Huawei Mate 9 Unboxing

The time has come to unbox Huawei’s latest and greatest phablet – the Mate 9. If you have read the launch article then you will know what to expect, but for those of you who didn’t then here are the highlights.

• Kirin 960 chipset, the world’s highest performing smartphone processor*
• EMUI 5.0, an intuitive user interface that streamlines the users’ experience with the OS
• EMUI 5.0, an intuitive user interface that streamlines the users’ experience with the OS
  SuperCharge technology that delivers a full day’s charge in 20 minutes
  Second generation Leica dual-lens camera with 12-megapixel RGB sensor, 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and Hybrid Zoom, featuring a superior 2x magnification

The phone feels great to hold in the hand and even though this is not the Porsche Design version, Huawei has by no means scrimped in the build quality. For a phone with the screen size of 5.9″ it does not feel huge and that is a testament to the honing of the engineers and design team at Huawei.

The phone features some great tech such as Dual Lens Lecia co-developed camera, one of the fastest fingerprint readers available and a ridiculously powerful new chipset from Hi-Silicon, the new Kirin 960.

We also find “Supercharge” on board which is Huawei’s own version of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge. It allows the massive 4000mAh battery to be charged to 50% in mere minutes. This allows you to get through at least a full working day without having to worry. I am yet to fully test this claim but I can say that I have been running the phone for 16 hrs from when I unboxed the device (it had 60% out of the box) and I am still on 13%!

This is awesome and even though it still doesn’t have a SIM in the phone I am expecting great things from this battery.

Here is the video of the unboxing for your viewing pleasure..

The specs of the phone are pretty impressive as well as can be seen in this list here.

One of the things that really makes this phone is the camera and I can honestly say that it performs. I have had a little bit of time to use the phone today and during that time I got the below shots.

I have to say that as far as the camera goes this has really impressed me. Now, bear in mind I am coming into this after using the Xperia XZ for the past few weeks. I was impressed with the camera on the Xperia and the Huawei Mate 9 may be a very good match for the Xperia XZ, especially if these first few shots are anything to go by. I love the fact that you can easily adjust the focus point during the taking of the shot, but also and perhaps more importantly afterwards. Also that 2x Zoom is a real bonus especially as there’s with very little loss of quality. My one complaint is that if you are using the camera in widescreen format (which I tend to use most of the time), the megapixel count drops to 9 which is a shame.

Another big surprise, and one that I have been harping on about for a bit, is the fact that the launcher now has the option to have either no app drawer iPhone style (boo) or you can enable an app drawer (woohoo). Add this to the fact that you are running Android 7.0.1 with an EMUI 5.0 layer on top and I am actually enjoying the UX of the phone a lot. I am even enjoying using the infamous “Knuckle touch”.

Overall I am very happy with my first 48hrs of using the Mate 9 and I am looking forward to getting into some serious testing.