Huawei’s P9 has been the flagship phone defining the company’s smartphone lineup with its dual camera setup. It has performed well and has gotten pretty decent reviews – a well designed phone sporting Leica’s lens. Well it ain’t no more the company’s top of the line phone, Huawei has unveiled a new phone to take a higher position than the P9 and its calling it – The Mate 9.
Mate 9 is the company’s best offering with its beefed up specs. The phone sports a 5.9 inch full-HD display, 4000mAh battery, rear dual camera setup, 4 gigabytes of RAM, and Huawei’s own Kirin 960 an octa-core processor which supports the Vulkan API (for graphics), the company claims that it’s the fastest chip they have ever designed. Also the obvious worth mentioning is the fingerprint sensor being present and a USB Type-C port.
Huawei is targeting customers who want the most of their phones. In terms of looks, the device flaunts a metal unibody design which looks decent but is boring. Almost every phone nowadays looks alike with a metal enclosure and antennas placed on top and bottom (usually the use of antenna lines) with the trend which began with Apple’s iPhone 6.
The software on the device is simple and clean compared to the company’s older offerings. Huawei’s EMUI skin is based on Android 7.0 which now offers stock Android fans an option to use app drawer in place of iOS styled app placement. Also it radiates more blues and white and comes with reduced menu clutter.
Apart from the looks, the software has been tweaked to improve performance as you start using the phone. The magic behind it is the use of a machine learning system which understands how you use your phone and accordingly allocates processing power making it a much more pleasant experience. This is opposite with other Android phones which tend to bog down as you start using. The company says that it has tested this system and has seen around 8 percent increase during 10,000 hours of simulated use.
At the back there are two Leica camera systems, a 20 megapixel monochrome sensor which does the job of capturing more information and a 12 megapixel RGB sensor with optical image stabilisation. Both sensors work together to capture sharp images with high dynamic range while also improving low-light imaging. On the front, there is a regular 8 megapixel camera – nothing notable about it.
The Mate 9 comes at a time when the company is starting to make its presence seen its regions outside of Asian countries. Huawei has been offering phones in the west and it’s already seeing success in some European countries, the reports say that the company’s phones account for nearly 20 percent of the smartphone sales. The next big expansion will be in the US, the company has already confirmed that it plans to offer Mate 9 in the US. It’s a premium phone, selling for €699 ($776).