Are the two Leica lenses of the new P9 phone really boastworthy? My colleague Andrew Hoyle thought so when he tested the phone in London for CNET's full P9 review. (He should know; he takes excellent photos.) But I'm still on the fence about how well the P9 captured my recent 19-day trip in Asia, where I met with companies and documented the interesting tech I interacted with day to day.
For example, none of the pictures I took at the elephant park came out in focus (before my hands got too muddy and occupied with elephants to hold a phone), and I got a lot of stray photos from the P9's shutter going off when I didn't want it to, so I had to delete a bunch of unwanted photos of things like the ground or half my blurry chin.
Click to read more of Jessica's tech travels in Asia!
Luckily, the P9 also turned out some great shots of a gilded temple in Thailand and flowers in Singapore's famous cloud forest (yes, I do really photograph plant life for fun), which will make it into my master album from the trip. Check them out in my travelogue slideshow above!
I don't want to be unfairly hard on the P9 here; not even the iPhone 6S and Samsung Galaxy S7 I also had on me hit home runs, though they felt more consistent. The same goes with the advanced DSLR strapped to my shoulder, a camera with a much larger lens and optical zoom.
Still, these are once-in-a-lifetime memories I'm documenting, not photos of an egg scramble and a biscuit, so I don't take them lightly.
I'm glad that I had the P9 on hand during my trip, but I'm also glad it wasn't the only camera around.