Our reviews - Huawei Mate 8
May 18, 2016 • Android • huawei • Launch • Reviews
Huawei officially presented Mate 8 on November 25 at the Shanghai Expo Centre in China. The smartphone is the successor to the Huawei Mate 7 that appeared last year. The newcomer is limited to sales within China for now. We will have to wait untill CES 2016 in January to get more details about Mate 8 global release date and pricing.
According to some earlier data the price for the smartphone was claimed to be around $520 for the 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage version and approximately $615 for 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage respectively.
Slim & elegant
The Mate 8's body is made of aluminum and 2.5D curved glass. It has a higher screen-to-body ratio than the Mate 7 and slimmer dimensions: 157.1 x 80.6 x 7.9 mm with the weight of 185 g. The back of the device is dominated by a large circular camera unit at the top-center and there's a fingerprint scanner below it. Apart from these changes the design does remind that of Mate 7 and Mate S.
The smartphone is available in 4 absolutely gorgeous colors: Champagne Gold, Moonlight Silver, Space Gray, Mocha Brown. According to the data we have so far, the Champagne Gold might be a bit pricier than the rest.
Specifications
The remarkable news is that Huawei does use a new generation processor in its flagship - HiSilicon Kirin 950, which is supposed to boost the performance by 100% over the Mate’s 7 Kirin 920.
Huawei emphasized the comparative benefits of the Mate 8's setup, saying that it would perform 22 percent better and consume 12 percent less power than the Exynos 7420, and perform 25 percent better and consume 44 percent less power than the Snapdragon 810.
We are familiar with the outstanding battery performance Mate 7 has, while the newcomer is going to absolutely exceed it with the new 4000mAh battery. It is claimed to provide up to 30% more of life.
As we mentioned before, the smartphone is going to be available in two variants: 3 GB RAM and 4 GB RAM, both with the same size screen, 6-inch IPS LCD display with the resolution of 1080x1920 pixels. The screen also covers a wider color range than the Mate 7's.
The phablet includes a 16-megapixel rear camera powered by Sony IMX298 sensor with OIS, f/2.0 aperture, phase-detection auto-focus (PDAF) and 1.12um pixel size, alongside with an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with Sony IMX179 sensor and f/2.4 aperture.
For the connectivity options the device offers Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Micro-USB 2.0, GPS, DLNA, Bluetooth, 4G and NFC.
Mate runs Android Marshmallow and supports dual SIM (Nano-SIM cards). The second SIM slot can also be used as MicroSD card slot.
As you see, there’s much to be expected from Huawei Mate 8 and we can’t wait to actually try it ourselves and share the real life experience with you.