Huawei Mate 9.
Huawei Mate 9. Image: Huawei.

The Huawei Mate 9 is the company’s latest flagship, offering high performance, battery life, and features to make a solid device all around. Unveiled in November and available since December, the Huawei Mate 9 is one of the best Android phones out there.

The Chinese giant was, in a way, blessed by Samsung’s misfortune upon launch of the explosive Galaxy Note 7.

The Mate 9 quickly took its place as the go-to option for Android fans looking for a big screen and form factor.

Huawei is a rising star globally now, and its devices are known for their quality build and affordable prices. Here we take a look at the Mate 9, arguably the company’s best phone yet.

Huawei Mate 9: Specs and design

The Huawei Mate 9 has some of the best specs an Android phone can pack nowadays, starting with its Hisilicon Kirin 960 octa-core processor and Mali G71-MP8 GPU.

The flagship’s chip reportedly outperforms the A10 unit on the iPhone 7 Plus and the Snapdragon 821 on the Pixel XL.

Huawei’s Mate 9 has a 5.9-inch Full HD LCD with 1080 x 1920 resolutions. It comes with 64 GB of storage expandable up to 256 GB via microSD and 4 GB of RAM.

Besides Black, Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Champagne Gold, Mocha Brown, and Ceramic White, Porsche partnered up with Huawei to create the Porsche Design Mate 9.

The Porsche Design Mate 9 comes only in Graphite Black, and it sports a 5.5-inch QHD curved display. The handset comes with 6 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage straight out of the box.

Huawei Mate 9: Features

Huawei Mate 9 Kirin processor.
Huawei Mate 9 Kirin processor. Image: Huawei.

The latest flagship from Huawei gets away with being the main competitor to the iPhone 7, packing a dual-lens Leica camera on the back and an 8 MP selfie camera on the front.

Huawei’s Mate 9 gets a 20 MP monochrome lens and a 12 MP full-color one. Besides Leica optics, and a dual LED flash, the phone has an impressive aperture on both fronts, and it can record 4K video.

A fingerprint sensor sits at the back for easy unlocking of the device. Huawei brings the latest version of its Emotion UI to the Mate 9 in conjunction with Android 7.0 Nougat out of the package.

The Mate 9 is also one of the first mobile devices to be Daydream-ready, although the lacking display resolutions won’t make for a VR experience quite as engaging once it launches later this year.

Huawei Mate 9 Leica cam
Huawei Mate 9 Leica cam. Image: Huawei.

Battery life easily lasts all day thanks to its massive 4,000 mAh unit with fast charging support via USB-C.

Huawei Mate 9: Price and Availability

The Huawei Mate 9 is now out in Europe and North America, priced at $599.99 in the U.S. and €699.99 for the rest of Europe. In the U.K., it costs £579.99. The Porsche Design Mate 9 is worth €1395, and it is available in limited quantities.

Source: Huawei