Pat Pilcher
Here’s a toughie. If you were a smartphone maker, what would you put into your latest device so it stood out from the crowd?
Last year, Huawei got it right with the P9. Its clever dual-camera setup saw it cement its No 3 position in the smartphone market. This time they’re knocking on Apple’s door and eyeing up Samsung’s market share with the Mate 9 Pro.
Huawei has long been perceived in New Zealand as a budget brand. Making the leap into the premium space is the result of launching well-designed hardware with excellent features that offer decent bang-per-buck value.
With its latest phone, the Mate 9 Pro, Huawei is hoping lightning will strike twice.
The Mate 9 pro is a gorgeous smartphone. This time, however, it bucks the budget trend and commands a $1399 price. Unsurprisingly, the big question becomes this – does the Mate 9 Pro have what it takes to sell despite its higher price?
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Look and feel
The Mate 9 Pro is the unbranded version of the Porsche Design Mate 9. When viewed front on, it resembles Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge. Like the S7 Edge, it has a curved screen plus a lozengeshaped home button/fingerprint sensor. Its curved screen gives it more usable screen real-estate than other similar-sized smartphones. This also allows Huawei to cram a 5.5-inch QHD AMOLED screen into a chassis smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus.
My review unit sported a silver finished glass front with a grippy alloy back. This should make involuntary drop tests much less likely. Huawei also earns brownie points for bundling a case with the Mate 9 Pro. It is something other handset makers could learn from.
The similarities between the Mate 9 Pro and Samsung’s S7 end abruptly when you spin it around. Unlike the S7, it sports a twin camera setup.
Under the hood
The Mate 9 Pro is powered by the Kirin 960, a CPU developed in- house by Huawei. It’s an 8-core beast that crunches a crazy amount of data. It’s also energy efficient. This is thanks to a little/ big 8-core configuration that see’s four CPU cores clocked at 2.4GHz. These are only used for demanding tasks such as games and multimedia. Its other four cores run at a more battery-friendly 1.8GHz for less demanding day-today tasks.
Huawei is aiming for feature parity with the iPhone 7 Plus. The Mate 9 Pro I reviewed comes with 6GB of Ram plus 128GB of storage. It doesn’t support MicroSD cards.
As with the P9, the Mate 9 Pro uses a dual camera co-designed by Huawei and Leica. There’s a 20MP mono sensor that only captures black and white images. Its lack of colour filter means it can capture more light and get better contrast levels. The other camera has a colour filter and a 12MP sensor. Its role is to colour in images captured with the mono sensor. Both cameras have a f/2.2 aperture and 27mm focal length plus optical image stabilisation.
In use, the Mate 9 Pro captures photos that are on par with a highend point and shoot camera. Its app also has a manual mode that DSLR users will appreciate.
One of the key specs of any smartphone is battery life. The Mate 9 Pro sports a non-removable Li-Po 4000mAh battery. It also comes with one of the quickest fast charge systems I’ve used to date. The Mate 9 Pro will last a full day and a-half with typical use and charges in a few hours. With modest use, two days battery life is typical.
Software
The Mate 9 Pro uses Huawei’s EMUI 5.0 launcher atop of Android 7. The EMUI interface feels a lot like a mash-up between Android and iOS. Large clear icons make navigation a joy. Unlike earlier EMUI versions, there is now an optional app drawer. This should make EMUI 5.0 ideal for transitioning to Android from iOS.