Paul Briden 15/12/2016 - 12:57pm

We loved the Huawei Mate 8 and its phenomenal battery performance - can the new Huawei Mate 9 continue that legacy?

Last year’s Huawei Mate 8 was an all round good egg of a phone, but it really blew us away with its astonishing battery life; in the months since its launch, a few rival devices have come within a similar ballpark of offering its many days of juice on a single charge, but none have exceeded it. It really did set a new benchmark for battery performance. Understandably, then, we’re looking hopefully at the new Huawei Mate 9 successor; is this going to be a major step forward? Can it once again re-define the boundaries of battery performance? 

Huawei Mate 9 Review: Design & Display

My first impression upon unboxing the phone is that the Huawei Mate 9 is a pretty cool looking device, and it quickly becomes quite obvious as to why; there are stylistic cues from the HTC 10 and Apple’s iPhone series - in fact it has quite a close resemblance to Apple’s larger “Plus” model devices. Original the design may not be. Derivative, even? Perhaps, to an extent. But even so, it is a sleek, all-metal, premium design that has been very well executed.

Maybe I’m being overly generous, but it doesn’t feel right to me to detract points (hypothetically, of course, we don’t do a points system round here) from Huawei just because there are similarities to similarly constructed smartphones elsewhere on the market. You want a big-screen, premium, metal-built handset? Well this is pretty much how they’re going to look, at least until we enter into the realms of flexible folding displays.

The rear panel appears to be made of some fairly thin aluminium, as there is a tiny bit of give and flex to the shell when gently squeezed, but the rest of the bodywork feels very solid indeed. The power key and volume rocker are both metal and have a really nice, solid, and clicky feedback.

The whole quasi-industrial design is executed very well with the integrated antenna bands and a bare minimum of ports and other visual interruptions, Huawei has clearly tried hard to integrate most needed components as seamlessly as possible. The base plate is rather eye catching and houses a Type-C USB port flanked by a pair of small screws and then a set of speaker grilles; rather than the usual round holes these use nice little rounded lozenge shaped openings.

A second speaker grille sits at the top of the front panel, above the display, it’s very small and discrete with a punched circular mesh design in a black colour to match the surround.

There’s one, flush-fitting card tray on the side and two small round openings on the top; a 3.5mm headphone jack and the other presumably a sensor or microphone.

On the back panel things are neat and tidy, with all the interesting stuff happening towards the top; a large lozenge houses a Leica-branded dual-camera sensor (complete with the Leica name emblazoned on the sensor array); it’s not flush-fitting, protruding from the bodywork by about 1mm, this is then flanked by two smaller lozenges, one a dual-LED flash module, and the other appears to be the hybrid autofocus module. Beneath the camera sensor is a small round circle recessed into the shell, this is of course the now obligatory fingerprint scanner. The recessed design makes it nice and easy to find with your finger by feel alone.

One of the most striking things here is the display, which pretty much dominates the front fascia leaving a bare minimum of space up top and around 3mm of bezel on the sides with a 77% screen-to-body ratio; Huawei’s also got the transition from glass to bodywork along the edges implemented very nicely indeed with a gentle contour and a seamless seal which not only looks good but feels very solid too.

In terms of image quality, it’s pretty accomplished as well, sure, it’s not Samsung’s Super AMOLED, but the 5.9in IPS LCD and its 1080p FHD resolution manages to offer up a respectable 373ppi pixel density which, to the naked eye at normal viewing distances, is not exactly lacking in clarity or sharpness. The contrast is good, and colour is punchy, while viewing angles are also nice and wide.

White purity is ok, though by default I noticed a slight yellowish tint, however, Huawei has sensibly included a software menu which allows you to pick between default, cold, and warm colour settings, as well as to manually pick your own hue on a colour wheel. With enough tweaking it’s not too difficult to get things looking “better” according to your own perceptions, but don’t expect 100% colour accuracy here.

We will be continuing to update this reveiw with new sections in the coming days - stay tuned for the latest verdicts on other features, from the processor to battery, camera, and everything in between!