Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Battery life
- Comes with a 3000mAh battery
- Average battery life that means you'll get through a day before recharging
The Huawei P8 wasn't exactly known for stellar battery performance, so it has been interesting to see how the P9 can handle everyday life.
Huawei has upped the cell from the 2600mAh version in the P8 to a 3000mAh cell in the Huawei P9. That jump seems to have paid off well for the new phone, but it's still not amazing.
Huawei is claiming over a day battery life with the P9, but personally I never got much over a full day. I found myself getting to the end of the day regularly with a few drags of battery left and a few times I had to charge by the middle of the day as I saw it dropping much quicker than I'd hoped.
I do think "normal usage" may mean something a little different to Huawei as I wasn't always putting this phone through its paces and it was still struggling to make it to the end of the day.
I ran our video test on the Huawei P9, which consists of a 90-minute video running with the phone screen on full brightness and it got to the end with 85% battery left over. Compared to the competition, the Galaxy S7 with an Exynos chip lost 13% while the Galaxy S7 with a Snapdragon lost 16% and the iPhone 6S lost 30%.
In our web browsing test, which saw it run through a series of sites using a web script, the Huawei P9 recorded a similar battery drop relative to rivals, as you can see in the video below.
Watch below to see how the Huawei P9 performs in our battery test video up against the iPhone 7 Plus and Huawei Mate 9.
After two hours of constantly cycling websites at full screen brightness the P9 had dropped to 43% battery. That's slightly worse than the Samsung Galaxy S7, which dropped to 48% and a lot worse than the HTC 10, which still had 56% left over, but a better score than the Sony Xperia Z5, LG G5 or iPhone 6S, the latter of which had just 22% of its juice remaining.
When playing video or browsing websites then the Huawei P9 came out with a fairly impressive score, but it's still not great for everyday use.
While the cell itself is larger and offers more charge that way, Huawei hasn't taken steps to include any extra features to improve battery life.
Close competitor Oppo is making a big step by using VOOC fast charging technology within its phones but there's no sign of that here on the P9.
Fast charging means you can plug in your handset and get up to a suitable amount of juice much quicker. For phones with average battery life this can be a savior to power users.
There's also no wireless charging on the Huawei P9, a feature which is becoming a much bigger focus and is sure to grow in the coming years.
I feel Huawei should have included either wireless or fast charging to future proof its device. As wireless technology becomes more readily available in pubs, coffee shops and even household furniture it does feel like Huawei hasn't future proofed this phone by not including it.
If you're buying this on a two-year contract, you're likely to be disappointed when people in 2018 are buying new phones and placing them down on wireless charging spots while you're out for dinner.
But the real problem with the Huawei P9 battery is just that it's not stunning.
It's just kind of OK, and in a world where the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are offering great all day life it's a bit frustrating to get to the end of an average day and still have your phone drop out before you get into bed.
