Huawei Mate 9 First Impressions: Elegant and Powerful

The newest flagship of Huawei’s Mate Series, the Mate 9, was officially launched yesterday. Being the company’s most powerful business phone to date, it sports an impressive spec sheet with an elegant design. We were able to get up close and personal with it, and here are our thoughts:

Design

The Mate 9 sports a premium and classy looking design, reminiscent of its predecessor. 2.5D curved glass on the front, soft curves, and a metal back which houses its signature dual camera. This isn’t a small phone by though, so one handed operation may become a bit of a challenge for people with small hands.

Display

A 5.9-inch Full HD display adorns the front of the Mate 9, and it looks spectacular. Text is sharp, and colors pop out with excellent brightness and contrast. If you’re in it for media consumption or gaming, the screen on this thing will be a treat.

Performance

Huawei Mate 9 Specs:

• HUAWEI Kirin 960 Octa-Core Processor + i6 co-processor, Mali-G71 MP8 GPU
• 4GB of RAM, 64 GB of Internal Storage Expandable up to 256GB via MicroSD Card
• 9-inch Full HD Display
• Rear: 20MP Monochrome + 12MP RGB, f/2.2
• Front: 8MP, f/1.9
• LTE, Dual SIM
• Emotion UI 5.0 on top of Android Nougat
• 4000mAh Battery with SuperCharge Technology

The Mate 9 runs on Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box with Huawei’s Emotion UI 5.0 on top. Navigation was smooth and fluid, with no signs of lag or stutter, even when opening multiple apps, certainly what you would expect from a device at this price point.

Camera

The Mate 9’s dual camera setup has been improved from the previous iteration, and uses a 12MP F/2.2 RGB sensor which captures true-to-life colors, a 20MP f/2.2 monochrome sensor which captures details and depth. I took some sample shots, and the quality of the images that came out were nothing short of stellar. Colors were accurate, and the amount of detail captured was even more impressive especially when zoomed in.

The Mate 9 comes in Champagne Gold/Mocha Brown and is already available at all Huawei Experience Stores nationwide for PhP31,990. Watch out for more details in our full review.

Emman Tortoza

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Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.