Here are the best Huawei mobile phones that you can buy in 2017. From budget devices like the Honor 9 and Huawei P10 Lite 2017 up to the greatest premium flagship phones like the P10, packing best-in-class cameras and impressive specs, these are our favourite Huawei smartphones right now.
Chinese heavyweight Huawei is a serious challenger to Samsung and Apple when it comes to mobile tech, producing some truly excellent smartphones.
Huawei’s partnership with camera expert Leica means you can expect some brilliant mobile optics on its high-end phones, including dual-lens cameras that are packed with brilliant features and capture incredible detail. Meanwhile Huawei’s ‘Honor’ branded devices offer up great specs and features at a pleasingly affordable price point.
Here’s our pick of the very best Huawei phones you can buy right now in 2017, plus a sneak peek at any upcoming handsets.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei P10 Plus
| Price: | £629 |
| Release Date: | April 2017 |
| Our Review: | Huawei P10 Plus review |
Huawei’s most premium phone offering right now is the P10 Plus, a beast of a blower packing some seriously strong specs.
For a start, this 5.5-inch phone towers over the standard 5.1-inch P10, while still packing the same awesome variety of designs. That means you can get the precision-cut textured model, ceramic style version and all of those vibrant colour choices, including the gorgeous green effort.
The P10 Plus also boasts updated specs, including more RAM, an improved Summilux camera and a super-sharp Quad HD screen. In other words, the P10 Plus a seriously strong flagship phone in every respect, even if it lacks the HDR support and waterproofing of rivals like the LG G6 and Galaxy S8.
Check out our P10 Plus vs P10 vs P10 Lite comparison review for more info on how these new Huawei phones stack up in terms of specs and features.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei P10
| Price: | £599 |
| Release Date: | April 2017 |
| Our Review: | Huawei P10 review |
The latest Huawei flagship phone is the full-priced Huawei P10, a solid 5.1-inch mobile that is pleasingly easy to handle compared with most other flagship devices.
With its curvy and compact design, the P10 is made for one-handed use. You get a strong selection of funky designs and colours to choose between, including the gorgeous new green model. And as you’d expect, performance is absolutely fantastic thanks to the Kirin 960 processor of Huawei’s own design.
That Full HD IPS screen is both colourful and pleasingly sharp, stretching to the very edges of the P10’s metal frame. And while battery life caps off at 24 hours, the fast-charging tech means you’re good to go again in no time at all.
Last of all, the new and improved dual-lens Leica camera is a beast. You can capture stunning shots in most conditions, with some lovely bokeh effects thanks to that secondary monochrome lens. And you can also shoot video in up to 4K resolution. Check out our in-depth P10 camera review for more info and samples.
Update: We’ve spent five months with the Huawei P10 now; find out how it holds up over time in our in-depth P10 long-term review.
Best Huawei phones: Honor 9
| Price: | £380 |
| Release Date: | July 2017 |
| Our Review: | Honor 9 review |
The Honor brand by Huawei continues to offer solid tech at a great-value price, with the release of the shiny Honor 9. In fact, take a look at this handset’s specs and you’d be forgiven for confusing it with the Huawei P10. Which makes this mobile’s asking price even more surprising. For while the P10 will still set you back over £550 SIM-free in mid-2017, the Honor 9 is priced at just £380.
In fact, the Honor 9 is considerably cheaper than its biggest rival right now, the OnePlus 5- which again offers premium specs for less cash than other flagship handsets.
The Honor 9 is undeniably a great-value handset and a strong all-round experience. Sure, you don’t get any jazzy HDR visuals or a ridiculously sharp Quad HD screen – and most users won’t even notice. They’ll be too content with the slick software, lovable design, smooth performance and dependable battery life. With the exception of a couple of camera flaws and that fragile backing, we really can’t find much to criticise here.
Best Huawei phones: Honor 8
| Price: | £369 |
| Release Date: | September 2016 |
| Our Review: | Honor 8 review |
Back in 2014, Huawei launched its new Honor brand which was designed to offer decently-specced smartphones for a refreshingly budget price tag. One of the biggest launches since inception is the wonderful Honor 8, which offers up an attractive design, solid performance and plenty of sweet features like a fingerprint sensor for under £300.
The glossy frame is attractive and surprisingly hardy, putting up with a fair bit of bumping and scratching. We really love the 5.2-inch Full HD display, which pumps out punchy colours and sharp visuals, with a strong maximum brightness. And like Huawei’s P9 flagship, the Honor 8 comes packing a solid dual-lens camera on rear end.
Considering the low price, the Honor 8 is a serious rival to the likes of the OnePlus 3 and other mid-range marvels.
Best Huawei phones: Honor 8 Pro
| Price: | £475 |
| Release Date: | April 2017 |
| Our Review: | Honor 8 Pro review |
The flagship Honor phone right now is the Honor 8 Pro. This is the most expensive handset under the Honor brand, but the 8 Pro still offers strong value for money. After all, with the exception of the design and the camera tech, this is pretty much a cheaper version of the Huawei P10 Plus – a beefy handset boasting a Quad HD screen, premium performance and even better battery life for around £150 less.
Unlike the relatively compact Honor 8, the Pro model is a meaty 5.7-inch smartphone. It’s certainly one for media lovers, while Honor also caters to anyone interested in VR. The Honor 8 Pro’s box actually converts into a Google Cardboard-style set of virtual reality glasses, to enjoy VR movies and games with.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei P9
| Price: | £400 |
| Release Date: | April 2016 |
| Our Review: | Huawei P9 review |
Huawei’s big 2016 flagship phone is still one of its best handsets to date, boasting premium specs and an excellent camera experience. These days you can pick it up for around £400 as well, so it’s not too pricey for a top-of-the-range mobile.
The Huawei P9 rocks a gorgeous metallic frame which is impressively thin and light, considering how much it packs in. The colourful 5.2-inch Full HD screen is perfectly crisp and customisable like the P10’s, while you also get seriously long battery life and solid performance.
But the real star of the show here is that dual-lens rear camera, produced in collaboration with optics firm Leica. Those two lenses work together to produce supremely sharp, detailed photos, complete with some very sexy bokeh.
If your demands are high, the Huawei P9 should hopefully meet them.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei P9 Plus
| Price: | £579 |
| Release Date: | August 2016 |
| Our Review: | Huawei P9 Plus review |
If 5.2-inches seems rather paltry, check out Huawei’s P9 Plus instead. This 5.5-inch handset is a bigger version of the Huawei P9, packing most of the same features. Performance is once again silky smooth, battery life is seriously strong and you get the same dual-lens Leica camera of the Huawei P9.
If you want to see what the difference is between the Huawei P9 and the Huawei P9 Plus, as well as the dinkier cut-price Huawei P9 Lite, check out our full Huawei P9 comparison guide.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei Mate 9
| Price: | £649 |
| Release Date: | November 2016 |
| Our Review: | Huawei Mate 9 review |
Huawei’s Mate handsets are premium phablet-sized phones built for those who like massive mobile screens. The latest version is the highly desirable Huawei Mate 9, launched at the end of 2016, and we gave it a worthy four and a half stars in our full review.
The Mate 9 boasts a lot of firsts. It was the first phone to come packing Huawei’s new Kirin 960 processor, for instance, which is built for top-end performance. It was also the first phone packing the fresh new EMUI 5.0 launcher, and Huawei’s second-generation dual-lens Leica camera. What a camera too.
Factor in smooth performance and impressive battery life and the Mate 9 offers a pricey but premium smartphone experience that’s hard to fault – as long as you don’t mind a bulky blower.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei Mate 8
| Price: | £429 |
| Release Date: | January 2016 |
| Our Review: | Huawei Mate 8 review |
Huawei’s mighty 6-inch Mate 8 was the predecessor to the excellent Mate 9, offering media fans a real treat at a now affordable price.
Although the Mate 8’s rather enormous screen is only Full HD rather than Quad HD, visuals are still crisp as well as bright and you get accurate colour reproduction too. Usefully, you can plug in a microSD memory card to expand that storage space, for carrying around a massive media collection.
The Huawei Mate 8 isn’t just about kicking back with movies on the move, however. Huawei’s Emotion UI is rammed with interesting features and you get a capable 16-megapixel rear camera for snapping your surroundings. Performance and battery life are also excellent, making this a solid all-round smartphone if you’re after a bigger screen.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei P10 Lite
| Price: | £299 |
| Release Date: | May 2017 |
| Our Review: | Huawei P10 Lite review |
This mid-range phone is almost half the price of the original Huawei P10 handset, yet still offers the same slick and feature-packed Emotion UI as well as some pretty respectable specs, for a much better asking price. That said, the P10 Lite also changes up Huawei’s aesthetics and scales back to a single lens camera, compared with the flagship’s dual-lens snapper.
The P10 Lite is well built, offers a great user experience and performs well for everyday use. Its camera is reliable although not quite as strong as some rivals. In fact, that £299 price tag places this handset within firing range of the excellent Moto G5 Plus; a bigger, bulkier phone for sure, but one that can take on and even surpass the P10 Lite in some areas, for less.
Best Huawei phones: Huawei P8 Lite 2017
| Price: | £185 |
| Release Date: | February 2017 |
| Our Review: | Huawei P8 Lite 2017 review |
Huawei’s first affordable phone of the year is a revamped version of the old P8 Lite, and for just £185 in the UK it’s a seriously strong rival to similar budget blowers.
This 5.2-inch phone is even cheaper than the rather good Honor 6X, yet still crams in some solid specs. You get a Full HD screen, the latest version of Android and loads of bonus Huawei features, giving impressive value for money.
Huawei’s crafted a solid user experience in almost every area, wrapped in some slick hardware. For this price, what more could you ask for?
Best Huawei phones: Nexus 6P
| Price: | £389 |
| Release Date: | September 2015 |
| Our Review: | Nexus 6P review |
Although it’s plastered with Google branding, the Nexus 6P was actually crafted by Huawei and it’s our favourite Huawei phone of 2015.
The larger of Google’s new Nexus phones, the Nexus 6P sports your typical all-metal premium design, complete with a gorgeous camera bar and fingerprint sensor around the back. It’s a bit of a handful though thanks to the spacious 5.7-inch screen, of course, but still not as big as the Huawei Mate 8.
The Quad HD display is stunning, producing incredibly detailed visuals that will please media fans and everyone else who gazes upon its beauty. Sadly there’s no microSD support, so you’ll have to look to other means of adding extra storage.
As with most Huawei phones, the 12.3-megapixel rear camera is a delight. You can shoot up to 4K resolution videos and your snaps will look sharp in almost any conditions.