What's good
- 2 day battery life
- Good screen with vibrant colors and decent detail
- Good camera
- Premium build quality
What's bad
- Unwieldy size
- Impossible to use one-handed
- Some slowdown during intense tasks
Phablets might be the new standard in terms of smartphones, but Huawei takes it a step further with their P8 Max. Measuring in at 7.2 inches tall by 3.7 inches wide, the Max portion of the name is no misnomer. In fact, it is only 0.6 inches smaller than the Nexus 7 tablet. As expected, experts had a difficult time using it one-handed as their thumbs could not stretch across the width of the phone. Although unwieldy, they praise the overall build quality of the phone with Trusted Review stating, "…the Huawei is a brilliantly built product." Like the P8, the Max is made almost entirely of aluminum besides a strip of plastic on the back and Gorilla Glass 4 protecting the front.
Taking up 83 percent of the phone is the 6.8-inch, Full HD (1080 x 1920 pixels) display. Critics expected the phone to be blocky and grainy, but instead found it to have vibrant colors, good contrast and fairly good detail. With that said, they do think it could have benefited from a quad HD display for additional sharpness. Besides overall quality, they had no problems with overall brightness or viewing angles.
On the hardware side, the Max comes with an octo-core processor – four 1.5GHz cores for basic functionality and four 2.0GHz (or 2.2GHz for the 64GB model) for more intense tasks – and 3GB of RAM. While fast enough when navigating the home screen, reviewers ran into some slow down when launching multiple apps and playing graphics intensive games. The biggest draw of the P8 Max, besides the screen, is its 4,360mAh battery. When put through the ringer, reviewers were able to get two days of normal usage with a single charge. Of course, the heavier the use the faster the battery drains, but they were still able to get over a day heavy use.
The P8 Max has the same 13MP RGBW snapper as the P8. It comes with the same features as well including dual-color dual-LED flash and optical image stabilization. Thanks to these features, experts were able to take good quality images in almost every lighting situation though they add the photos weren't especially "ground-breaking." Still, the only complaint they had was the slow shutter speed.
While the P8 Max is a solid phone, reviewers have a hard time recommending it over the P8 due to its large size. Digital Trends states, "It's a whopping slab of a phone, and really too big for everyday use…That said, the battery life and comparatively compact size makes it tempting – but only if you've got the hands and the pockets to handle it." PC Advisor adds, "Although it's thin, light, compact and attractive, we're not convinced anyone wants a 6.8in phone."
Prices (Where to Buy)
Common Questions
Huawei backs up the P8max with a 1 Year parts & labour warranty.
If your P8max has problems and is still within its warranty period, you could contact Huawei support or the retailer you purchased the phone from. You'll find Huawei's contact information here. If your phone is off warranty and needs repair for a physical problem such as a broken screen or bad battery, you should visit an authorized service centre or a local phone repair shop. You can also connect with others in The Informr Community Forum to find and share answers to questions.
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