A year after the announcement of its 6-inch flagship phablet Ascend Mate 7, Huawei introduced its successor – the Mate 8 smartphone. The new product received a premium design and one of the most powerful hardware to date. A detailed review of the new device from Huawei in our material today.
Design and Construction
Huawei is positioning its new smartphone as a gadget for business people, and the design of the device emphasizes this. It would not be a shame to take such a smartphone out of the pocket of an expensive suit at a presentation or negotiation.
On the other hand, the device in its rather large metal case looks quite brutal, not only because of the all-metal case, but also because of the dimensions: almost 16 cm in length and 8 cm in width and weighing 185 g.
It is worth noting that the manufacturer tried, if possible, not to increase the size of the device: the smartphone does not have side frames, but the 6-inch display does not allow the Mate 8 to easily fit into any pocket.
In the metal body of the phablet, plastic inserts are noticeable at the bottom and top to solve the problem of signal shielding.
The front panel is completely covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 4. There are no physical or capacitive keys under the screen. The buttons appear only when the screen is turned on and disappear when they are not needed, for example, in games and when watching videos. This solution allowed us to save a couple of extra millimeters in the length of the case.
On the right side panel there is a power button, as well as a volume rocker.
There is only one slot on the left side of the case, but it can accommodate 2 cards at once – nanoSIM and microSD. If you need to install 2 SIM cards, you will have to sacrifice a microSD card. Quite often, Samsung resorts to the same measures in its smartphones, but such compromises in top-end devices are a little frustrating.
At the bottom end of the smartphone there is a connector for microUSB 2.0, as well as a speaker grille, so that when listening to music, the sound is not muffled, even if the smartphone is lying on the table. At the top end of the device there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a microphone.
At the top of the front panel there is a speaker, to the right of it is a front camera module with a flash. To the left of the speaker is the smartphone status indicator. If the device is charged and there are no new notifications, then this indicator is invisible.
Back panel. The Mate 8 has a round main camera module with dual flash and a fingerprint scanner. Personally, I like this design better than the squarer elements on the back of the Mate 7.
The case itself also received slight roundings at the corners, and the back panel has a barely noticeable thickening in the middle, making it convenient to take the smartphone from a table or other horizontal surfaces. The gadget also lies quite comfortably in the hand, even for a device of such dimensions.
Screen
Unlike last year's Mate S, the smartphone does not have an AMOLED display. There is a 6-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels. According to Huawei, 2K displays in modern smartphones are overkill, and in general, the Mate 8 confirms this. With a pixel density of 327 ppi, the fonts on the screen are clear, the picture looks bright and contrasty.
Quite often, various smartphone displays have a noticeable “cool” or “warm” tint. Huawei has given users the ability to customize the screen color temperature as they wish.
The display supports up to 10 simultaneous touches, as well as glove mode. I would like to advise those who decide to use it: press harder or choose thinner gloves. You can perform some simple actions like answering or rejecting a call while wearing gloves, but to fully work with your smartphone you will have to take them off.
One of the most attractive aspects of the smartphone, besides the design, of course, is the 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 950 chipset of Huawei's own production. Kirin 950 with Big.Little architecture has 4 high-performance Cortex-A72 cores (clocked at 2.3 GHz) and 4 energy-efficient Cortex-A53 cores (clocked at 1.8 GHz).
The device uses a Mali-T880 MP4 chip as a graphics accelerator. In addition, a special i5 coprocessor processes information coming from the smartphone’s sensors. Kirin 950 also has support for high-speed LTE Cat.6 networks.
At the time of its announcement in November last year, the Kirin 950 chip scored just over 80,000 points in AnTuTu. The smartphone in my hands scores 91,114 points in AnTuTu, which allows it to outperform competitors such as Meizu Pro 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 Edge, and Xiaomi flagships in the benchmark rating.
Of course, at the MWC 2016 exhibition held not long ago, more powerful mobile new products with 6 GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 820 chip were presented, but all of them have not yet gone on sale (Le Max Pro with the first batch of a thousand copies does not count), so that Huawei Mate 8 can rightfully be called one of the most productive smartphones today.
The device is available in versions with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of flash memory or 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal memory. The device supports memory cards up to 128 GB.
We had a 3 GB version of the smartphone in our review, and during a week of use we did not notice any slowdowns, including when working with “heavy” and graphics-demanding mobile “toys” like Asphalt 8.
In addition to standard communication modules (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), the gadget, as befits a modern flagship, includes a module for NFC contactless payments. For now, a Belarusian user is unlikely to be able to use it often, but it may come in handy in the future.
Usage
In addition, Huawei has equipped its phablet with fast charging capability (Quick Charge version 3.0). According to the manufacturer, the gadget charges to 100% in 2.5 hours. It took me a little over 3 hours.
Conclusion
The new Huawei Mate 8 smartphone should appeal to users who are looking for large screens, style and functionality in their smartphones. It should also appeal to avid tech fans. The latter will appreciate the various additional options of the smartphone, as well as good autonomy and productive hardware. Those who pay a lot of attention to the camera will also have something to play with in the new phablet - a large number of settings and the light painting mode give the opportunity to experiment. In general, my impressions of using the new Huawei Mate 8 are purely positive. This is a gadget for those who value their image and are willing to pay from 11.5 million Bel. rubles for its maintenance.
Nadezhda Abramchuk
The Ascend sub-brand no longer exists - the predecessor of the Mate 8, we recall, was called Ascend Mate 7 - now Huawei has gotten rid of the additional word in the name as unnecessary. And this is for the best - why create entities. Mate 7, let us remind you, was a very successful model - it was with it that Huawei began to be perceived as a truly serious smartphone manufacturer, not only in terms of the number of handsets sold, but also in terms of the level of products produced. Very good both in terms of characteristics and impressions of working with it, the Mate 7 sagged a little except in the performance of the proprietary Kirin 925 platform, and did not have a sufficiently high-quality camera.
In the fall, we received the development of the ideas of Mate 7 in a slightly more compact Mate S model with an improved system-on-chip, AMOLED display, but at the same time a less capacious battery. Now let's talk about a full update of the Mate 7 - with the same six-inch screen (again IPS, again Full HD), about the same battery, but with improvements in all other characteristics. Are Apple iPhone 6s Plus and Samsung GALAXY Note 5 worth it? be afraid of a newcomer - or is the Chinese flagship not a threat to them?
⇡ Specifications
| Huawei Mate 8 | Huawei Mate S | Samsung GALAXY Note 5 | Google Nexus 6P | LG V10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display | 6 inches, IPS, 1920 × 1080 pixels, 368 ppi, capacitive multi-touch | 5.5 inches, AMOLED, 1920 × 1080 pixels, 401 ppi, capacitive multi-touch | 5.7 inches, AMOLED, 2560 × 1440 pixels, 515 ppi, capacitive multi-touch, S Pen stylus support | 5.7 inches, AMOLED, 2560 × 1440 pixels, 515 ppi, capacitive multi-touch | 5.7 inches, 2560 × 1440, IPS, 515 ppi, capacitive multi-touch |
| Additional display | No | No | No | No | 2.09 inches, 1040 × 160 pixels, IPS; Gesture support |
| Air gap | No | No | No | No | No |
| Protective glass | Corning Gorilla Glass 4 | Corning Gorilla Glass 4 | Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on both sides | Corning Gorilla Glass 4 | Corning Gorilla Glass 3 |
| CPU | HiSilicon Kirin 950 (four ARM Cortex-A72 cores, 2.3 GHz; four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.8 GHz) + IntelliSense i5 coprocessor | HiSilicon Kirin 935 (four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.5 GHz; four ARM Cortex-A53e cores, 2.2 GHz) | Samsung Exynos 7420 (four ARM Cortex-A57 cores, 2.1 GHz; four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.5 GHz) | Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.55 GHz + two ARM Cortex-A57 cores, 2 GHz) | Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 (four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.4 GHz + two ARM Cortex-A57 cores, 1.82 GHz) |
| Graphics controller | Mali-T880 MP4 | Mali-T628MP4 | Mali-T760 MP8 | Adreno 430 | Adreno 418 |
| RAM | 3/4 GB | 3 GB | 4 GB | 3 GB | 4 GB |
| Flash memory | 32/64 GB | 32/64/128 GB | 32/64 GB | 32/64/128 GB | 64 GB |
| Memory card support | There is | There is | No | No | There is |
| Connectors | microUSB, mini-jack 3.5 mm | microUSB, mini-jack 3.5 mm | microUSB, mini-jack 3.5 mm | USB-C, 3.5 mm minijack | microUSB, 3.5 mm minijack |
| SIM cards | two nanoSIM | two nanoSIM | one nanoSIM | one nanoSIM | two nanoSIM |
| Cellular connection 2G | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | |
| Cellular 3G | UMTS 800/850/900/1900/2100 MHz | UMTS 850/900/1900/2100 MHz | HSPA 850/900/1900/2100 MHz | HSDPA 850/900/1700/1800/1900/2100 MHz | HDSPA 850/900/1900/2100 MHz |
| Cellular 4G | FDD LTE Cat. 6 (up to 300 Mbit/s): bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 17, 19, 20, 26, 38, 39, 40 | FDD LTE Cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbit/s): bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 17, 20, 38, 39, 40, 41 | FDD LTE Cat. 9 (up to 450/50 Mbit/s): bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26 | LTE Cat. 6 (up to 300 Mbit/s): bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 17, 19, 20, 28, 38, 39, 40, 41 | LTE Cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbit/s), bands 1, 3, 7 |
| WiFi | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac | 802.11b/g/n | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac |
| Bluetooth | 4.2 | 4.0 | 4.2 | 4.2 | 4.1 |
| NFC | There is | There is | There is | There is | There is |
| IR port | No | No | No | No | There is |
| Navigation | GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou | GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS (BeiDou for the Chinese market) | GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou | GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou | GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou |
| Sensors | Illumination, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope, magnetometer (digital compass), barometer | Illumination, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope, magnetometer (digital compass) | Illumination, proximity, accelerometer, barometer, magnetometer (digital compass), heart rate sensor | Illumination, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope, magnetometer (digital compass), pedometer | |
| Light, proximity sensor, pressure sensor, accelerometer/gyroscope, magnetometer (digital compass), pedometer | |||||
| Fingerprint's scanner | There is | There is | There is | There is | There is |
| Main camera | 16 MP, ƒ/2.0, autofocus, optical stabilization, LED flash, Full HD video recording | 13 MP, ƒ/2.0, autofocus, optical stabilization, LED flash, Full HD video recording | 16 MP, ƒ/1.9, laser autofocus, LED flash, optical stabilization, 4K video recording | 12.3 MP, ƒ/2.0, laser autofocus, LED flash, 4K video recording | 16 MP, ƒ/1.8, laser autofocus, LED flash, optical stabilization, Full HD video recording |
| Front-camera | 8 MP, fixed focus | 8 MP, fixed focus | 5 MP, fixed focus | 8 MP, fixed focus | 5 MP, fixed focus, 80° viewing angle + 5 MP, fixed focus, 120° viewing angle |
| Nutrition | Non-removable 15.2 Wh battery (4000 mAh, 3.8 V) | Non-removable battery 10.26 Wh (2700 mAh, 3.8 V) |
Non-removable 13.11 Wh battery (3450 mAh, 3.8 V) | Removable 11.4 Wh battery (3000 mAh, 3.8 V) | |
| Size | 157.1 × 80.6 × 7.9 mm | 137 × 72 × 9.8 mm | 153 × 76 × 7.6 mm | 159.3 × 77.8 × 7.3 mm | 160 × 80 × 8.6 mm |
| Weight | 185 grams | 156 grams | 171 grams | 178 grams | 192 grams |
| Housing protection | No | No | No | No | No |
| operating system | Android 6.0 Marshmallow, own EMUI 4.0 shell | Android 5.1 Lolliipop, own EMUI 3.1 shell | Android 5.1 Lolliipop, Samsung's own TouchWiz shell | Android 6.0 Marshmallow | Android 5.1 Lolliipop |
| Current price | 600-700 euros (not yet sold in Russia) | 41,000 rubles (for version with 64 GB of memory) | 44,000-49,000 rubles (depending on memory capacity) | 49,990-56,990 rubles (depending on memory capacity) | 50,990 rubles |
⇡ Appearance and ergonomics
The design has not changed too much compared to the Mate 7 - the general outlines remain the same, all the changes affected the details. But it no longer occurs to compare the device with any HTC. Firstly, the Taiwanese company’s smartphones themselves have changed a lot, just take a look at the One M9+ or One A9. Secondly, the younger models of the Honor line (for example, 5X) have adopted many of the solutions - and now this style can already be called proprietary to Huawei, if, of course, you can discern some “family” features in it. Huawei smartphones are nice, but, subjectively, they still lack some kind of branded character.
Huawei Mate 8, front panel: above the display there is an earpiece, a front camera, a light sensor and a miniature status indicator
Huawei Mate 8, rear panel: at the top there is a camera module with a dual LED flash, below it is a fingerprint scanner; above and below we see plastic inserts above the antennas
The Mate 8 is no exception, although formally there is nothing to complain about here: the body is made of metal and tempered glass, the assembly is excellent, the colors are interesting (gold, silver, gray, chocolate) - but can you distinguish Huawei from other top smartphones at first glance? ? However, similar claims can now be made against many people, starting with Apple.
Huawei Mate 8, top edge: second microphone hole and 3.5 mm mini-jack
There are practically no frames around the display - due to this, we managed to save a lot of space and the Mate 8 turned out to be more compact than many smartphones with a smaller display diagonal.
It has also become even thinner than the Mate 7, with the camera protruding less from the body. Actually it turned out funny. Last time they announced a thickness of 7.9 millimeters, now we are told that they managed to reduce it by 0.4 mm - and it turned out... 7.9 millimeters. Amazing things are happening, almost on a Bulgakov scale. However, just as you couldn’t make any complaints about the Mate 7 - you’re supposedly too fat - you can’t find fault with the Mate 8 either. It is rather too thin - holding it is not very comfortable because of this; but the ease of use of 6-inch smartphones is generally a separate topic that can be debated forever.
Huawei Mate 8, right side: standard set of volume rocker and power key located under it
Huawei Mate 8, left side: single slot for both nanoSIM cards and microSD card
Other differences from the Mate 7: the main speaker has moved to the bottom edge, which now does not overlap if the smartphone is lying on the back; reduced “swelling” of the rear panel; modified form of the camera module and fingerprint scanner; a single slot for two SIM cards and a memory card (previously there was one SIM card and two slots).
We made it. Smartphone manufacturers are now competing to see which fingerprint scanner is more accurate and faster - at least this is what Huawei boasted at the presentation of the device in Las Vegas. And she boasted about it. The Mate 8 uses Android 6.0 with a scanner supported by default; you don’t even need to create your own software.
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The scanner works very quickly and accurately, allowing you to unlock your device in the blink of an eye. It is noteworthy that it is suitable not only for unlocking: it is also possible to take photographs by touching the sensor, which is especially convenient when taking selfies. But you can’t scroll through photos in the gallery, like on the Mate S, for example. The scanner remains primarily a convenient way to protect a smartphone; its other uses are secondary.
⇡ Software
We have already written in detail about Android 6.0 in the review of the first smartphone with a pure version of this OS -
Rising to new heights with the successful launch of Google Nexus 6P, consumers around the world are becoming more aware of the company thanks to the value phone. Huawei's remarkable 2015 launch continues in the new year with the announcement of the latest smartphone in the Mate line, the Huawei Mate 8, at CES 2016.
It's been over a year since its predecessor was released, and the level has been raised by the Nexus 6P, so there are great expectations for the Mate 8. Like the recent Mate S, you might be a little skeptical about its value based on its starting price of €599 (~$650).
Package contains:
- Huawei Mate 8 smartphone
- 2A charger
- Micro USB cable
- SIM Removal Tool
- Headphones
- Protective case
- User guide
Huawei has created a beautiful all-metal phone.
There is no doubt about this at present. Huawei is able to play on par with established industry brands like HTC when it comes to delivering a quality all-metal design. The Mate 8 is a beautifully crafted all-metal design with fine edges that shares many of the design features seen in the Mate series. The 6-inch screen does not feel bulky; it is quite thin and light. In no case does this mean that the device can be controlled with one hand, but aesthetics make it possible to neutralize the importance of dimensions.
Many design details have been carefully thought out, such as the placement of the SIM slot, which combines microSD, nanoSIM and microSIM slots into a single unit.
There is a built-in fingerprint sensor on the back of the case, the same as the Nexus 6P. It's surprisingly accurate and responsive, plus it has good placement when we hold the phone.
Display
The same oversaturated colors, but with more powerful brightness.
The Mate 8 comes with a 6-inch IPS LCD display with 1080p resolution. The resulting pixel density of 367 ppi is certainly sufficient for reading small text from a normal distance.
Thankfully, the display's brightness has improved significantly over the Mate S. In particular, its peak brightness reaches 492 nits, which improves screen readability in direct sunlight. Color reproduction remains on par with the Mate S, unlike the more accurate panels on the Ascend Mate 7. So colors look oversaturated, which some people won't mind, but the resulting picture doesn't always look natural.
Interface and functionality
EMUI 4.0 resorts to a 'bigger is better' strategy, but it can appear disorganized.
The Mate 8 comes with a new EMUI 4.0 interface on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Having the latest build of Android is great news for fans, but the core UI still prides itself on being feature-rich. Whether this is good or bad depends on who you talk to. Huawei is making every effort, but EMUI 4.0 still lags a little behind Samsung and LG's interpretations.
Visually, the interface is present in all relevant areas, such as dialing and the calendar. Functionally, the shell has many features used by power users, such as one-handed mode, multitasking and gesture controls, but they are not as refined as we would like. For example, multitasking is limited to just a handful of native apps, a far cry from the more diverse support seen in TouchWiz.
While the core Android features are present, EMUI 4.0 is an attempt to have Android with a bunch of over-the-top specs, but the end result lacks cohesion and clear direction.
Performance
Kirin-950 is a leader in test results.
Huawei promises to be a formidable force because of its unique 64-bit chip The in-house Kirin 950 produces impressive results with the Mate 8. Our particular review unit has 3GB random access memory, but there is another model with 4 GB. In any case, the benchmark results are through the roof.
In reality, every action will be accompanied by a pleasant level of responsiveness, but performance is not as close to the Nexus 6P with stock Android. Still, the smartphone continues to amaze with its above-average graphics processing performance.
In various performance tests, Huawei Mate 8 performed better than Samsung Galaxy Note 5, LG V10 and Huawei Ascend Mate7.
Internal memory 32 GB, in another version - 64 GB, there is room for memory expansion - a microSD slot.
Camera
You'll enjoy its many shooting and control modes, but the camera quality leaves a lot to be desired.
The love and care is evident in the abundance of camera hardware on the phone, which features a 16-megapixel 1/2.8” Sony IMX298 CMOS sensor along with an F/2.0 lens aperture, phase detection autofocus, three-axis optical image stabilization and dual-LED flash. The 8-megapixel front camera is more than enough for selfies. Even with the dreamy combination, the only chink in the armor is the fact that video recording doesn't exceed 1080p resolution.
In addition to a rich camera system, Huawei Mate 8 launches a variety of camera interfaces, largely repeating its EMUI shell. There's an extensive range of tools, shooting modes, and a manual mode to please advanced users, but for all its photo prowess, video recording is still largely automatic once the record button is pressed. Indeed, there is manual control over preset parameters, such as focus, but once recording starts, the parameters cannot be changed while shooting.
Image quality
The hardware sounds amazing on paper, but in reality, performance will be average at best. Scenes with plenty of light are handled beautifully by the camera, with a fair amount of detail and mostly neutral colors being stamped out. Walking indoors, the artificial light casts a noticeable greenish cast on our footage, while details become significantly washed out. And while noise levels are kept to a minimum, in low light the lack of detail in photos just makes everything look muted. Plus autofocus sometimes becomes unstable.
Video quality
You'd think that a smartphone of this caliber would be capable of 4K resolution when recording, but that's not the case. In general, its 1080p samples did not impress with the appearance of their calm tones - there simply is no significant presence of fine details. However, autofocus is fast and audio recording is mostly clear. The standard 30fps mode has stabilization, but the camera is very prone to a shaky, jelly-like effect when moving.
Multimedia
Nothing to complain about.
If you can stomach the display's color inaccuracies (or at least partially correct it by setting the white balance better), you'll find that the 6-inch Mate 8 is well-suited for media playback, like most high-end phablets.
Both video and music players are fairly basic and offer little more than you'd expect from built-in solutions. The gallery is actually a very powerful photo editor, combining pixelation functions for selective parts of the image and numerous filters that would normally be found elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the built-in speaker is not enough; its maximum volume is 71.4 dB. It is sufficient for small spaces and produces a neutral sound tone. Using the DTS-enabled headphone jack allows you to enjoy rich, rich sound.
Call quality
Listening through the ear goes without any problems, mainly because voices are clear and deep in tone, and also because the optional "loud voice" mode provides more volume for voices. However, on the other hand, the microphones used to capture our voices seem to give off a robotic tone to our callers. Lastly, the speaker can be used in moderately noisy environments - it simply won't cope in extremely noisy environments.
Battery
Long battery life.
You won't believe the slim profile, but Huawei has somehow managed to cram a 4,000mAh battery inside the Mate 8. The battery will easily last longer than a day. By the end of the day, the phone's charge level is usually in the range of 40% - 50%. And while the charging time of 156 minutes is not the fastest compared to flagships, we must keep in mind that the smartphone has a significantly larger battery than many of its contemporaries. 
conclusions
Huawei's sudden rise is obvious, and there's no denying its dramatic changes in just one year. Huawei Mate 8 is another device in the portfolio that shows that the company is not backing down anytime soon. The device quickly established itself as a premium phablet with Marshmallow on board. To be fair, there are some great things: premium all-metal construction, long battery life, and exceptional performance, but the high price makes it a tough sell.
The device is already available abroad at a starting price of €599 ($643). We already have several reviews of smartphones that have better features and performance, plus a few that are lower in price.
PROS
- Elegant all-metal construction
- Thin and light for its size
- Above average battery life
- Tons of features with EMUI 4.0
MINUSES
- Disorganized user interface
- Weak built-in speaker
- Greenish tints in indoor shots
- Shaky effect when recording video
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The Chinese company Huawei is pushing forward with all its might to compete with brands such as Apple and Samsung, and ultimately become a trendsetter in the smartphone market. Until recently, it was impossible to even mention this, but today we are holding in our hands the premium metal phablet Huawei Mate 8, which is practically not inferior in price to the sacred iPhone 6s Plus and Samsung Galaxy S7 edge.
Huawei does not skimp on epithets when describing the advantages of the Mate 8’s exterior. There is an all-metal body, a 2.5D diamond-cut screen, and sandblasting of the surface - in general, everything is first-class. One cannot but agree with this - the device is truly of very high quality, truly beautiful, technologically advanced, and exudes the aura of an expensive business item. But let's be honest: its design is ordinary, there is no zest, no signature character.
It's too similar to last year's Huawei Ascend Mate7. Moreover, since Huawei is still a successful company, many other Chinese manufacturers boldly borrow its ideas, and therefore there are a lot of smartphones similar to our hero today. They'll even have the same fingerprint scanners on the back. By the way, compared to last year’s model, the scanner depth has been reduced by 0.45 mm, notes Huawei in the hope that we will all immediately take crispy bills out of our pockets.
Huawei Mate 8 is a classic phablet with a classic large IPS screen with a diagonal of 6 inches. A little more and there would be a tablet! At the same time, the device itself is by no means gigantic - the screen occupies 85% of the front panel area, there are practically no frames.
The resolution is 1920x1080, the density is 368 ppi, and this is not as much as we would like, because we are dealing with a flagship phablet, and we would like Quad HD. Moreover, if you use Huawei Mate 8 with virtual reality glasses, you will see pixels. To be fair, we’ll say that the pixels are visible even at higher resolutions, but we repeat – we have a flagship phablet in our hands, and you naturally expect the highest possible numbers from it.
There are no comments about the picture quality. The color rendition is true, the brightness is enough so that even in sunny weather you can watch videos, and even more so surf websites, text with WhatsApp, walk on Google Maps and “swipe” girls on Tinder during your lunch break on a bench.
Performance
Huawei Mate 8 is built on the proprietary HiSilicon Kirin 950 processor. And this is complete stuffing! An eight-core chipset based on ARM Cortex-A72, made using a 16-nanometer FinFET Plus process technology based on transistors with a 3D structure, flavored with a Mali-T880 GPU – sounds serious, doesn’t it?
When the Huawei Mate 8 with 3 GB of RAM was just born, it received the laurels of the most powerful smartphone in the world, leaving behind all competitors on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 and Samsung Exynos 7420. Now, when 2016 processors rule the roost, Huawei Mate 8 is already slipping somewhat in the ranking, but still falls into the top 10 most productive AnTuTu smartphones, taking the last tenth place.
Let's get a look. Having scored 91,665 points in AnTuTu, our hero was ahead of Samsung Galaxy Note 5, iPhone 6, Meizu Pro 5, Samsung Galaxy S6, i.e. the deadliest devices of 2015! However, today it is inferior to Meizu Pro 6, LG G5, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s and, of course, Samsung Galaxy S7 edge. Does this mean anything to the average user like you and me?
Absolutely nothing! The device simply flies and will continue to fly for a very, very long time. Absolutely all games run at maximum graphic settings - at least Modern Combat 5: Eclipse. What more could you want?
But let's look at the camera. Huawei Mate 8 became the first smartphone to receive a 16-megapixel Sony IMX298 photo module with f/2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus and four-axis image stabilization. Matrix area 1/2.8 inches, pixel size 1.2 microns.
Indicators are worse than those of the iPhone 6s Plus! Yes, the pixel size is approximately the same, but the aperture is 0.2 larger. However, let's see how Huawei Mate 8 shoots.
In sunny weather, pictures are sharp, with a wide dynamic range and ideal exposure - without gaps in the shadows or white spots in the highlights.
At night, of course, there is noise. This is not to say that the camera produces any extraordinary results.
Macro photography demonstrates all the delights of high-aperture optics - Huawei Mate 8 can create beautiful bokeh. True, sharpness when shooting a moving object, be it a bee or a flower swaying in the wind, is not so easy.
An attempt to film the kittens playing in the room was unsuccessful. The miracle did not happen - the kittens were smeared, and nothing could be done about it.
Overall, the Huawei Mate 8 camera left a good impression. It's a pleasure to shoot with, it produces beautiful, sharp images. Macro photography is a particular pleasure, but only if there is a static object in the frame, otherwise you can get upset. The lack of flagship features is also a little frustrating: there is no laser autofocus and you cannot shoot 4K video.
Other features
Experts are sure that today there is a crisis of expensive things. People are in no hurry to buy expensive flagships because performance alone is not enough to convince them of the rationality of the purchase. Realizing this, manufacturers are trying to endow their devices with interesting little things.
Fingerprint's scanner. In Huawei Mate 8 it is located on the back side. It works at lightning speed, identifies the owner in just 0.5 seconds, and allows you to lock and unlock not only your smartphone, but also folders with personal content. If necessary, it will remember several fingerprints.
EMUI interface. Yes, Huawei Mate 8 runs on the Android platform, but the Chinese covered it with a proprietary interface that made communicating with the smartphone as simple as possible. Plus, there are some interesting things in it.
For example, control your smartphone with “knuckle movements.” We drew the letter “C” and launched the camera. Draw a line across the screen with your knuckle and turn on the two-window mode. By the way, note that this mode only works with some applications. For example, you can watch videos and photos at the same time, but you won’t be able to watch videos and surf in the Chrome browser.
The control button is another feature of the EMUI interface. It hangs on top of most of the screen, you can drag it back and forth and use it to open a menu with the buttons “Back”, “Work screen”, “Recent”, “Lock screen”, “Optimization”.
Supports two SIM cards. It seems that this is no longer a new product today, but not many flagship smartphones provide such luxury. Of the two SIM cards in Huawei Mate 8, only one can work in LTE Cat.6 networks, while the second can only work in 2G. It's sad that Huawei is sticking to the same tray design, which can accommodate either two SIM cards or one SIM card and a microSD memory card. But what if you need both a memory card and two SIM cards?
In general, there are a lot of such little things in Huawei Mate 8. However, we’ll leave the joy of discovering them to you, because the more you find them yourself, the more pleasant your communication with the phablet will be.
Working hours
So, we have a large screen and a powerful processor, and then a reasonable question: how long can this miracle go without recharging? Don't worry, this is all very well. The battery capacity is decent – 4000 mAh. There are energy saving modes. As a result, we have 2–2.5 days of battery life in mixed mode. At the same time, the smartphone takes only 45 minutes to charge 50%. Excellent performance!
Huawei made a great phablet. Comfortable, powerful, with a decent camera and excellent battery life. It’s not so easy to find fault with him, because everything here seems to be in the right mind. However, for that kind of money you want something more interesting - either in design, or in functions, or in everything at once. In the case of the iPhone 6s Plus, we understand what we are paying money for. After all, this is Apple. In the case of the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, it’s even more clear – just look at the curved screen. What about Huawei Mate 8? This is where you need to look at the roots, because behind the strict design lies a powerful, long-playing phablet, which may not be as interesting as its competitors, but is nevertheless more practical.
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Huawei Mate 8 smartphone - review
Second desktop with applications. By default, several applications with a Chinese interface are installed here (search engine, browser, social networks, navigation), which, however, can be easily removed. Instead of the Google Play store, the HiApp store is installed here, which is better not allowed to install and update any recommended applications, because they will all be in Chinese.
Regarding the installation of Google services. Google Play Store is easily found by searching in HiApp and installed. And then the services you need are installed from the Google Play Store.
The only service that I somehow couldn't install from the Google Play Store is Google contacts synchronization. But this application was easily installed via GApps Installer (Google services installer). Quick switch icons.
They are easy to edit.
In the list of running tasks there is a "Clear" button (unload programs from memory).
Themes for the design of the shell and icons, as usual with Huawei, can be changed within very wide limits. Here, for example, is one of these topics - in a completely different style.
The shell supports two-window mode.
You can immediately call the camera from the lock window. Also, by swiping upward, the proprietary action and application bar appears.
View of the application bar on the lock window when an audio track is running.
Talk. There is a recording mode.
Testing the channel speed for 4G showed the expected speed. The same applied to the Wi-Fi speed - it was at maximum.
The quality of telephone communication was good, the subscriber could be heard very well. The noise reduction system worked quite effectively. Audio The sound of the built-in speaker is of surprisingly high quality: quite voluminous and even with some bass. The Myst Nail2 in-ear headphones are good: voluminous and fairly clear sound, decent highs and some bass.
Full-size Plantronics BackBeat Pro headphones in wired mode are not particularly good: the sound is more or less spacious, but slightly dull, decent bass, which lacks fullness, and not at all outstanding highs.
The tanks produced 58 FPS. 
Settings The settings, as usual with Huawei, are very advanced and varied. 
Settings for two SIM cards. One of them is 2G/3G/4G, the second is just 2G. However, 4G/3G can be assigned to any card.
Switching mode between Wi-Fi and mobile communications. By the way, a useful thing: when it is turned on, the smartphone does not cling to the dying Wi-Fi until the last moment, but switches to the mobile Internet.
The home screen can be switched to a simple mode with large icons and simple settings.
Display settings. You can change color temperature, viewing modes, typeface and font size.
Setting up notifications.
Notifications for each application.
Fingerprint control. With it, you can also take photos and videos, answer a call, turn off the alarm, and open the notification panel. By the way, the scanner works well and recognizes normally. (But, as usual, there are problems recognizing a wet hand.)
Setting up on-screen buttons.
Control.
Application Rights Manager.
Setting energy consumption.
Memory.
The smartphone saw a 128 GB memory card in exFAT without any problems.
Memory cleaning functions.
As usual, a wide variety of movements are supported.
Knuckle gestures are also quite convenient.
Shooting modes.
Settings.
Examples of pictures. (All are clickable.) At home in normal lighting. 
Bright sunny day. 
In room. 
Sunny day. 
Mainly cloudy. 
Cloudy. 
Night. 
Indoors in poor lighting. 
Evening. 
Selfie with front camera. 
Well, here's an example video.
I must say that the camera has been significantly improved. Now it shoots more or less at the level of other flagships. It is somewhat inferior in performance and quality, especially the Galaxy S6 edge+ and LG G4, but not too much. In general, the camera is quite decent, you can and should use it. Discomfort, as I experienced with the Mate 7 (although the camera there was also not terrible at all), is not observed here. The pictures are bright, saturated, the white balance is almost never wrong, the exposure is wrong within reason (and it’s easy to correct). It focuses well, but does not focus very quickly (compared to the S6 and LG G4). By the way, here the camera can still be called up (and immediately removed, if specified) from sleep mode by double-pressing the volume rocker. System data and performance CPU-Z data.
AnTuTu test. The highest index. First place in the table.
Geekbench tests.
Well, a PCMark test. By the way, the Galaxy S6 edge+ has 5260.
It looks like this really is the fastest smartphone on the market right now. Well, it’s practically clear that the device is very fast: everything turns and starts smoothly and without jerks, there are practically no lags. Using a smartphone is very comfortable. Battery life I remember that Mate 7 showed very good battery life. What happened here. Internet. The display brightness is set to a comfortable 50% without auto-adjustment. All wireless types of communication are turned on, the page in the browser is updated every 30 seconds. Almost exactly 12 hours - almost the same as the Mate 7 (and that platform is not as productive). Video. The screen is set to the comfortable 10th brightness level of the player (maximum 15th), the “Airplane” mode is turned on, and a television series with hardware decoding is playing in a loop in MX Player. 10 hours 10 minutes is good, but the Mate 7 lived noticeably longer. Reading. The screen is set to a comfortable 30% brightness without automatic backlighting, the page is automatically flipped in AllReader, and the “Airplane” mode is turned on. 18 hours 24 minutes. Synthetic test. At a comfortable screen brightness and with wireless communications turned on, PCMark conducted a test of mixed modes: surfing, photo processing, video, reading, and so on, that is, emulation of a good smartphone boot using various standard actions. This is what happened. In general, this is very cool, the Galaxy S6 edge+ has 7 hours 41 minutes. This test means that the smartphone will last a full day under the most active load.
Almost by the evening of the first day, with normal loading, the smartphone had about 70% charge left. And, in general, it lasted up to three days on one charge - in all-inclusive mode. If you optimize (turn off wireless communications and coordinate determination when not needed, turn off automatic synchronization), it can last up to five days. It also has well-optimized power consumption in standby mode: during the night it consumed only 2-3 percent of the charge. So in terms of battery life, everything is very good here. The smartphone supports fast charging in 9V/2A mode. At the same time, the smartphone is charged to 50% in literally 50 minutes, and a full charge from zero lasts about 2 hours 45 minutes. Observations during operation and conclusions During testing, I did not find any serious glitches, although occasionally it happened that the Play Market was switched off for some reason at startup. The back cover did not noticeably heat up even when using heavy applications. There was only one serious glitch. I was unable to install the Epic Citadel game: when I tried to download it from Google Play, Google Play was cut off at the moment the download started. And nothing helped here: neither an attempt to download via 4G, and not via Wi-Fi (in some cases it helped), nor even a complete system reset. I don’t know why things didn’t work out with this toy. All other games and applications installed without any problems. What conclusions can I draw here? The device turned out to be very decent. Powerful platform, excellent equipment, very high-quality display, excellent battery life, the camera is not top-end, but quite high quality. If we compare this model in price with the Galaxy S6 edge+, then in Russia Mate 8 starts from 35 thousand, and S6 edge+ - where- then from 42 thousand, that is, S6 edge+ is about 1.2 times more expensive. Moreover, compared to the S6 edge+, the Mate 8:
- there is support for a second SIM card or memory card; larger display (but we remember about the on-screen buttons) with similar dimensions; more powerful platform; noticeably better battery life; The sound in the headphones is a little worse; slightly worse camera; less impressive design.
