Huawei is the world’s largest smart phone maker, but its footprint in the United States has been very small. This is the final with the mate 9 attention to the US market. Overall, this is a good cell phone, but it is not perfect. If you or consider Huawei mate 9 down $ 600, there are three of the best and worst things about this phone.
Best
- Battery Life: The Mate 9 has a massive 4,000mAh battery. Something that large was previously only seen in tablets. You’ll have no problem making it through a day on a single charge. In fact, the next one is now problem either. A third day is also entirely possible without any time on the charger. If you just run the phone flat out watching video or something, it’ll run for over nine hours before running out of juice. That’s incredible for a phone with specs like this.
- Cameras: The Mate 9 has two cameras, which is increasingly common lately. One is a 12MP RGB sensor and the other is 20MP monochrome. They combine to produce photos with good detail and accurate colors. It even does well in low light. It’s not the best camera on Android, but it’a very, very good. One particularly cool thin is that you can use 2x zoom without losing any detail—it’s basically faking an optical zoom.
- Speed: This phone comes with Huawei’s latest custom ARM chip, the Kirin 960. It’s an octa-core SoC with the latest CPU designs from ARM. There’s also 4GB of RAM on-board. The Mate 9 is incredibly fast, about on-par with the Snapdragon 821. Appps open quickly and multitasking is smooth. Even the fingerprint sensor is lighting fast.
Worst
- The Lock Screen: Huawei ships this phone with Nougat, which is great. It’s even cleaned up many of its more annoying UI quirks in the EMUI Android skin. However, the lock screen is still terrible. It makes you quick settings harder to access, and notification are only shown once. Even if they’re still in your notification shade, they won’t appear again. Most media playback controls won’t show up on the lock screen at all. It’s incredibly annoying.
- Size: The Mate 9 has a 5.9-inch LCD, which I’m sure is fine with some people. For most, that’s too large to use comfortably. Even with the slim bezels, you can’t reach much of the screen without adjusting your grip or using a second hand. This is not objectively bad, but it’s something to be aware of.
- Charging: While the battery life is excellent, the Mate 9’s charging system is non-standard. The USB type-C port does not support Quick Charge or USB-PD. It’s a special Huawei system called SuperCharge. It is very fast, but none of the other chargers you have will fast charge this phone. You can’t even buy extras.
