In recent months, Huawei has taken over Xiaomi’s limelight when it comes to premium, affordable phones. Their recent release, the Nexus 6P – which they made in conjunction with Google – is often touted as one of the best Nexus phones ever made.
When I was given the opportunity to have a preview of their latest flagship, I couldn’t say no.
Huawei has mastered the art of providing a top-notch unboxing experience that we would normally expect of other more premium brands.
The Mate 8 is a gigantic 6-inch monster phablet with a full metal body. While packing tons of new features, it weighs exactly the same as its predecessor, the Mate 7, at just 185g. Photo © Calixto Tay.
After lifting the front layer, you are presented with three neatly organised boxes, each with a different piece of accessory.
You’ll find three boxes of accessories. Photo © Calixto Tay.
You’ll only appreciate how huge the screen is when you hold the phone in your end. The screen comes very close to the edge of the phone on the left and right, while the rather thin bezel at the top and bottom gives the impression that the screen is much larger than it really is. Photo © Calixto Tay.
The screen rocks a Full HD, 1920 x 1080 resolution IPS display. There’s a fingerprint sensor lock at the back, which works as fast as the one on Nexus 6P. Battery is a crazy 4000mah.
A look at the design of the speak grills. Photo © Calixto Tay.
One think I dislike though is the design of the speaker grills at the bottom of the phone. Personally, I prefer the stereo front-facing speaker design that Huawei employed on the Nexus 6P, which allows for a much better movie and gaming audio experience.
The back of the phone. Photo © Calixto Tay.
The back of the phone shows off the Mate 8’s unibody design heritage. The smooth curve of the back makes the phone extremely easy to hold, while also producing a very nice color gradient which I absolutely adore under certain lighting conditions.
Huawei claims that their inhouse HiSilicon Kirin 950 processor makes the Mate 8 the fastest Android phone in the world today. The Kirin 950 is an octa-core processor with 4x Cortex A53 clock at 1.8GHz, 4x Cortex A72 clocked at 2.3GHz.
To get a sense of how fast the Mate 8 is, compared to Huawei’s previous masterpiece, the Nexus 6P, I’ve put together a short (non-scientific video) showing the launch speed for various popular apps, such as SG BusLeh, SG TrafficLeh and CPF Starter on both phones.
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