From China to CES to now Malaysia, the Malaysian Huawei team has confirmed that we’ll be getting the much-anticipated Mate 8 on our shores come the 8th of March.
The largest smartphone in the Chinese manufacturer’s repertoire already has us getting goosebumps because it boasts one of the first current-gen chipsets of 2016 – all eight cores of HiSilicon Kirin goodness.
In terms of specifications, Huawei has always been on the up and up and we’re not disappointed with its spec sheet. First in line is the 6-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS-NEO panel that’s protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4. The majority might argue that having a screen that big should warrant a Quad HD display (2560 x 1440) but for the most part, the Mate 8’s 368ppi will suffice.
On the processing side of things, you’re getting an all-star in the form of the Octa-core Kirin 950 chipset that’s clocked to 2.3GHz and accompanied by the Mali-T880 MP4 GPU. For RAM, it’ll come in two options 3GB and 4GB while internal storage will also vary – 32GB and 64GB.
The determining factor will be the colour option you choose as they’ll represent different RAM and internal storage capacities. They will come in Champagne Gold, Space Grey, Mocha Brown and Moonlight Silver.
Moving to its camera, there’s a 16-megapixel rear shutter complete with OIS, and phase detection autofocus while the front will don an 8-megapixel sensor. There isn’t much to say about the camera yet as we’ve yet to test it but we’re hoping that it’ll perform similarly to the other device made by them: Nexus 6P – you can check out some camera samples here.
Taking a look at its rear, you’ll again find a super-quick Huawei fingerprint sensor sitting just under the rear camera module. Biometric security is something that the Chinese manufacturer has locked down to almost perfection.
Powering all this is the fairly large 4,000mAh non-removable battery that’s encased in a metal unibody.
Although it is still smaller than what was on its predecessor, we’re expecting its battery life to be a lot better thanks to Android Marshmallow and a more efficient processor. Possibly lasting even two days.
Despite being a phablet by definition, the smartphone weighs only 185grams which is pretty light in our books. Out of the box, you’ll get Emotion UI or 4.0 that’s overlaid on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow – the skin that always leaves you without an app drawer like other Chinese-based user interfaces. The Mate 8 supports Dual-SIM 4G LTE, NFC and has a micro SD slot as well for additional storage.
Unfortunately, there’s no talk yet about how much the Mate 8 go for. Though, in the scenario that our currency exchange rates don’t fluctuate any further, it might be competitively priced against the Galaxy Note5.
