Huawei Mate 8 is out and is one of the best premium phones out there. Fresh from the success of the Nexus 6P, the Asian phone maker has aspirations of becoming the next leader in the Android realm.
And that’s an understatement. Since early 2015, Huawei is the world’s third biggest handset manufacturer, behind Apple and Samsung but ahead of Sony, LG, Motorola, Lenovo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Blackberry.
Unlike most of Android partners, Huawei succeeds in both mid and high-end smartphone segments. On that regard, Mate 8 goes from $418 to $534 in Huawei’s official channels in the usual digital retailers as Amazon.
Mate 8 is not the latest flagship from the company. It recently launches the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus.
The looks of the Mate 8
The Mate 8 upgrades the looks and feels of the Mate series with a boasting, vivid 6-inches Full HD display, which is to say 1080 x 1920 with about 338 pixels per second density and 16.7 million colors. A Corner Gorilla Glass 4 protects the screen.
The phone has an ultra slim metallic unibody design, a revamped fingerprint sensor, and unique 2.5D Diamond Cut Glass. It comes in various colors: Moonlight Silver, Space Gray, Champagne Gold, and Mocha Brown.
The camera, the storage and the processor
The handset holds the same camera than the P9 and P9 Plus. It’s a dual-lens Leica 12MP with auto-focus, digital zoom up to 4x, dual-tone flash and optical image stabilization.
The phone can record videos up to 1080p with 60fps, while the pics can go as high as 4608 x 3456 pixels. It also supports slow motion recording at 720p with 120 fps. The front camera rocks 8MP, can record at 1080p at 30fps and can take pics with 3264 x 2448 pixels.
The Huawei Mate 8 NTX L-29 comes with 4GB Ram and 64GB storage room; while the NXT-L09 comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage room.
An octa-core 2.3GHz Kirin 950 processor powers the phone along with an i5 -processor. The CPU isn’t very popular in the West, but the Chinese processor is super fast and goes up to date with their Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Apple and Samsung competitors.
The Kirin 950 scored 6,210 points in the Geekbench 3’s multicore test, almost 2,000 points ahead of the iPhone 6S and 1,200 points ahead of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.
Other features of the Mate 8
Both versions have the possibility of extending the memory up to 256GB with a 2 Sim slots. The Mate 8 comes out of the box with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, 4G TDD-LTE connectivity and Wi-Fi support up to 5G.
The battery life can go up to 528h (22 days) in minimum use and 98h (4 days) while playing music. This is because is a Li-Pro 4000 mAh battery – non-removable – and the screen is not the power consuming QHD.
The Mate 8 is cheaper than their premium rivals and presents excellent quality, long-lasting free battery life, advanced camera technology and overall premium feel. That’s a lot of package on a single phone.
Source: Huawei