5 Things you will love about Huawei Mate 9
December 07, 2016 • huawei • New Launch • News • Reviews
Mate 9 is a well-built handset that offers up much of what you'd expect from a high-end smartphone in the current age of slim profiles and glass/metal construction. The phone's chassis measures 7.9mm thick at the waist and sports a slight curve on the back to help it sit comfortably in the palm. It come with 5.9inches Display 1920 x 1080 IPS 373ppi, Processor 2.4GHz octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 960 and 4GB RAM. The Software is running on Android 7.0 (nougat), Emotion 5.0 UI, and Storage 64GB, expandable to 256GB
Let’s see the few things about this Huawei mate 9
- Impressive battery life
The Mate 9 unlike Qualcomm’s Quick Charge, MediaTek’s Pump Express+, or the USB-C standard Power Delivery, no one other than Huawei uses SuperCharge. In short, it is a proprietary technology that only Huawei knows about. In practice, this means that no other charger or cable will give you the benefits of SuperCharge except Huawei’s official accessories. Not even Google’s standards-compliant Pixel charger and cable. Everything other than Huawei’s charger and cable always maxes at 5V/2A.
- Camera
The Mate 9 has the second generation of Huawei’s dual camera, which like the P9 is branded as co-engineered with camera maker Leica. There is one 12-megapixel colour camera with optical image stabilisation and one 20-megapixel monochrome sensor, which is used to collect more light information for the colour camera to improve the amount of detail captured in the shots. The 8-megapixel selfie camera is good, most will like its balance of detail and soft focus for more flattering pictures. It struggled a bit in low-light conditions but no more than most others.
- Software EMUI 5
EMUI 5 still has the tight control over app power consumption, and the reminders that guide users through the identification and killing of apps that are using more than their fair share of power when the screen is off. Some may not like them, but they are useful when used properly at prolonging battery life without having to change you habits. The app twin feature is also worth using - it allows you to have two instances of apps that only allow one login, such as WhatsApp, Facebook and others. It essentially duplicates the app so you can hot swap between them.
- Fingerprint
Huawei, as some might say, pioneered the fingerprint sensor being on the back of a smartphone. Their fingerprint sensors have always been lightning fast and very, very accurate. And it’s no different here with the Huawei Mate 9. The big difference between the fingerprint sensors here on the Mate 9 and some other smartphones is the fact that the sensor is actually a bit smaller. Now Huawei didn’t tell us why the sensor was smaller, but it looks like this was done to make it uniform with the camera module above it. Now with the sensor being smaller, the sensor is still just as accurate as you would expect from a Huawei device. Unlocking the phone is nice and quick, and since it is running on Android 7.0, the fingerprint API is included. Meaning that you can use the fingerprint sensor to login to supported apps and authenticate purchases made in Google Play and Android Pay.
- Performance
Huawei decided to keep its processor eggs in its own basket. That means no Snapdragon 820. Not even a MediaTek. Instead, you’ve got the newest Kirin 960 from HiSilicon, the fabless semiconductor company wholly owned by Huawei. The Kirin isn’t exactly known, much less used, outside of Huawei’s devices, but Huawei should, perhaps, look into changing that, because its performance is surprisingly impressive. The Kirin 960 is an octa-core mobile processor with four Cortex-A73 cores running at 2.4 GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.8 GHz. This is paired with a Mali-G71 graphics core for pixel pushing.
Should you get the Huawei Mate 9?
If you prefer a larger device, then yes. There’s plenty to love about the Huawei Mate 9. The battery life and larger display definitely make this an attractive smartphone from Huawei. And the fact that it looks like Huawei is getting on board with quicker software updates, just gives users another reason why the Mate 9 should be their next smartphone.