Introduction
Huawei has started 2019 with the launch of the P Smart (2019), it’s bigger in every way.
This year the P Smart gets a bigger 6.21 inch display with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The display now integrates a “dewdrop” notch (housing the front camera) which has enabled Huawei to fit such a big display in such a small body.
Most markets are getting an 8mp front camera but South Africa is one of the few countries to receive the 16mp variant.
On the topic of cameras if we turn to the back of the phone we see the dual camera setup. The main camera is rated at 13mp while the secondary camera is rated at 2mp (used for depth information). This setup has been carried over from the 2018 P Smart.
Another improvement is the chipset, the 2019 P Smart uses the Kirin 710, which is currently used in Honor 8X and Huawei Mate 20 lite and will probably be used in every upcoming Huawei/Honor Mid-range device. There’s also a bump in storage, you now get 64GB internal storage compared to the 32GB internal storage of the previous gen P Smart. In terms of RAM it’s still the same at 3GB.
Lastly the battery has increased from 3000mAH to 3400mAH.
Huawei includes a pair of headsets which look like they came from 2006, to be fair I’ve also seen Nokia shipping these types of headsets. There’s a standard (nowadays) 5V/2A charging brick. You will also find a clear silicone case to protect the phone.
Design
Huawei sent me the “Aurora Blue” variant, and what a beautiful colour it is. It starts off from a deep blue transitioning to a light shade that resembles a mixture of cyan and Teal, as you move to the top of the phone. It has a shiny finish so don’t hold the phone in direct sunlight otherwise you risk blinding someone with that beautiful finish. It definitely looks like phone from the flagship segment.
The 2018 P Smart had a Metal rear plate with two plastic caps at the top and bottom. On the 2019 version Huawei decided to ditch the metal in favour of a unibody plastic body. To be honest it doesn’t feel as good as the 2018 P Smart once your fingerprints start smudging the back although the build quality is much better this year. I’m also starting to see some minor scratches when look at the back at certain angles, it can also be felt with your fingernails.
At the top of the phone is where you will find the Dual SIM/SD Card hybrid tray, next to it is a pin hole for one of the two microphones. The bottom of the phone has a speaker to the left while the headphone jack can be found towards the right, in between you can find the Micro USB port, for the price of the device, USB C should’ve been included instead. The second microphone can be found between the headphone jack and Micro USB port.
The right side of the phone has nothing while the left side houses the volume and power button. The power button has a circular pattern design which can be found on many Huawei devices, it does have a very slight texture to it.
The fingerprint scanner can be found at the rear of the device while an LED notification light sits towards the right, below the display (for reasons unknown).
Display
The P Smart features an IPS LCD Panel with a FULL HD+ resolution (2340 pixels by 1080 pixels). The device is set to vivid mode from the factory, I found the saturation levels of the display to be on par with other devices in this segment, nothing displeasing, personally I would leave it at this setting, unless you prefer a more naturally setting then you can select the standard mode. The display is on the cooler side but can be adjusted to your liking from within the settings menu.
The device can get sufficiently bright for normal use – yes it’s somewhat useable in sunlight but nothing to write home about. At night I found that the device doesn’t get very dim, which I’ve found to be a problem on many devices in this segment.
There’s also a blue light filter labelled as “Eye Comfort” that has been certified by TÜV Rheinland.
Battery
As mentioned before the P smart has 3400mAH battery. Using Geekbench’s battery depletion test I managed to get an excellent screen on time of 7 hours 10mins – this figure will be dependent on how bright the display has been set.
In terms of charging times – The device took 46 minutes and 10 seconds to reach 50% while full charge took 1 hour and 48 minutes. This is not lighting fast but neither is it slow, considering the large battery capacity, it’s a decent charging time.
Performance
The device features a Kirin 710 which has been manufactured on a 12nm process which is an improvement from the Kirin 659 which was manufactured on a 16nm process. Obviously this makes the SoC very power efficient.
I found the phone to be pretty snappy and so far haven’t seen it slow down in the 1 ½ weeks that I’ve used it. This is obviously down to new manufacturing process and the fact that 4 A53’s have now been replaced with 4 A73 cores.
Using Antutu I got a score of 119 171, this ranks the device at 51. This is probably down to the fact it only has 3GB of RAM. Both its cousins (Honor 8X and Mate 20 lite) ranked in the top 50 with scores in the 139 000 region, reason for this could be that they start off with 4GB RAM and go up to 6GB.
I then used Geekbench and managed to get single-core and multi-core score of 1519 5271 respectively – looking at the other scores it showed that the P Smart 2019 edition was not too far off from the Samsung Galaxy S7.
Gaming
The P Smart features a Mali-G51 MP4 GPU which is a slight improvement over the Mali-T830 MP2 found in the 2018 P Smart.
I loaded two games – PUBG Mobile and Real Racing 3.
Both games played smoothly with no stuttering. PUBG recommended a medium graphic setting in order to operate. Real Racing 3 didn’t give any indication as to what settings it was using but it did look like it was rendering at 720p.
The phone did get hot while playing PUBG.
I also performed a synthetic benchmark using GFXBench, the result are as follows:
Camera
As mentioned early the 2019 P Smart carries over the same setup from 2018 but this time it adds PDAF instead of AF, this should help with shortening the focusing time. Huawei also states the camera as an “AI Camera” – it can identify 22 categories.
If you enable the AI function you will be limited to 8MP photos while normal mode enables you utilize the full 13MP. To be honest the AI function doesn’t work as well as it does in Huawei’s flagships and is best left off. I found that it merely boosts the saturation a little.
Apart from the usual Aperture, Portrait and Night mode you also have an AR mode which enables some background effects and some face masks. You can add sticks to your photos. There’s also an HDR mode. The usual Panorama and Time Lapse modes are featured. Want to do some Light Painting? It’s here as well.
The camera was set at 8MP in order to get an aspect ratio of 18.7:9. I found that images taken indoors appeared washed out and smudgy.
Give the camera enough light by taking it outdoors and it will be able to produce some decent images that are sharp and vibrant.
I also set the camera to utilize the full 13MP at an aspect ratio of 4:3 and images taken indoor appeared less smudgy and were slightly vibrant. If you going to be taking images indoor then I would advise you set the camera to utilize the 13MP option.
The Night Mode creates some usable images but nothing too spectacular.
Verdict
Huawei almost has a perfect mid-range phone here, unfortunately it feels a bit cheap with the plastic body, it would have been better if they had gone with a glass and metal sandwich, I guess they wanted it look expensive but forgot about what the customer will be touching.
The device excels in everyday task, the phone never slows down and never gets too hot. It can handle the occasional gaming but play too long and you will feel the heat.
The camera quality is not too bad if you give it enough light, therefore I would mainly take photos outdoor than indoor.
If I was in market with a budget of R6000 would I get this phone? Yes and No. I would say yes if was looking at taking out a contract because currently there is nothing that’s available in the South African market that has same specs. But if I was looking at getting a prepaid phone I would rather get the Honor 8x – it’s too hard to overlook with its glass and metal sandwich build and a slightly better camera.
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