Sunday, March 12, 2017

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 XLSamsung 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