Huawei Mate 9
OUR VERDICT
Another solid effort from Huawei – despite not having all the top-end
specs, this looks to be a good large-screen choice.
|
Pros
·
Powerful camera
·
Strong chipset
·
Well made
|
Cons
·
1080p screen
·
Still cluttered as an
interface
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Huawei's Mate 9 is a
phone that's equal parts Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (minus the fire) and iPhone 7,
mixed in with the brand's own design sensibilities both inside and out. It's a
Note in that it's a large-screened device, which instantly pushes it into the
realm of 'power user' and the enterprise space, a claim backed up by the fact
it features the newest, most powerful chipset also from Huawei. But it's also
aiming for the consumer-friendliness of the iPhone, offering strong cameras,
long battery life and increased day to day usability in the long term,
something Huawei is keen to talk up.
The similarities to
those two phones aren't just coincidence, as Apple and Samsung are the two
brands ahead of Huawei in terms of world smartphone market share. The Chinese
brand has strong designs on taking the top spot – but while the Mate 9 is
impressive in some areas, it's not going to be a device that gains ground in
key markets.
Design
One of the most
impressive things Huawei has done over the years is move from a brand that
stuck in technology for the sake of it (although that's still lurking there in
its DNA) to one that makes phones that look and feel well made. The metal
design of the Mate 9, while large at 79mm x 156.9mm, is smaller than that of
the iPhone
7 Plus, yet features a larger 5.9-inch screen thanks to everything being
packed a little tighter inside. The fingerprint scanner on the back again rests
nicely where your digit lands, and the sharp combination of metal and glass
that makes up the frame of the new Mate feels pretty solid in the hand; it's
not the most premium in the world, but it's jolly hard to find fault with it.
The lack of bezel is
sure to impress those who hate the extra black bars all around the iPhone, and
with nicely-machined buttons for operating the power and volume, there's not a
lot to find fault with in terms of the way Huawei has created its latest
flagship phablet.
It's not waterproof, as Huawei told us it believes
that would add too much thickness to the device.
But, while it's true that adding in barriers to water
ingress does mean more space taken up, it's a problem that rival companies have
managed to solve, and it would have been nice to see the feature here (although
it's possible that the extra space was used for battery capacity instead).
Screen
The screen will be something of a disappointment for
spec hounds, given that it's 'just' 1080p, rather than the QHD offering that
some would have hoped to see at 5.9 inches. It's also LCD rather than Super
AMOLED – another hope for many – but neither of those things diminishes the
overall impression when using the phone.
The color
reproduction, something Huawei has talked up during the release of the handset,
seems rather muted (although that could merely be the result of the
less-dramatic color palette used by the brand in its new EMUI 5.0 software).
However, even watching video didn't make the colors necessarily pop out,
despite the overall quality being decent. The large size obviously makes the
Mate 9 almost impossible to use one-handed, but that's not something many
people drawn to this phone will have much of an issue with.
In fact, the compact
nature of the screen within the size of the handset makes this less of an issue
than you might ordinarily expect.
What's it like to use?
While it was impossible
to properly put the Mate 9 through its paces in just a few minutes of testing,
it was hard to find anything that would properly slow the phone down. This is
down to a couple of things: to start with, there's the high performance of the
new Kirin 960 chipset and the 4GB of RAM combining under the surface. But
Huawei has pushed things a little further with its latest attempts to improve
the long-term performance of the handset. It's claiming to use machine learning
to work out our behaviors when using our phones, deciding which apps gain
priority of use at certain times.
The issue with
current Android phones, according to Huawei, is that too many apps will request
the highest priority of access when in use, resulting in multiple programs all
vying for the limited resource. This means that over time the phone will begin
to slow as we fill it with apps and content, all of which demands more of the
system resource. Huawei's AI within the Mate 9 will apparently keep only the
most-used apps front and center, so the phone should in theory stay much
snappier.
In terms of the
software used, this is Android 7.0 running underneath Huawei's divisive Emotion
UI. The user interface has been upgraded once more, to a more
Android-Material-like mix of cleaner icons and more curved, nature-inspired
shapes throughout. The color scheme has been altered to be more infused with
blue and white shades (something to do with being inspired by some
Mediterranean village somewhere, or so the promotional video made out) and the
theme of nature permeates throughout, with the music player being doused in
water during playback.
While there are still
multiple design elements within the user interface that irk (such as repetitive
notifications on how much power is draining) it's completely unfair to say that
Emotion UI is the terrible experience that plagued earlier models, as early
elements, like the lack of app drawer, are now a user toggle, so you can choose
between a familiar experience or the more iPhone-like single level for apps.
Visually, the Huawei Mate 9 interface is clean and easy to understand; it's
complex in certain places, but that's a by-product of Huawei wanting to pack as
many functions into one phone as possible. That's evidenced by the
'optimization' app, where you can clean system resources, see what's hogging
your battery and generally clean up the performance of the phone.
While it's good to
have this option, you're still given too much choice: users will feel they
should turn off Wi-Fi and location and shut down apps just to save battery, but
then that's going to compromise the experience when they use those same apps
regularly. It's hard to criticize the user interface of the Huawei Mate 9 too
much, but it's still not the revolution in simplicity you feel this brand needs
to start making waves in the western world. The keyboard, powered by Swiftkey,
is great to use as well. In short, while there are still too many options (who
knows which apps should be whitelisted in RAM cleanup, for instance?) Huawei
has made good strides towards making its interface far more global-friendly.
Battery
It'll be interesting
to see how the Mate 9 battery performs – because it should offer really stellar
battery performance in a number of ways. First up, the battery capacity is
massive at 4000mAh, so in terms of raw capacity this is one of the biggest on
the market.
Huawei has also
developed a new charging technology, called SuperCharge, that uses a lower
voltage but a higher current (4.5V and 5A) to offer some insane charging
speeds, with just 10 minutes enough to gain three and a half hours of movie
playback. Although Huawei didn't give exact percentages, the graphs suggest
that it can charge much faster than anything else around when connected to its
own SuperCharge socket, with the phone intelligently talking to the wall
charger to work out the fastest current available. Given the worry surrounding
the exploding Samsung Note 7 devices, the brand was also quick to point out
that the phone wouldn't get hot during charging, with five monitoring points
used to work out whether the handset is heating up, and the current dropping if
it is.
While the SuperCharge
technology sounds great, Huawei hasn't evolved the chemistry of the battery
it’s using, which begs the question of how long the battery pack will continue
to function effectively when charged at such a speed time and again. It's not
insane to think that after a year the quality of the battery life will have
degraded as Huawei chased ever-greater charging speeds to top up its huge power
pack, but only long term testing will confirm that. One nice element that shows
Huawei is working well with its own Kirin chip is the fact that turning on
Ultra battery saving mode (which essentially turns your handset into a late
‘90s Nokia phone) is instant to turn on and off, not requiring a reboot or
involving a 30-second wait.
Camera
The Huawei Mate 9 camera is another dual-lens
affair, created in association with Leica. This time around it's one 12MP lens,
with a 20MP one sitting alongside. The former is the RGB lens, similar to that
found in most smartphones, and the latter is monochrome, with the sole job of
capturing a black and white image that can be integrated into the picture to
improve brightness and sharpness.
In fact, this higher
resolution has meant Huawei is confusingly claiming a 'true' 2x optical zoom.
It's hard to say how that's possible given that the magnification doesn't occur
on the hardware level; instead a 12MP image is cut out of the 20MP sensor to
give the illusion of getting closer without actually doing so. It's the same
technique used in Nokia / Microsoft's PureView smartphones from years gone by –
but they weren't optical-zooming either. The camera does take some decent
photos though, and covering the monochrome sensor does lead to a poorer and
less color-balanced snap, so there is is some good image processing and quality
enhancement on board thanks to having two lenses on the Mate 9. The bokeh,
background-defocusing, mode is okay – there are still some artifacts present in
the subject at the edges, but it’s not a bad option to have (if a little slow).
Pro mode is cool, and
only a swipe away (although in our test model the icons didn’t rotate when
holding the phone in landscape mode, which is odd) with a decent range of tools
to tinker with get the best image. However, this setup, with two powerful
sensors on the back, needs to be tested properly to see if Huawei has made an
industry-leading camera – the P9 had a decent snapper with a lot of options for
manual photo enhancement, but it wasn't the very best out there. But with a
larger 20MP sensor on the side, perhaps the Mate 9 can push things up a notch.
Early verdict The
Huawei Mate 9 is a phone that was launched with a lot of bold claims: improved
battery charging speeds, a better camera and the ability to keep phone speed
where most Android handsets couldn't. While some claims can't be tested
initially (the long-term performance enhancements, for instance) in our time
using the Mate 9 it's hard to say that anything particularly stood out as an
innovative and exemplary smartphone feature.
The Mate 9 feels
iterative, rather than something bold from Huawei – but then again, the company
keeps increasing sales of its phones, so perhaps it doesn't need to go big.
However, while the new Mate does offer some high spec (the battery life on this
thing could be simply awesome), if Huawei is to become a major player in
western markets it will have to (a) actually launch properly in the US, and (b)
start taking on the might of the incumbent smartphone manufacturers by offering
better features, performance and design.
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