completely recover, leaving no white burn marks on the screen like you see
with my Galaxy S7 Edge.
Onto the bend test.
Remember that I test every new phone that comes out, so if you haven't subscribed yet...
now would be a good time.
With the initial flex, the screen pops out from the frame, and then the metal strip near
the power button cracks, but there is no catastrophic damage or folding like the Nexus 6P.
Which is a good thing.
Durable phones are important to most people.
Unless you want to be able to snap your burner phone in half like Walter White...
then you should get a 6P.
But this Huawei P9 is still functional, which means it survives the bend test.
Just for clarity, even though the phone survives my tests, I still recommend getting a screen
protector AND a case.
I always have a case on my phone even if I trust its durability.
My behind the scenes stuff can be found on Instagram and twitter, I even did a snap story
about my editing process on the P9 camera comparison video.
Ill try to have the teardown video of this phone up in the next few days.
I'll be interesting to review this phone from the inside.
Thanks for watching!
I hope to see you around.