Huawei's Mate 9 flagship smartphone.
Huawei has launched the Mate 9, a large-screened smartphone that looks to capitalise upon the removal of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from the market.
Sporting a 5.9 inch full HD LCD display, the Huawei Mate 9 is firmly in the phablet camp of smartphones, though lacks the pixel density of the screen found in the Google Pixel XL and the iPhone 7 Plus, though it will undercut them on price by coming it at $699.
The camera array offers optical image stabilisation and the ability to shoot 4K video. Sitting below the cameras is a small fingerprint scanner that can be found in a few of Huawei’s recent handsets.
Back around the front is an 8MP camera takes care of video call and selfie duties. Thin bezels around the display help trim girth off the phablet giving it a weight of 190g in dimensions of 156.9 x 78.9 x 7.9mm.
Under the hood is an eight-core Kirin 960 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of on-board storage that can be upgraded to 256GB courtesy of the Mate 9’s SD card slot. Speaking of which, that slot can double as a dual SIM slot to cut out the need to mess around with paper clips and hair pins when changing SIMs if you’re a regular traveler.
The battery comes in at 4000mAh, which is the same size as the Mate 8 but offers significantly more battery power than other phablets; crucially it has yet to be found to spontaneously combust, which sets it ahead of the Samsung’s foiled phablet.
Android 7.0 Nougat will come with the Mate 8, meaning it comes with an up-to-date operating system out of the box, rather than being forced to wait for Nougat to be pushed out beyond Google’s own phones.
We’ll reserve judgment on the Mate 9 until we have a unit in to review, but all signs so far point towards a solid flagship phablet to take on others in the market and offer Samsung customers disappointed by the recall and discontinuation of the Galaxy Note 7 with a viable alternative.
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