Huawei Mate 8
Huawei Mate 8
Huawei unveiled its new flagship, the Mate 8 at CES 2016 earlier this month and the company launched the new smartphone officially in the Middle East region a couple of days ago. PC Magazine received a review unit days before the actual launch of the device in the region and we were able to put the device through a series of benchmarks. At the end of it, we were quite impressed by the performance of the Huawei Mate 8.
The pricing of the Mate 8 starts at AED 1899. We got the premium model for review, which comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB of built-in storage, and is available at a price of AED 2199. One of the things we like of the Mate 8 is its all-metal build quality, which is excellent.
The Mate 8 is squarer and a little more formal than the curves you see on other flagships. Having said that, the device is brilliant in terms of the design and the material used overall.
This one’s an update to the Mate 7 and Huawei has packed in loads of features to make the Mate 8 stand out of the crowd. The phone’s best feature is its super-bright 6-inch screen, which makes it terrific for reading books.
It’s only 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, though we thought the colours just popped out. The fingerprint scanner on the back is easy to reach with your forefinger, and it’s super fast and accurate.
Other features include 4GB RAM, 64GB of built-in storage, NFC, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, dual SIM and so much more. The Mate 8 comes with a 16-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel front cameras. The main 16MP camera comes with a lot of fun filters and it was able to shoot awesome pictures and videos, even under low light conditions. The selfie camera has a great little guide to make you look at the actual camera rather than down, though.
Performance-wise, the Huawei Mate 8 is a beast. In our AnTuTu benchmarks, the phone just sped through all the tests, blazing fast. The 2.3GHz Kirin 930 processor does help offer excellent productivity performance with good gaming frame rates.
This is the first smartphone from Huawei and available in this regionc we’ve seen, which comes with Android Marshmallow 6.0. Huawei also adds its very own EMUI skin on top of it. Huawei’s EMUI gets rid of Android’s app tray — all your icons are on the home screens to make it simpler and easier for you to browse through apps.
The Mate 8 also comes with a bunch of software features including a neat automatic defragmentation service that continues optimising system performance. Additionally, the Mate 8 also features a split-screen mode that allows you to multitask between apps.
The Huawei Mate 8 also comes with a gigantic 4000mAh battery and in our battery drain tests, we were able to clock around 1.5 days of battery life on a single charge. The smartphone also comes with a rapid charger that claims to charge your battery to a full-day’s worth in just 30 minutes.
The Huawei Mate 8 is a very able flagship that can give competitors a run for their money. In the current crop of flagships out there, Huawei’s Mate 8 emerges as a worthy contender. This one’s a performance beast you can’t ignore and hence we crown it with the PC Magazine Editors’ Choice award.
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