Huawei has a new Mate for you
Huawei’s flagship Mate 9 has exceptional battery life
Despite being the world’s third-biggest phone maker, Huawei have made a slow entrance to the Irish market. A year ago, most of us had difficulty pronouncing their name correctly, but things have moved on for the Chinese maker. With newly-launched phones and watches, they’ve entered mainstream and their flagship phone, the Mate 9 is aimed squarely at buyers at the top-end of market.
Unboxing the Mate 9 reveals the huge 5.9inch screen. That’s a screen even bigger than an iPhone 7 Plus, but Huawei have managed to fit this in to a metal body that feels light and slim. It weighs in at 190 grammes and is less than 8mm thick. There are some subtle curves to the phone, which aren’t just for aesthetics as they make the phone more manageable to hold and use, which can be a challenge with these phablet-sized devices.
In the box, there’s a useful clip-on translucent plastic case, which has a little window in it, letting you easily access the built-in fingerprint reader.
Huawei have made setting the phone up straightforward and there are shortcuts for transferring your data over from another phone. Enrolling my fingerprint was quick and is the fastest way to unlock your phone throughout the day.
Phone processor specifications are hard to interpret on paper and watching a video, playing a game and using the phone are the best yardstick. Doing all of that with the Mate 9 reveals that it has a blistering chipset. It runs Huawei’s Kirin 960 and it is the most responsive Android phone I’ve used.
There were no lags on app-switching or when opening some test files. The Kirin chipset helps, as does the 64GB memory which is expandable with a memory card, right up to 256GB.
The big screen lights up brightly and is a great size for watching movies on. Watching a three-minute YouTube video on a smaller phone is fine but you do need a decent-sized screen like this to enjoy a film as you travel. The six-inch screen is full HD and can display over sixteen million colours.
Dual cameras are becoming the norm on these big premium phones and Mate 9 has one of these dual systems. It’ll record video in 4K and the front camera for video calls and selfies has a good 8MP.
Despite it’s slim size, Huawei have packed in a hugely powerful battery at 4,000mAh.
I was a little surprised Huawei didn’t go for the higher-quality Ultra HD screen and the front camera could be upgraded with a Leica collaboration like the brilliant rear camera. Overall though this is a really impressive device. It’s outstanding battery life and whizzing processor make it a great choice for personal use but almost a must have for business users.
The big screen lights up brightly and is a great size for watching movies. The six-inch screen is full HD