Huawei Mate 9 Review: Dual Leica Camera, Kirin 960 and 4GB RAM

We all are familiar with the Huawei Mate series smartphones for a long time, it’s always been decent phones with large screen, capacious battery, dimensions – in general, a strong mid-range phablet that could safely recommend to buy. And the Huawei Mate 9 turned out that the flagship with dual camera, and what’s more added by the company, how interesting this device and what are its prospects, we will briefly discuss in this Huawei Mate 9 review below. Huawei Mate 9 USA

Design

The combination of metal and glass along with soft curves in Huawei Mate 9 would give it a perfect corporate look. Frame is relatively thin and neat, top and bottom margin is not too wide. The build quality is traditionally high, no complaints. Huawei Mate 9 Review

Above the screen we have a front camera, proximity sensor and earpiece. Below the screen – Huawei’s logo, instead of navigation buttons, which is the plus point to save more place.

On the right side we have a volume rocker and the power button, while the hybrid SIM-card slot on the left.

At the bottom there are the USB Type C port, external speaker and microphone, and 3.5mm jack along with the infrared sensor on the top.

Coming to the rear panel, you can see the dual camera sensors, dual-tone LED-flash, laser autofocus and a fingerprint scanner. Scanner with fast speed, you just lightly touch it with your finger, and the device is unlocked immediately.

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Display

The Huawei Mate 9 comes with a 5.9-inch Full HD (1920×1080 pixels) screen used IPS-matrix and a pixel density of 373ppi. The display is excellent, with maximum viewing angles, good color, also has the color temperature setting.

There is a 2.5D curved glass on top of it along with the oleophobic coating, an automatic brightness control, and it supports up to 10 multi-touch points. 2

But the main question – why Full HD? And, frankly, we have no answer. Device with such huge screen we would love to see QHD resolution.

And such a diagonal has been already possible to see the small difference between FHD / QHD, but in reality we can’t see a lot difference between it.

Software

The smartphone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat and EMUI 5.0. This is one of the first models running on the latest version of Android and updated EMUI. Now it’s become more convenient to use, for example, finally removed the separation of switches and notifications (you can turn it on in the settings).

The launcher now allows you to choose the style of Home screen: all applications are hosted or on-screen, or in a separate application menu.

Performance

Huawei Mate 9 is equipped with the latest HiSilicon Kirin 960 processor. It is an octa-core chip, Cortex-A53 four cores running at 1.8 GHz, four Artemis core (Cortex-A73) – at a frequency of 2.4 GHz. It packs in 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage and microSD slot to add more.

The device comes with the enough power to handle heavy multi-tasking and play high-end games. It was able to handle most everyday tasks and we had no complaints with the Kirin 960 processor. Even visually demanding games like Need for Speed: No Limits, Asphalt Xtreme, and Nova 3 worked smoothly. Multitasking on the Mate 9 was great, and apps launched quickly. There was no problem with overheating either.

During heavy multi-tasking, we did not experience any abnormal heating, but a very less warmth while gaming or using camera. It does a good job in terms of heat control.

Camera

The Huawei Mate 9 follows the same dual camera system as in P9 / P9 Plus, where’s just B / W resolution module increased up to 20MP, while secondary sensor is 12-megapixels. Ofcource, the company resorted to Leica algorithms, the Mate 9 also installed Leica lens.  3

The camera speed is fast, with instant focusing (almost same as Galaxy S7 EDGE), with a huge number of modes, settings and filters. The Mate 9 also feature a 2 x optical zoom, means you can zoom the picture in half without losing its quality, but this option is only available at a 12MP resolution.

Both the 20MP + 12MP cameras with f/2.2 aperture, where one of the camera is a RGB and the other one captures monochrome. On the front, Mate 9 comes with 8MP camera with f/1.9 aperture. The pixel size is 1.25 micron on the rear and 1.4 micron at the front.

The camera app on Mate 9 is quite simple, the left edge of the screen has the camera toggle icon on top, followed by the camera filters, flash on/off and selective focus mode. On the right edge, there is a toggle for video/camera followed by the camera shutter in center and recent pictures at the bottom. You can swipe left to open camera, swipe down to open camera settings and swipe up to reach modes. 1

Coming to the picture quality, in natural light it is great. The dual camera setup does a great job in capturing wide range of color and high-end details. Autofocus works perfect and you can click amazing pictures using the wide aperture mode.

But gets worse as soon as we go into the dark room or low light conditions. But the bokeh effects or background blur works great, both in automatic as well as manual mode.

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Battery

There is a 4000mAh battery on the Mate 9 managed to last for 10 hours in our HD video test at maximum brightness (airplane mode on), which is not bad for a battery of this full-HD screen.

With heavy usage, the Huawei Mate 9 barely managed to last up to six hours when using the 4G mobile Internet, surfing the web, Facebook messengers, high-end game playing and mail synchronization is enabled.

And it’s a little sad, because five to six hours battery life which we usually getting on the other conventional smartphone.

Final line

At $599.99 on Amazon.com, you will get the phablet with an excellent speed, high-quality display, comfortable body, great camera, full of connectivity, and fast fingerprint scanner. But an average battery life was looking a slight cons against the other mid-range devices.

But in return, when we used this handset and felt the quality it offers in terms of style and feel, we were convinced with the price as it does a great job in almost every department. If you are looking for a stylish looking smartphone with a large display, great camera and responsive software, then you can surely consider the Huawei Mate 9 for these qualities.

About Ankeet Solanki

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