While the rest of the "big fish" tend to save their smartphone announcements for private events or Mobile World Congress, Huawei has constantly delivered new handsets at CES. In 2016, things have not changed, as Huawei announced the Mate 8 and the Honor 5X.
Although we haven"t yet had time to explore the Honor 5X, we did get some quality time with the Mate 8. The Mate 8 is a wonderful handset that offers a refined design and elegant build. Although the handset does offer a large 6-inch 1080p display, it still feels good in hand, thanks to the near bezel-less display.
As for the software, the Mate 8 runs a skinned version of Android 6.0, which is incredibly rare and felt speedy in general navigation. One area that we will keep an eye on (in our review), is the camera, where things seemed a bit sluggish when shooting with the 16MP rear camera.
As you know from our previous post, the Mate 8 will come in two variants, with the only difference being the RAM that will see either a 3GB or 4GB setup depending on which you choose. Just to reiterate, the full specifications for the Mate 8 have been listed below.
Huawei Mate 8 specifications:
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6-inch 1080p display
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Huawei Kirin 950 (octa-core 2.3GHz x 4 + 1.8Ghz x 4 + i5 co-processor (ARM Cortex-A72 / Mali)
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3GB / 4GB RAM (depending on configuration)
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16MP camera, 8MP front-facing
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4,000mAh battery with Rapid Charging
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Fingerprint reader
While this is just a first impression, we will have a full review of the unit in the coming weeks.