Mate 9 basic Edition

HUAWEI MATE 9 – DESIGN

If you’ve seen a Huawei phone from the past 18-months then the Mate 9 will be familiar. It’s a well-built device, but one that struggles to really excite.

It’s made completely out of metal, with a lovely curved back that helps it feel manageable – despite the fairly hefty 5.9-inch display. It’s certainly large, but it’s no bigger than an iPhone 7 Plus, which has only a 5.5-inch screen. It feels strangely light too, which again helps it feel good in the hand, even for long periods.

Huawei has worked wonders with the ergonomics here, and if I didn't know the screen was 5.9 inches, I'd have guessed it was much smaller.

The circular fingerprint sensor sits on the rear of the device, just below the camera and as is the case with all Huawei’s phones it’s both super- fast and accurate. Out of 50 attempts, the scanner correctly unlocked the phone on every occasion. It's a little small though, which can sometimes make it tough to hit.

While the design is functional, there are easily better-looking phones on the market. I'd have preferred for Huawei to use the blueprint of the Mate 9’s flashier and Porsche-designed sibling. This has slightly curved edges and looks far similar to the Galaxy S7 Edge.

Flanking the USB Type-C port on the bottom are some fairly standard speakers offering decent volume, but almost no detail, and there’s a headphone jack on the top. I’m not overly fussed about this classic connector's demise, but I'd rather have it present unless there’s a good reason for it not to be there.

HUAWEI MATE 9 – DISPLAY

In the same way that megapixels don’t make a great camera, having the highest-resolution possible display doesn’t always guarantee a superb screen.

I was a tad disappointed when I first heard the Mate 9 would feature only a 1080p screen, especially when so many cheaper phones are now including quad-HD panels. In reality, however, this is still a gorgeous display – and the lack of the tip-top resolution hasn’t bothered me in the slightest.

I’ve been using it alongside the Porsche-designed version of the Mate 9, which has a quad-HD display, and I've found that in plenty of situations I'm of the opinion that the 1080p version is actually better.

Colours are bright without being oversaturated, and deeper shades, such as reds, blues and greens, are lovely and rich. Since it’s an AMOLED panel, blacks are inky and it makes for a superb media experience.

Viewing angles are fantastic, as is brightness – although it can’t quite match the Note 7 for sheer nits. Auto-brightness is smooth, something that's rare, even on the top-end Android phones.

One minor issue that could arise from the resolution is how the phone performs when it’s placed into a Daydream headset, but I've yet to test this as right now the support is lacking.

HUAWEI MATE 9 – PERFORMANCE

Under the metal body of the Huawei Mate 9 is some serious power, and in the majority of situations it delivers impressive performance.

As is usual with Huawei, the company has opted for a CPU that's been built in-house, rather than something from, say, Qualcomm or MediaTek. These CPUs have been in little hit-and-miss in the past, but the new Kirin 960 used here is one of the more reliable.

The Kirin 960 is a high-performance chip that uses four of ARM’s new Cortex-A73 cores and four low-powered A53 cores. It also happens to be the first processor to ship with the Mali G71 MP8 GPU, which should offer up better gaming performance and graphics thanks to a quoted 180% speed increase over the outgoing T880.

Day-to-day performance is ace, and the improvement to the GPU is noticeable in higher-end and more intensive games. Asphalt 8 looks and plays great, with fast loading times and zero frame-rate drops. This decent performance is also helped by the lower-res display, meaning there are less pixels for the screen to push around.

There are some slight judders, however – although I suspect most of these are software-related since they're so infrequent and random. I had some trouble running our usual suite of benchmarking tests here, with Geekbench 4 crashing and AnTuTu failing to complete. But this shouldn’t sway your decision; to be honest, mobile benchmarking tools are fast becoming obsolete.

There’s a healthy 4GB of RAM included, so apps will stay in memory longer and therefore won't require constant reloading. Another bonus is the 64GB of storage, which can be expanded further with up to a 2TB microSD card.

Call quality is fantastic, with the noise-cancelling mics able to do a decent job of shutting out background sounds. Both Wi-Fi and network reception are equally impressive, something I've come to expect from Huawei.

HUAWEI MATE 9 – SOFTWARE

If you’ve read any of our previous reviews of Huawei handsets then you’ll probably have noticed a theme: a constant lambast of the software.

Huawei’s EMUI has long been the worst Android skin, for reasons that include an awful notification shade, ugly apps, failure to properly integrate Google services and so much more.

Surprisingly, in the Mate 9 Huawei has finally changed its approach to software – and for the most part it’s a success.

First, there’s now an app drawer (rejoice!) so all your downloads no longer have to be splayed out across homescreens. There’s a redone notifications shade too, which is a huge improvement, and most of Huawei’s own apps have a much fresher, less iOS 5 feel about them.

My most favourite change is that Huawei has finally acknowledged Android 7.0 Nougat's native features, opting to use them over its own versions. Split-screen multitasking on the Mate 9 works as it does on the Pixel, rather than Huawei’s own janky solution, and instead of continuing with its own virtual reality, the Mate 9 will be one of the first handsets to support Daydream it becomes more widely available.

Many of the new features are under-the-hood, and most of them won’t become apparent until you’ve been using the phone for an extended period.

There’s some machine learning going on that should help keep things running smoothly – even when you’ve built up a load of junk – alongside battery management too, so in theory the cell in the phone should last longer.

To be honest, I've yet to find such features that actually work, so it will be interesting to see whether these claims are in fact true.

Some of Huawei’s choices remain baffling, however. While one of the best features of Android is easily setting your default apps, it’s made oddly difficult in EMUI. Even when I choose something other than a Huawei app, it often kicks me out and changes the settings back.

In addition, the annoying messages about apps consuming too much power continue to incessantly pop up, but they're at least easy to dismiss.

HUAWEI MATE 9 – CAMERA

Like the Huawei P9, the Mate 9 includes a Leica-branded camera on the back. The famous German optics specialist, known for its pricey but exceptional cameras, has shared some of its know-how with Huawei along with an app that mirrors what you’d get on a proper Leica camera.

There was a lot of miscommunication about just how much input Leica had on the P9 cameras, and the story appears to be similar here, too.

With the Mate 9, the two sensors offer up different resolutions. The monochrome one – which helps improve contrast and low-light shooting – boasts 20 megapixels, while the colour RGB version is a lower 12 megapixels.

It is possible to use the black-and-white sensor separately, but most of the time they combine to create a hybrid zoom effect that’s supposed to mirror an optical zoom.

On countless occasions, Huawei referred to the zoom on the Mate 9 as "optical" – but it certainly isn’t that. There's simply some software trickery at play here, where the use of differing resolution sensors creates a zoom effect. It’s similar to the tech used by Sony phones, where the photo is taken at a higher resolution and then cropped.

It’s slightly odd that Huawei has made a big deal of the zoom, because it’s pretty much useless.

Other parts of the camera are more successful, though. Photos taken in good light are nice and detailed, with decent depth and accurate colours. The auto-HDR mode tends to be aggressive in strong sunlight, leaving you with over-exposed results, but it improves shots taken when the light isn’t quite so good. Vignetting is an issue too, and this appears to be a common problem when two lenses are at play.

The slightly narrow lens f/2.2 aperture means low-light photos aren’t the best, even though the sensor is optically stabilised, and I'm not convinced the brighter monochrome sensor makes much difference. Some low-light pictures come out nicely, but others lack detail and suffer a huge amount of noise.

It feels like there’s so much processing going on that the results aren’t overly reliable, and that’s a bit of a problem.

Like the iPhone 7 Plus, the Mate 9 has a mode that aims to create the silky bokeh effect you’d normally only be able to achieve with a DSLR. This "variable aperture" mode can produce some decent results, but it often blurs the wrong area of the photo and looks odd and fake.

Low-light shots can look too bright, here the sky isn't black as it should be and the lights overexpose the shot

In general, modes are the Mate 9’s strong suite. The monochrome sensor takes fantastically artistic black-and-white shots, while there's everything else from light-painting to a number of dodgy beauty modes. The easy to use "Pro" mode is good too, and you can shoot in RAW if you want a completely uncompressed shot to play with later.

I think this could have been a really fantastic camera with a few tweaks, but currently it falls below the tough standards set by the Pixel XL, Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Considering the near-£600 price of the Mate 9, I was expecting more.

4K video is supported, while the 8-megapixel front-facing camera is as good as the competition, it isn't the best.

HUAWEI MATE 9 – BATTERY LIFE

I've never been completely won over by large phones, but their more sizeable batteries keep tempting me back. Having a phone that more times than not lasts two straight days without needing a charge is something that’s hard to ignore.

The 4,000mAh battery in the Mate 9 – still non-removable – is a strong performer, with tremendous standby times and an impressive ability to sip power when you’re streaming music or films. An hour of HD video streaming on Netflix consumed only 7% – the best I've seen on a phone this year – and listening to Spotify on my hour-long commute took 4%.

I've easily been able to get through the day with 50% remaining before bed, waking up to 45% the following day.

Huawei has also finally added quick charging, but it’s another proprietary format like OnePlus' Dash Charge. Using the supplied power brick, the Huawei Mate 9 can be powered from 0% to 100% in about 1hr 10mins.

While this is impressive for a battery of this size, it’s a different story if you’re using just any old charger. It took 4 hours to charge with a Samsung Galaxy S7 charger, and about 3 hours with the block that came with the Pixel XL.

Incidentally, there seems to be three messages that come up when you’re charging; Charging, Fast Charging and Super Charging. The first is when you’re using a low-powered plug, while Fast Charging popped up when I used a 2A plug. Super Charging seems to be reserved for the included Huawei power supply.

And here is the Spec of the Device  :

NETWORK	Technology	GSM / CDMA / HSPA / EVDO / LTE
LAUNCH	Announced	2016, November
	Status	Available. Released 2016, December
BODY	Dimensions	156.9 x 78.9 x 7.9 mm (6.18 x 3.11 x 0.31 in)
	Weight	190 g (6.70 oz)
	SIM	Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
DISPLAY	Type	IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	5.9 inches (~77.5% screen-to-body ratio)
	Resolution	1080 x 1920 pixels (~373 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
	Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass 3
		- EMUI 5.0
PLATFORM	OS	Android OS, v7.0 (Nougat)
	Chipset	Hisilicon Kirin 960
	CPU	Octa-core (4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53)
	GPU	Mali-G71 MP8
MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 256 GB (dedicated slot) - single SIM
		microSD, up to 256 GB (uses SIM 2 slot) - dual SIM
	Internal	64 GB, 4 GB RAM
CAMERA	Primary	Dual 20 MP +12 MP, f/2.2, 27mm, OIS, 2x zoom, Leica optics, phase detection & laser autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash, check quality
	Features	Geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, panorama, HDR
	Video	2160p@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps, check quality
	Secondary	8 MP, f/1.9, 26mm, 1080p
SOUND	Alert types	Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers
	3.5mm jack	Yes
		- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
COMMS	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, DLNA, WiFi Direct, hotspot
	Bluetooth	v4.2, A2DP, EDR, LE
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO
	NFC	Yes
	Infrared port	Yes
	Radio	No
	USB	v2.0, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector
FEATURES	Sensors	Fingerprint (rear-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, barometer, compass
	Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email
	Browser	HTML5
	Java	No
	- Fast battery charging
	- DivX/XviD/MP4/H.265/WMV player
	- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/Flac player
	- Document editor
	- Photo/video editor
BATTERY		Non-removable Li-Po 4000 mAh battery
MISC	Colors	Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Champagne Gold, Mocha Brown, Ceramic White, Black, Obsidian Black
TESTS	Performance	Basemark OS II: 3280 / Basemark OS II 2.0: 2637
		Basemark X: 36519
	Display	Contrast ratio: 1622 (nominal), 3.680 (sunlight)
	Camera	Photo / Video
	Loudspeaker	Voice 83dB / Noise 74dB / Ring 85dB
	Audio quality	Noise -92.2dB / Crosstalk -93.3dB
	Battery life	Endurance rating 82h

Mate 7 Review

The design and the display:

  Huawei Mate 7(or what Huawei calls MT7-L09 for the 16 GB Version, and MT7-TL10 for the 32 GB) has a 6-inch screen which has required the body to balloon out to 157mm (6.2 inches) long and 81mm (3.2 inches) wide. It's nigh on impossible to use with only one hand,.

By using an extremely narrow bezel around the display, the all-metal body, while being big, is all being put to use -- there's no wasted space by simply having chunky bezels around the screen. Indeed, Huawei boasts that 83 percent of the face of the phone is screen.

As well as silver, the phone will be available in a dark grey color for the 16 GB model as well as a light gold for the 32 G model -- thanks partly to its size, but also the matte metal, the curved back, the lines crossing the back at the top and bottom, the camera and flash placement and of course the fingerprint scanner sitting directly below the camera. So not that similar really.

It feels pretty good to hold -- certainly much nicer than Huawei's slew of plastic budget phones -- and the metal and narrow bezel help it look like a reasonably high end device. It's not the most interesting of designs though. You'll find a micro SD card slot on the side (you'll need a SIM removal tool to access it) which you'll want to use to expand the 16GB of built-in storage.

Fingerprint sensor:

The fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone is positioned precisely where your index finger will naturally rest when you pick the phone up. It's certainly comfortable to use, although it does mean you need to pick your phone up to unlock it, rather than jab at the screen when it's lying on your desk.

The sensor is very accurate and work in 360 Degree which mean that you can unlock the Device from any angel, and It rarely failed to recognize my own finger – and even if it does, it might be because of that the sensor might need to be cleaned -so just wipe the sensor- or (make sure that your hand’s is Clean) --.and it is Very nimble as will and snappy  

Holding your finger over the sensor will wake your phone from standby and you can even use it to take photos- but due to the size of that phone --157mm (6.2 inches) long and 81mm (3.2 inches) wide --  you might face some problems to use that fingerprint sensor for taking photos – even if you have Big hands like what I have - while other might feel that that position makes it very helpful for taking selfies.

Display:

When Huawei initially released  the phone specs  I was told that the phone would have a 2560x1600-pixel resolution, which would make it  higher-than-full HD display. Huawei's had a change of heart since then in the favor for the Battery, as the Mate 7 you'll find in the shops will have a lesser 1920x1080-pixel display.

While the Mate users might be happy with the 2560x1600-pixel resolution, but Huawei realized that they will be much happier with the big battery  , as a screen that size would potentially benefit from the extra pixels. Still, the Mate has a pixel density of 367 pixels per inch, which is higher than that of the IPhone 6 and it does seem very crisp indeed. Icons have well-defined edges, high-resolution images look good and text is easy to read. I definitely don't think it's lacking in definition.

It's bright, almost painfully so at times and it has strong, vibrant colors that stop just short of looking unnatural. Viewing angles are excellent, too. Its overall high quality, coupled with its vast size makes it a great choice for the Netflix addicts among you.

CAMERA:

The Huawei Ascend Mate has a 13-megapixel camera main camera with a chunky LED flash.

It’s a pretty good setup that’ll do the job for day-to-day photography out on the street. You get pretty good levels of detail in sunlight and even in darker conditions – despite lacking HDR, the Mate 7 manages to hold onto detail fairly well in lower-light conditions.

While there’s clear processing/sharpening going on at pixel level and the edges of the frame get a bit scrappy-looking, you can get great levels of fine detail in the right conditions.

However, it’s not perfect. We did notice that in tricky higher-light conditions, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s photos can end up looking quite desiderated – almost monochrome in the worst cases.

While things like this are common in phone cameras, we’ve come to rely on HDR modes a bit to patch them up. The Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s is far from the most effective we’ve seen, though. It’s not the go-to fix-all it is in the best examples.

This phone is a middleweight contender in the phone camera world, but when the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s camera is far from its star feature, that’s not a bad result.

Huawei has kept the modes on offer fairly simple too. You get Panorama, Beauty mode (which de-wrinkles your crows’ feet), HDR, burst mode and Watermark. There aren’t too many crazy processing filters, as you get in Sony’s phones.

It has a go at the post-focus modes attempted by other phones at present too, and this gets a spot as one of the main camera modes – right on the front page. However, as is generally the case with this kind of shooting, you’re much better off just taking normal photos in the vast majority of cases.

On the front is a much better-than-average 5-megapixel camera. With good light you'll get loads of detail in your selfies. However, for low-light indoors shots, that the camera uses a pretty tiny sensor are very evident – the noise is much clearer than in a high-grade 2-megapixel selfie cam.

BATTERY LIFE:

The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 has a gigantic 4,100mAh battery. For some extra context, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 ‘only’ has a 3,220mAh unit.

As you’d hope from a unit of this size, the Mate 7’s stamina is very good. You don’t need to be terribly careful to get two days’ use out of the phone, and for a spot of purely anecdotal evidence, the battery was at around 50 per cent at 11:30pm on one night, which got me through to about 5:30pm the next day before needing a charge – with some web browsing in-between too.

It does seem as though Huawei has taken a rather ‘brute force’ approach to the Mate 7’s battery efficiency, probably because the HiSilicon Kirin 925 isn’t all that power-efficient by itself compared to the best from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon range

For example, you actually have to specify apps that can run when the screen’s turned off. Everything else will be blocked. This may become a problem for those not intending to take a diploma course in how to use the phone’s settings menu, as it’ll limit what apps will be able to ping you push notifications.

Our standard video test supports this too. You'll get 12 hours of 720p MP4 video playback off a charge, with the backlight set to mid-level.

Android software and Huawei interface:

The Mate 7 arrives with Android 4.4.2 Kit Kat onboard, which is disappointing as that's a couple of versions out of date (version 4.4.4 is the most up to date version of Android around). I'm happy to forgive older software on budget mobiles, but on pricier, higher-end kit, it's far less excusable.

Huawei has changed the Android interface so much, however, that you probably won't immediately notice that you're on old software. It's visually very different from regular Android, mainly due to the fact that there's no app tray. Instead, all your apps and widgets are held across the multiple home screens.

I'm not keen on this personally as it's extremely difficult to keep any kind of order -- particularly if you enjoy using a lot of widgets, which will leave you having to swipe through many screens before finding that one app you need.

You can apply various themes to the phone, which change everything from the color scheme and background images to the app icons themselves. It's nice being able to put your own stamp on things, but there's only six themes installed.

By The Tec Wizard

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