The rumour mill in the build up to IFA has officially started. In the Sony camp we have already seen the earlier gossip, but now we’re hearing from Huawei too. They have a busy schedule lined up over the next few months.
First they’ll be working with Alphabet (nee Google) on the next Nexus device. Their sub-brand Honor is also busy beavering away on a rumoured device with a pop-up camera, and now there is talk of a new Mate being added to the portfolio.
Last year at IFA we saw the launch of the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 and this year we are potentially going to see its big brother, albeit without the Ascend name. This seems to have been ditched by all accounts. A few teaser banners have been spotted on various sites and social networking circles.
Could we see the next device being called the Mate S instead of the Mate 8? If the above banner is anything to go by then it is a possibility.
This one, when translated, means Unique (apparently). However, we can clearly see the “S” moniker here as well, so that may have some relevance.
As to what the device will look like, well we may have already seen it in a recently hidden video, but here are some pictures of the purported device.
As we can see, on the back they have made minimal attempts to disguise the branding of the device and it has got some similarities to the Ascend Mate 7 from last year.
We hope to see some pretty high-end specs here with a 6″ 2K display with 490 PPI. Also expected is Huawei’s latest in-house processor – the Kirin 950. This is reportedly a match for the Snapdragon 820 (to be seen in Q4 flagships, maybe even Q1 2016). There will be differnet versions based on RAM and internal memory, 3GB RAM with16GB memory and 4GB RAM with 64GB memory.
Camera wise we can expect it to be a 20.7 megapixel sensor, most likely the ones being used by Sony in the Xperia Z family. Of course Huawei will bundle their own features in there as well. The front camera is most likely going to be an 8 megapixel unit as this is becoming more normal for flagships now. Battery-wise we are hoping it will be bigger than the Mate 7. Lastly, the Mate 7 had one of the best fingerprint scanners (being on par with the iPhone for speed and ease of use), so I can only hope that this is carried over without too much finagling.
Bear in mind all of this is rumour at the moment, but the good news is that we will be on the ground at IFA to bring you all the latest as it happens.
I am looking forward to this as Huawei make very nice devices and this could be up there with one of their best.