After a long set of rumors that emerged in the past few weeks, Huawei has officially announced the Huawei Mate 9 flagship. This is the next generation version of the Mate 8, coming with improved specs and high-end features to take on the likes of iPhone 7 Plus, Google Pixel XL, and even the Galaxy S7 Edge. And yes, there is a dual curved edge version, as expected, however, more on that later. First, let’s take a look at what the regular Mate 9 flagship offers.

Design wise, Huawei has retained the same polished metal body as the previous generation Mate 8, which is actually a pretty good decision. The metal body looks premium and it comes in multiple colors like Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Champagne Gold, Mocha Brown and Ceramic White making sure that you have plenty of options to choose from.

While looks may not have received a lot of upgrades, there are a lot of changes in the hardware department. The Mate 9 is powered by the recently released and much more powerful Huawei’s Kirin 960 chipset. To remind you, this chip has 4 x Cortex A73 cores @ 2.5GHz and 4 x Cortex A53 @1.8GHz. For storage, you get 64GB of expandable ROM and 4GB of RAM.

This year, the camera has been the real highlight of Huawei smartphones and the same goes with the Mate 9 as well. The flagship comes with a new 20MP + 12MP dual camera setup at the back, certified by Leica. This is similar to the setup on its other phones, with the 20MP being the monochrome sensor and the 12MP being the color sensor. Other features include laser autofocus, f/2.0 aperture, dual LED flash and OIS. While there is no optical zoom as previously rumored, the phone features what Huawei calls Hybrid zoom.

The Huawei Mate 9 also retains the large 4000mAh battery as its predecessor and the company claims that its ‘SuperCharger’ can charge the phone to 58 percent in just half an hour. As for software, the phone comes with the new Android Nougat 7.0 with an overhauled EMUI version. The new UI seems to be cleaner and faster than before, which is definitely a good sign.

There are a few smart features as well, for example, Huawei claims that the Mate 9 will get faster with time, as opposed to current Android phones which often lags after a few months of usage. The software will observe the way you use the phone and in time, it will smartly allocate the processing power for your essential needs. The company said that the performance could improve as much as 8 percent in over 10,000 hours of simulated usage. That’s a pretty good claim, but we will have to see whether it’s the case in real life.

The Mate 9 seems like a really great phablet, coming with powerful internals, good camera, a large battery that lasts more than a day easily and the latest software. All this for a price tag of 699 Euros or $775.

There’s a Mate 9 Porsche Design Version as well, which is the most premium flagship ever made by Huawei, but it does come at a humongous price! More on that in the next article which is coming your way very soon.

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