Last checked at 
By Paul Sandle
LONDON, April 6 (Reuters) - China's Huawei Technologies presented its latest flagship smartphone on Wednesday,featuring a dual-lens camera co-engineered with Germany's Leicathat it hopes will set it apart from all the other Androiddevices on the market.
The P9, Huawei's flagship device, is the first result of thetie-up between the world's third biggest smartphone maker andLeica Camera AG, a 102-year-old firm whose cameras have shotsome of the most famous images in the history of photography.
Huawei said consumers were increasingly focused on thephotographic capability of smartphones, and the company wantedto partner the best in the field.
"Leica is the leading, premium iconic brand in cameras,"Richard Yu, chief executive of Huawei Consumer Business Group,said at a launch event in London.
The dual-lens 12 megapixel camera on the rear of the deviceseparately captures monochrome and colour images, and combinesthem to create more detail, depth and brighter colours thanrival single lens cameras, he said.
Leica said the collaboration went far beyond just branding,with the two companies working together on lenses and imageprocessing technology.
"A lot of people would like to have our red dot and put iton their product," said Leica's Chief Executive Oliver Kaltner.
"This is not what we are. We are the centre of opticalexcellence worldwide, and we should take advantage of thatknowledge."
Photography dominated the event as professional snappersincluding Mary McCartney and David Guttenfelder from NationalGeographic took to the stage to show what the device could do.
There was little fanfare for other features, like a 5.2 inchdisplay and Android 6.0 operating system, that are largely inline with launches from rivals such as Samsung andXiaomi .
The P9 will be available in 29 countries from April 16,priced from 599 euros ($684), the company said.
Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, said Huawei'stechnology was "great" but the company needed to innovate inareas like software to become a trend setter.
"They need users to pick the brand or upgrade within thebrand from maybe a mid-tier, and the more they go into thepremium end, the more they have to stand out as an overallexperience," she said.
Huawei, which leads the pack of Chinese smartphone makers,however is confident the P9 will help it gain ground on marketleader in terms of volume Samsung and second-placedApple.
It became the first Chinese company to ship more than 100million smartphones, recording a 44 percent jump in devices to108 million last year.
"We have the chance to be number two within two to threeyears, with market share of over 20 percent," Yu said. "We havethe chance to be number one in less than five years."($1 = 0.8763 euros) (Editing by David Evans)
