For a company that would have prompted a “Who? Why?” response from the average consumer just a couple of years ago, Huawei has come a long way, and the networking giant earned a ton of praise for its Google-branded Nexus 6P last year. It’s only with the P9 that Huawei has come into its own to make a flagship phone that, courtesy its “co-engineered with Leica” tag, promises to reinvent smartphone photography. The question is, does it?

Now, the P9 isn’t the first smartphone with a dual rear camera setup, but it’s the first to be blessed by an engineering partnership with the hallowed Leica brand. You get two 12MP camera sensors sitting side by side, one with a normal RGB (red green blue) sensor for colour and the other with a monochrome sensor which captures only how much light is coming in, without colour information.

Smart software combines the two images into a single colour image, but courtesy the black and white sensor, you get a whole lot more detail in the photos. Low-light photography benefits as well, and the camera captures oodles of detail even in dimly lit situations. Having two sensors also allows the P9 to capture depth information for those gorgeous blurred out backgrounds, plus you can refocus selectively after the shot is taken. Take the time to master the shooting app and the P9 rewards you with great photos (loved the monochrome mode!), but even so, the camera lacks optical image stabilisation and 4K video shooting and there’s noticeable graininess in the images when you zoom in, which detracts from the overall experience.

As for the rest, the P9 is a sorted device. All metal unibody with a 5.2-inch display form factor means it’s great in the hand, and a capable octa-core Kirin 955 chip with 3GB of memory and 32GB of storage (expandable to 256GB) keeps performance snappy. Now, while I had no complaints in everyday use, it just isn’t quite the scorcher performance-wise when compared to the other 2016 flagships, which calls into question the premium pricing. I mean, sure it takes great photos, but you get a lot more bang for your buck if you look up or down a notch, price-wise. 
♦ Rating: 8/10
♦ Price: Rs 39,999
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-HuaweiP9

Fine print

Ever wondered aloud “why does printer ink cost so much?” That’s because it is! Fun fact: printer ink is about one of the most expensive liquids you can buy, costing more per ml than fine champagne or pricey perfumes! Fortunately, you could well be seeing the end of expensive cartridge replacements, with ink tank printers becoming more common. Working with tanks of ink connected directly to the printer heads, printers like the Epson L655 are good for a claimed estimate of 6,000 black and 6,500 colour prints, so one 70ml refill should be good for about two years of home-office use.

Getting started with the L655 is a bit of a complex process, and you need to be extra careful when filling the ink tanks as it can get very messy. Fortunately, you won’t be performing this mundane activity too often but be aware that it isn’t as plug and play as most regular cartridge-based systems.

For the money, you get a capable set of features — wireless (and wired) connectivity, scan/fax and copy with automatic document feeder for hands-free copying, and the L655 even has the duplex (two-sided) printing that I wished percolated down to the entry-level ink tank printers as well. At a maximum 33 and 20 pages per minute for black/colour pages, the printer is plenty fast and text is razor sharp and photos vibrant. My only complaint, if any, was the tiny 2.2-inch monochrome LCD display — a bigger, sharper, possibly touchscreen, display would have been much more usable. At Rs 24,999, the L655 isn’t cheap, but the price is offset by the long-run affordability of the ink tank approach.
♦ Rating: 8/10
♦ Price: Rs 24,999
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-EpsonL655

See through sensor

Ever hammered a nail into the wall only to hit a pipe or a wire? The Walabot DIY will give your smartphone the ability to look through walls, cement and plaster using the device’s 3D imaging sensor, so you can spot pipes, wires and even rodent nests up to 4-in deep. Such a great tool for weekend DIY projects.
♦ Price: $299
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-Walabot

The 3D effect

With virtual reality taking off, the Weeview Eye-Plug 3D is the perfect little device to capture VR-ready pictures and video. Plug the flash drive-sized camera into any Android phone with the micro USB connector, and the 2MP camera will start recording 3D videos viewable with Google Cardboard or other VR viewers. When taking pictures, the camera will instead work like a depth sensor, helping prevent that boring flat look a lot of smartphone pictures tend to sport.
♦ Price: $44.99
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-Weeview

technocool@kanwar.net; follow me on twitter @2shar