As expected Huawei announced its brand new flagship, the Huawei Mate S at IFA Berlin. Thank to the numerous leaks in the past couple of weeks, we knew a lot about the device before its launch. And most of the specs are in line with what we expected.
The highlight of the Huawei Mate S flagship will be its Force Touch screen. The force touch makes it easier to carry out additional tasks on the device like zooming in and zooming out. The tech allows the device to recognize how hard the user has touched the screen. This coupled with the Knuckle Control 2.0 will make open up new ways to interact with the smartphone. In case you remember, the Knuckle Touch was first introduced in Huawei P8 flagship a few months back. Recently, we could also interview the startup behind Qeexo, you can check that out here.
Coming back to the Mate S, the phone will feature the second generation version of the software now aptly called as the Knuckle Control 2.0 This will offer new features such as activating an app with knuckle gestures. For example, users can draw the letter ‘C’ with their Knuckle to open up the camera. Similarly, other gestures perform other functions.
Coming to the fingerprint sensor, the Huawei Mate S will feature the new Fingerprint 2.0. Remember the sensor on the Mate 7, which is still considered as one of the best in the market. Huawei claims that this is an improved second generation version which increases the recognition speeds by 100 percent! The sensor comes with more accurate self-learning functions and can control various aspects of the UI. For example, you can double click to erase notifications, slide to preview pictures and hold to take phone calls.
The Mate S will feature a 5.5-inch FULL HD ONCELL display with 2.5D floating screen lens. The edges will be curved with Gorilla Glass 4 protection. Like the Mate 7, the company has made sure the bezels are thin, measuring just 2.65mm. The overall designed is a bit curved at the back, which the company claims helps in the ergonomics. For this, the company had to use a specially designed circuit as well as a battery. The phone’s all metal design is further made premium by CNC carving, and diamond cutting. What’s even more interesting is that the phone has nano coating which makes it water resistant.
As for the specs, the Huawei Mate S will come with the same Kirin 935 octa-core chip that we saw in the Honor 7. There’s 3GB of RAM on board along with 32GB of storage. At the back, you get a RGBW 13MP sensor with dual color temperature LED flash and OIS. The setup is similar to the P8 flagship. Up front, there’s an 8MP shooter.
Under the hood, there will be a 2,700mAh battery, which is smaller than the one used on the previous generation Mate 7. However, the company assures that this should be enough for more than a day’s usage. Also, the phone supports fast charging which means just 10 minutes of charging can give you about 2 hours of talktime. As for the software, the phone will run on Android 5.1.1 based EMUI 3.1.
The phone will be available in a number of countries worldwide. You can check out the list from the image above. As for the pricing, the Huawei Mate S won’t be cheap. For all these high-end tech, the standard flagship model will cost you 649 Euros or $729 and the high-end model with 64GB storage will cost you 699Euros or $786. That’s in the range of the iPhones and Samsung Galaxy series. So, it would be interesting to see whether customers go with Huawei instead of the these two manufacturers. The Mate S will be available to buy from the company’s own VMall store in Europe for the above mentioned prices. The phone will be launched in four colors, gold, champagne, pink and grey.
