Huawei has today unveiled its latest handset as the company looks to increase its global smartphone influence outside of its homeland China.

Following a number of successful launches, Huawei has unveiled the P9 and P9 Plus, the latest in a line of slim yet powerful Android smartphones housed in a premium metal body. 

The highlight of the new flagship smartphones are the twin cameras on the rear, the fruits of a recently-announced union with premium optics brand Leica. The company has previous dabbled with dual cameras on its Honor sub-brand, appearing on the Honor 6 Plus.

The Huawei P9 features a 5.2-inch Full HD display for 423ppi and 96 per cent colour saturation and 500 nits. All that is surrounded by a slim 1.7mm bezel. The company continues to avoid the use of Quad HD panels appearing on recent Samsung and LG devices.

In both models you can expect at least 32GB of storage, microSD, a fingerprint scanner on the rear, plus a USB-C port. Both also feature two levels of sensitivity on the touchscreen plus and IR blaster.

The P9 has a 3,000mAh battery while the P9 Plus has a 3,400mAh unit - the P9 Plus should hit 70 per cent capacity after charging for one hour, claims Huawei.

There is a sandblast finish and the P9 will be available in white, grey, silver, prestige gold, haze gold and rose gold. The P9 Plus will come in white, gold, grey and rose gold.

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The Huawei P9 Plus features a 5.5-inch Full HD display also with 96 per cent colour saturation and 500 nits brightness. This has more RAM and a larger storage capacity option.

The cameras are dual 12-megapixel shooters with 27mm f/2.2 equivalent aspherical lenses that are slightly wider than the iPhone. One camera shoots in red, green and blue while the other captures images in black and white. Why? The two working in tandem should mean more light in your photos. Plus, the extra width of perspective from two cameras allows for greater depth of field to create a blurred background in shots. This, with software, should get as low as f/0.95 apparently.

The company uses its own silicon to power the device, with an octa-core Kirin 955 chipset and 3GB RAM in the P9 and 4GB in the P9 Plus. 

Launching on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the Huawei P9 will have the company's own EMUI 4.1 software layered over the top, bringing a wide range of customisations to the visual appearance of Android, as well as adding in a wide range of functionality.

It's in the software that Huawei has struggled previously, with the EMUI skin being a little over-the-top and lacking the slick refinement you now find in the likes of Samsung's TouchWiz or HTC Sense.

The Huawei P9 starts from £449 for 32GB, while the P9 Plus will retail from £549 for 64GB. Both should be available from 16 April.

READ: Huawei P9: Release date, specs and everything you need to know