The question on everyone’s mind is when can I get it and how much does it cost.
Luckily, the growing number of Huawei fans in the Middle East won’t have to wait long as the brand has set the regional launch date on 18 January – at 6:30PM to be precise. The regional prices, memory variations and colours will be announced then.
Huawei’s new flagship, the Mate 8 was announced at CES together with two Watch variations, a gold-coloured Nexus 6P, the MediaPad M2 10.0 and the Huawei GX8.
For all the info on Huawei’s CES announcements, head here.
I compared the new flagship to their previous one, the Mate S – one of my favourite phones.
At first glance, the new Mate 8 is a good looking device with its all-metal unibody design. It’s quite large with its 6-inch display and looks rather thick and solid from afar. When compared to the S, it’s a tiny bit bigger in size and it looks quite big and feels quite light
The 8 is thicker at 7.9mm than the slim 7.2mm S, a smudge taller at 157.1mm when compared to the 149.8mm S, and wider at 80.6mm vs the S’s 75.3mm. The 8 weighs in at 185gm when compared to the S at 156gm.
Around the edges is a familiar Huawei setup. Volume rockers on the upper right, the power button below it with SIM and memory card slots flush mounted on the left. The headphone jack is where it should be, on the top left and on the bottom between the speaker grills is a, nope not a USB Type-C port, a microUSB port.
The fun’s at the back though. On the rear is its 16MP camera, a dual flash… umm flash, and Huawei’s famous fingerprint sensor. On the front is an 8 MP 1080p camera.
Another thing you notice immediately is that its screen is a massive with slim bezels around the edges. The screen curves towards the edges, maximising phone real estate together with the tiny bezels.
On the inside
The device is powered by Huawei’s very own HiSilicon Kirin 950 processor, an upgrade from the processors in the S (Kirin 935) and the honor 7.
Its memory options still need to be clarified based on local availability, but on display were the 32GB with 3GB RAM and 64 with 4GB RAM. A 128GB version was nowhere in sight. We’ll confirm this as soon as we know more. Luckily, expandable memory of up to 128GB is supported.
Lastly, the main feature that’s got everyone excited is its battery. It's 4,000mAh battery to be precise. Huawei claims that it can last up to two days with normal use. We’ll put it through its paces as soon as we get a long-term device in for review.
It also features the quick charge feature – which is nice. And reverse charging through an external cable – which isn’t nice if you friends find out and guilt-trip you into reverse charging their dead phones.
