By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
YOU would think that Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. would see the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, as just the perfect platform for a splashy debut of its newest flagship smartphone, along with other devices that gearheads would no doubt quickly lust after.
After all, the Chinese multinational ICT solutions provider has emerged as the biggest and most successful smartphone vendor in its homeland, a huge market avidly courted by the world’s most powerful companies including Google and Apple. Indeed, its hardware and design chops are such that Google tapped Huawei as its partner in bringing its latest flagship smartphone, the much-acclaimed Nexus 6P, to market. That was in September last year.
However, the 2016 edition of MWC, held in late February, came and went with Huawei unveiling only the MateBook, certainly a handsome piece of kit powered by Windows 10 that would rival such hybrid tablet/notebooks from Microsoft and Apple in both looks and performance, but still.
Perhaps to the disappointment of some members of the tech media that had gathered in Barcelona, the company had no such “And one more thing…” moment at MWC for yet another flagship smartphone, one that would further cement its status not only as the leading vendor in China, but also as among the top 3 worldwide (it currently ranks behind only Samsung and Apple).
Then again, it should come as no surprise that Huawei had no big smartphone reveal at MWC 2016. Not only is the Google Nexus 6P a mere six-months old but Huawei also followed up that September, unveiling with its own Mate S a month later, and then the Mate 8 just as 2015 was drawing to a close.
The Mate 8—which should be in the 35 Huawei Brand Shops and other gadget stores nationwide by the time this piece comes out, and which I have had the pleasure of putting through its paces for a few weeks now—assumes from the Mate S the mantle as the company’s very own flagship by virtue of better internals, bigger screen, bigger battery and an aesthetic that improves on its predecessor, which was and is no slouch in the design department.
The Mate 8 is the company’s first smartphone that packs the all-new Kirin 950 chipset from HiSilicon, the semiconductor company fully owned by Huawei. The new SoC (System-on-Chip), according to Huawei, has “CPU boosting power up 100 percent, GPU performance up 125 percent and power efficiency up 70 percent, versus the Kirin 925. The device’s architecture balances energy efficiency with high-end performance through 4 x A72 2.3 GHz processors and 4 x A53 1.8 GHz processors.” Even more impressive, according to a report published by Tech Times (goo.gl/ucDsDU), a GFXBench test reveals that the Kirin 950 bests the Exynos 7420 chip that powers Samsung’s high-end smartphones:
“Based on the scorecard, the Kirin 950 notched a whopping 1,710 points in single-core performance while it logged 6,245 points in multi-core performance. If this leaked scorecard is true, this performance is indeed very remarkable, considering HiSilicon has been known for building underpowered chips. The Exynos 7420, which presently powers Samsung’s high-end smartphones, garnered 1,486 points in single-core and 4,970 points in multi-core performance.”
Geektalk aside, we can happily report that the Huawei Mate 8 does provide a user experience that is as smooth as butter, efficiently holding up to whatever the front-loaded task may be (say, checking out the latest discount offerings on Lazada, while enjoying music on Spotify), despite having multiple apps running in the background (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Grindr, Romeo Uncut, Scruff, Viber, Hangouts, Gmail, Pinterest, Flipboard and Chrome). Needless to say, the proceedings are helped by the fact that besides a powerful chip, Huawei has packed 3 GB of RAM into the base model (with 32 GB of built-in memory, the configuration of the review unit we have been sampling; the 64 GB and 128 GB versions have 4 GB RAM).
And, yes, consuming all kinds of media on the Mate 8 while stuck in yet another monster-traffic jam becomes pleasurable and, more important, possible, with Huawei having brought together a 6-inch display, topped by 2.5D diamond-cut glass and a 4,000 mAh high-density battery—a combination that allows the user plenty of screen time without the worry of running out of juice before reaching one’s destination, or having to plug the Mate 8 to a battery pack. On a related note, the phone features what Huawei calls “cutting-edge 9V/2A fast-charging technology” that allows you to “fully charge your Mate 8 in just 2.5 hours” or “get a full day’s use out of a 30-minute charge.”
No doubt, there will be some snarky comments made out of the fact that the Mate 8’s 6-inch screen only has a Full HD 1,920×1,080 pixel resolution with a 368 ppi, this in a market now flooded with flagship smartphones boasting of displays cranked up to at least a QHD 1,440×2,560 pixel resolution. To be sure, Huawei’s flagship won’t win any screen-pixel prize but the display is a lot more than just serviceable, dazzling in its color accuracy and vibrancy, with solid viewing angles and a brightness that makes the screen perfectly usable even in direct sunlight.
Despite its 6-inch screen size, the Mate 8’s dimensions come in at only 157.1 x 80.6 x 7.9 mm, weighing in at 185 g—making it a tad shorter, wider and heavier than the 158.1 x 77.8 x 7.1 mm and 172 g of the iPhone 6s Plus and its 5.5-inch screen. Huawei succeeded in keeping the dimensions perfectly usable by trimming the screen bezels down to mere slivers, the premium edge-to-edge look enhanced by the metal unibody with an ever-so-slightly rounded back, the metal sandblasted to keep unsightly fingerprints at bay.
Gone from the Mate 8 are the visible plastic antenna strips that marked—and, for some, slightly marred—the back of the Mate S, with Huawei having opted for two narrow strips at the sides of the device. As with the Mate S, the camera—a 16 MP f/2.0 shooter from Sony with OIS, phase detection autofocus, and dual-LED (dual tone) flash, among others; there is an 8 MP f/2.4 front-facing camera capable of shooting at 1,080 pixel resolution—and the slightly-recessed fingerprint sensor are centered on the back of the Mate 8 and both perform exceptionally well.
The Huawei Mate 8 is one of the few flagships that ship with Android Marshmallow (V6.0), with the company’s own EMUI 4.0 interface on top. It is a UI that has polarized not a few users and the tech media, but notwithstanding a few bugs that persist (such as the notification text being difficult to read, particularly with Gmail) we like the niceties that EMUI brings to the table, principally the ease it provides in switching networks for LTE and messaging for those who will rock the Mate 8 as a dual SIM/dual LTE device (it can be used with a single SIM, with the extra slot going to a microSD card to boost user memory).
We can go on and on about the many hardware and software goodies that can be found in the Mate 8, but suffice it to say that anyone in the market for a premium Android smartphone will be more than well-served by Huawei’s latest flagship.
***To know more about the Huawei Mate 8, visit www.huawei.com/ph.