I am going to compare these two phones

The latest iPhone 7

and the HUAWEI P9 Plus

Why comparing these two?

because I have these two only (kidding)

What I am going to do is

Compare the phones in 2016

so I won't do a comparison of the flagships from 2015

Hopefully I will have more comparison videos in 2016

a lot of my friends just ask

which one is better

iPhone 7 or P9 Plus

because there is a LEICA due camera

on the P9 and P9 plus

actually, not made by LEICA, but HUAWEI co-operate with LEICA

However, we see a really good image quality and filters

in this phone, people even compare it with a real LEICA camera

Although the effects are mostly made by software

But people really love it

and with the brand LEICA on a phone. It just cool.

Let's look at the phone

The P9 Plus just looks sleek, and solid

nothing special but feel good

This is the larger PLUS version

which features a 5.5 inch AMOLED screen

and the normal P9 features a 5 inch screen

We have the finger print sensor on the P9 Plus

which also found on the iPhone 7

but it located on the front

iPhone 7 has a 12MP OIS camera

and a dual camera setup for the iPhone 7 Plus

Someone may say it is not fair to compare the single camera iPhone 7 with

the dual camera on P9 Plus

But the dual camera on the iPhone 7 plus will not work together

So it doesn't matter

iPhone 7 Plus features a camera for wider image and one tele camera which is a x2 tele-lens

The dual camera on P9 Plus work at the same time

The image quality will degrade if you block one of the camera

The UI of both the phone are simular

Most of the Chinese phone maker try to make the UI

looks like and feel like iOS

That is lack of the android app drawer

All App icons are on the phone desktop

You can organize the app by grouping them into folders

Both phones run snappy and smooth

But they have their own implementation

P9 Plus features "Force Touch"

and iPhone features "3D Touch"

They are working in a similar way

P9 Plus just acting like a iPhone

But they provide a slightly different functionalities.

We have the selfie and movie on both phones

But black and white photo and M mode for P9 Plus

and slow-mo for iPhone

since they are selling difference stuff

HUAWEI selling their LEICA dual camera

lot's of filter, M mode and LEICA feel photo

Apple selling the OIS camera with overall good and solid experience

especially in the video mode

Someone ask is the "Force touch" real?

and the answer is "YES, It's real"

You must apple extra force to press on the screen

and there is an extra function on the P9 Plus

You can choose to hidden the virtual key.

There are 3 dots left at the bottom edge of the screen

Apply extra force on the dot to press the virtual key

However, the 3D Touch on the iPhone is

far better in some case

There are tones of Apps that support 3D touch

For example, the YouTube App support the 3D Touch special menu

and Google app

and facebook App

skype

although I seldom use this function

But every app seems supporting it

even local App support "3D Touch"

But it is very difficult to find an App which support

the "Force Touch"

Only some, but not all of the system App support it.

Message app supported

Google play... not supported

and other App, for example

Google photo

The system music app

movie

almost most App are not supporting the Force Touch

How about the YouTube App?

no luck

all not supported

But in the default photo album

We have Force Touch supported

For example, I have a photo

when I press on it harder

I've got a magnifier over the picture

the harder I press

The larger it magnify

It just fun

In terms of performance

iPhone 7 is

super fast and powerful

It is even faster then a MacBook Air

and faster then the iPad Pro

such performance enable something that is impossible in the past

For example, face detection right over the phone

In the past, we need a Mac computer to do all the

face detection

and then sync back to the iPhone

and it takes the computer hours to finish such process

now all is done right over the iPhone 7

and Because of the high performance,

The software stabilization on the video is even better

or during the 4K video recording

lots of processing power are needed

or it will be over heated just like the Android phones

In other words, there is no time limit for 4K video

You can take 4K video until you are running out of space

Most Android phones in the past has a 5 mins limit

and some have no limit still get overheated over time

and force you to stop recording

For the P9 Plus

The CPU is not the fastest in 2016

It is the fastest in 2015, much better than the S810 soc

But slower than the S820 in 2016

The performance is between S810 and S820

For the video in P9 Plus

The P9 Plus does not support 4K recording at all

The best possible is 1080p @ 60fps

It just disappointing

and because there is no OIS for the camera

all we have on the P9 Plus

is software stabilization or EIS

which require a lot of processing power

It is clear that the results are not as good as the stabilization found on the iPhone

The stabilization will be better if the performance can be improve

For the App availability, both iOS and Android are popular system

You can find most app from both system

most app support both system

iOS used to have better quality App

For the user interface (UI), iPhone looks better

and the UI from HUAWEI just looks not as good

They just want to improve something that is already

very good

and end up make it worse

Someone just hate the HUAWEI UI

But you can always install third party launcher

For example, you can install the Google launcher

to have a pure Google look interface

So, it is not a problem at all

Let's talk about the camera

Let's compare the camera from both phones

Most people care about the camera since

most people upload photos to social networks

everyday, every moment

or even taking video

I will go through the UI and the function

Starting from the basics

look at the iPhone 7

It just looks the same as the early iPhones

We can swipe through different modes

Panorama mode

Square, just like what we have in IG

Normal photo mode

video recording mode

Slow-mo

and timelasp

Let's look at the Photo mode

There are filters to choose from

nine filters here

We have the timer for selfie

10s or 3s to choose

and there is live photo mode

that is... You take a photo and the iPhone will take a short animation

and here we have the HDR mode

That is High Dynamic Range photo

and the flash light

That is a very simple interface

and for the video mode

There is almost no extra function

What you can do is tap on the object

Let iPhone to focus the object

and you can change the exposure if you want

nothing else

The iPhone camera just super simple

For the P9 Plus camera

The selling point is LEICA

It supposed to have lots of funs and filters

and some PRO features are expected

Let's look at the UI

First of all

We can see the button to switch between photo and video mode

tap once to activate video mode

tap again and back to photo mode

on the left

a button to switch between selfie and front camera

and we have some filters here, just like iPhone did

They just looks almost identical

9 filters total

and we have the standard color mode

and two modes for more saturated photos

Just like what people did on IG

The color just looks very good

It is fun to use such color effects with the filters

LOMO or LEICA like feeling

only FEELs like, they are not real effect

and we have a depth of view mode

iPhone will got this function at the end of 2016

with iOS 10.1

However, HUAWEI users having it 2 years ago

Let's have a look at the depth of view mode

it means

Let's take an object here

We can set up the aperture

to have a sharp object and blurry background

For example, I just choose F/4

take a photo

after that, we go back to the photo we just take

We can see a blurry background

We can tap on the button here

We can now choose where is the focus point

For example, now I am focusing the object on the front

I can choose to focus on the camera lens

The camera lens becomes sharper

now I switch back to the front

How about focus on the far back?

You can see the toy rabbit became sharper

We can take the photos first,

Then decide the focus point and the aperture

Some may said this is not new

every camera can do this

but actually, to do this with only one camera. at least 3 photos are taken.

It's not work if the object is moving

But for phones with dual camera setup

It takes one shot to have 2 images and stereo information

Which let the phone to recreate depth information

apart from the focusing point

You can choose the aperture, from F/16 to F/0.95

The depth of view is not REAL but useful

especially in some extreme setting like F0.95

The image looks a bit strange

The effect is obvious

What do you think?

someone may like this effect

some may say it's too fake

But if we reduce the setting to F 4.0

We have a more natural looking photo

It just fun

and we can apply filters here

You can see the difference

This one even de-saturated the background

You can switch between the focusing point

see how fun is that

Then you can save and apply the effect

and you can swipe here to open the M mode

You can custom all your camera settings

We have white balance

Focus mode

We can choose single shot focus

Focus continuously

or even manual focusing

You have all the control

Change it back to auto focus

then we can set the exposure

0.3 , 0.7

It just add some control over the automatic mode