Huawei launched yesterday the Huawai Mate 9 and a special version designed by Porsche, the Mate 9 Porsche Edition shown below.

The Mate 9 costs 699 euros and the special Porsche version 1,349 euros. The standard version comes with a 5.9 inch 1080p screen, 4gb ram and 64gb storage and micro SD card support. The flash version has a smaller 5.5 inch QHD display, 6gb ram, 256gb storage and no micro SD card support, the fingerprint sensor on the front, capacitive menu buttons and a curved edge screen. It also has Porsche Design branding. Both phones come with the new dual camera setup co engineered with Leica, a 20mp monochrome sensor and a 12mp RGB colour sensor. OIS is present too but only for the 12mp lens. Both lenses are f/2.2. Both feature a 4,000 mAH battery and Huawei’s super fast charging system that fully charges the battery in 90 mins. Out of the box the phones come with Android 7.0 and Huawei new EMUI v5. The processor is the latest in house Kirin 960.

On paper the Mate 9 plays it safe with a familiar design. However, the phone does come with many of the key aspects to make a good phone but in today’s world a 5.9 inch screen really should be QHD. At 1080p, this means you are only looking at 373 PPI. On the other hand the Porsche Edition has a smaller 5.5 inch display and a QHD screen, yet costs twice as much as the standard Mate 9. This is crazy pricing and out of order when curved display phones from other companies are available for around £650 or less.

I will be interested to see how the camera performs and I am sure the creative options with the new dual lens layout will be excellent. However, I do not think it is acceptable for a flagship phone not to have HDR as an automatic option. With the Mate 9 you need to select it in the camera mode option menu. This is where the powerful processing done by the Google Pixel makes it so good and from a quick camera comparison I have seen between the 2 phones, the Pixel was the clear champion on photo quality.

However, it is early days and I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these phones and test it properly. What do you think?

Now enjoy the videos on the new devices.

The Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Edition –

The Huawei Mate 9 –