Huawei Mate 9 review: The latest Huawei flagship fills the phablet gap left behind by Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7
Having had its reputation scuttled by the exploding Galaxy Note 7 – a phone that’s now as welcome on an aeroplane plane as a wet fart – Samsung has left a slightly singed gap in the phablet market.
Men and women with very large hands who need giant telephones to make them feel momentarily normal have been left with few decent alternatives, because despite its most glaring shortcoming – that it would occasionally try to destroy everything and everyone you love – the Note 7 really was at the top of its class.
The Huawei Mate 9 steps into the large shoes Samsung left behind. It has a 5.9-inch screen and a whopping (and especially safeguarded) 4,000mAh battery, with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and a 20 megapixel, Leica-branded dual-camera system.
It’s a more powerful proposition than Huawei’s existing P9 family of handsets, with 4GB of RAM and the Chinese manufacturer’s fastest ever mobile processor, the highly energy-efficient Kirin 960.
The 1080p resolution is just about adequate on a display of this size, bordering on lacklustre when compared to the competition’s higher pixel densities. Build quality is light but firm, the high-end, all metal unibody feeling solid in the palm, like it would do somebody real damage if you hurled it at them.
Most interestingly, Huawei claims that the Mate 9’s performance won’t deteriorate over time, like so many other devices are prone to do. Quite the opposite in fact. Huawei says that the phone’s operating system will speed up the more you use it, becoming faster and more responsive over time by gradually learning which apps you use before predicting your behaviours by having them pre-loaded and ready to go, like an attentive personal assistant anticipating your needs.
In simulated tests, Huawei says it’s run the Mate 9 for 10,000 hours and seen an eight per cent increase in speed – an enticing prospect for anyone whose ageing iPhone takes from Farringdon to Moorgate to open up iTunes.
The EMUI operating system has had an overhaul, with a more simplified and less garish aesthetic and the option (at long last) to keep your apps in an app tray, rather than littered across multiple screens.The user experience feels neater, sleeker, smoother and more Cupertino-esque in its styling than it’s ever been.
The Mate 9 is a beast of a phone that, were it still around to fight its corner, would have given the Galaxy Note 7 a run for its money.
From £549, huawei.com/uk