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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Huawei’s flagship device of the year is the Huawei Mate 9 and the phone is expected to be announced sometime in November 2016. While we wait for the official launch of the phone, new renders of the Mate 9 flagship have emerged, giving us some insight on the phone’s design and features.

There are not one, but seven renders of the Mate 9 that emerged today on Weibo. The seven renders reveal seven different colors for the upcoming smartphone. Further, we can see that the phone in the render features an all metal design with dual cameras at the back. Also, there are the words ‘Leica’ between the two cameras, revealing that the new device could also be Leica certified. After the news about the new research lab established by Leica and Huawei together in Germany, there is hardly any doubt that Mate 9’s camera will be Leica certified as well.

Other details revealed by these renders include a possible Laser Focus setup, at least that’s what the black sensor on the right of the dual camera setup look like. Then, there’s a rear placed fingerprint sensor as well.

RELATED: New Huawei Mate 9 Leaks: Multiple Versions, Iris Scanner, Launch Date and Price

According to earlier rumors, the Huawei Mate 9 will come with the brand new Kirin 960 chipset featuring Cortex A73 Artemis cores along with 20MP dual Leica certified cameras with OIS. The phone should also run on Android 7 Nougat out of the box.

More details should emerge in the days to come. So, stay tuned for more updates. Meanwhile check out rest of the renders from down below.

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Huawei P9 turned out to be a surprisingly good camera smartphone. Till now, Samsung and iPhone were considered to manufacture the best camera phones in the market, but that changed this year with the introduction of the Huawei P9 with its Lecia certified dual cameras at the back. Now, it’s been almost six months since the phone was released and we are expecting to see the Huawei Mate 9, which is the company’s top-end flagship of 2016 pretty soon.

Now, IHS Analyst Kevin Wang has said that the Huawei Mate 9 flagship should be released in the fourth quarter of this year. This is in line with the expected release schedule as we saw the Mate 8 release in November last year. This year, we can expect the Mate 9 to release sometime in December.

RELATED: Huawei Mate 9 Poster Leak: Kirin 960 & 20MP Dual Cameras

Since this is going to be the company’s best flagship of 2016, we expect the camera on the back of the device to be even better than the Huawei P9. According to the recent rumors, we should see a 20MP dual camera setup at the back, better than the 12MP dual cameras found on the back of the P9.

As for the other specs, the Huawei Mate 9 is said to come with the new Kirin 960 flagship chipset featuring Cortex A73 Artemis cores manufactured on 16nm process. Rest of the details about the upcoming flagship are scarce at the moment, but we can expect more details in the weeks to come. There’s still a few weeks left for December and more details should emerge by then.

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Huawei released the new Huawei Nova smartphones at IFA Berlin this year. While the new phones are pretty good when it comes to its looks and specs, they are nowhere near the flagship Huawei Mate series. We know for sure that we will see at least one new high-end model in the Mate series later this year and now, a leaked poster seems to reveal more details about the upcoming flagship, the Huawei Mate 9. Ideally, we should see the Huawei Mate S2 model before Mate 9’s release, but details about the former device are quite scarce at the moment.

The Huawei Mate 9, according to this new leaked poster, will come with dual 20MP cameras at the back. Now, this is something that we have been hearing quite a number of times in the past few months. A few months back, an analyst had said that the Mate 9 will feature dual 20MP sensors at the back, with Leica certification, and this poster seems to be backing that claim. Until now, Huawei has been using a monochrome + RGB sensor combination on its dual camera flagships and we can expect a similar setup on the upcoming handset. It should also feature OIS, according to another analyst who revealed this information recently.

RELATED: New Image of Huawei Mate 9 Dual Camera Setup. May Feature Kirin 960

Another important information revealed by this poster is that the phone will come with Kirin 960 chipset. This will be the new generation flagship chipset from Huawei’s Kirin range that should use the new Cortex A73 Artemis cores.

One thing to remember is that the Huawei Mate 9 poster that’s leaked today is quite basic. The dual camera setup arranged vertically is the only major design change that differentiates the device in the image and the Mate 8. Rest of the design, especially from the front looks identical to the Mate 8 flagship. Hence, it’s quite likely that this is a fan made poster and the details are based on the previously leaked information.

We can expect the Mate 9 sometime later this year, ideally around November- December period. So, there is still a couple of months left for the official launch.

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Now, an insider seems to have revealed some details about the upcoming Mate 9 handset on Weibo. He states that the Huawei Mate 9 should be using the Kirin 970 chipset. What’s more, he adds that the chip will be built on the highly efficient TSMC’s 10nm FinFET process. The source further states that Helio X30 is another chip that is going to use this ultra-efficient manufacturing node from this Taiwanese semiconductor foundry.

Now, we have been hearing rumors that the upcoming flagship was going to feature Kirin 960. In fact, we even have the possible specs of the 960 chip, unlike the Kirin 970 (about which we have hardly any info) mentioned by this insider. According to the previous information, the Kirin 960 chip is supposed to come with ARM Cortex A73 Artemis cores and Cortex A53 cores in big.LITTLE architecture with an upgraded GPU (possibly octa-core) and new LTE baseband including CDMA and Cat. 12 support. Moreover, this chip is said to be manufactured on TSMC’s 16nm process.

RELATED: Mate 9 Rumored to come with 20MP dual cameras at the back

Considering the new information (rumor) we have at hand, it’s possible that Huawei decides to use the Kirin 960 for some of its upper mid-range smartphones like the upcoming Mate S2 and Kirin 970 for Mate 9 and next year’s top-end flagships.

The Mate S2 is almost confirmed to meet us on September first week, while expect the Mate 9 to be released around November-December period this year.

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Huawei’s Mobile Product line manager, Bruce Lee revealed today that Mate 8 was listed only by December last year and hence, Mate 9 will not be released so early. This brings us to the question, what to expect from the event in September? Like last year, Huawei could unveil the brand new Huawei Mate S2 flagship at the event, that should precede the launch of the Mate 9. In fact, we actually may have seen the Mate S2 model, as recently a variant of the Mate 8 flagship with advanced Force Touch features was spotted on TENAA. It came with the same specs as the Mate 8 as well as the design.

However, it would make even more sense for Huawei to upgrade the specs on the Mate S2. For example, the company could debut the new Kirin 960 chipset in the new smartphone which is rumored to come with ARM’s Artemis cores (next gen of Cortex A72) in combination with low-power Cortex A53 cores. Further, the GPU should be upgraded to improve graphics performance of the chipset. Other possible features of the Kirin 960 include Cat. 12 LTE, CDMA support, and 16nm manufacturing node.

RELATED: Huawei Mate 9 Said To Feature 20MP dual cameras

In case you remember, last years Mate S was water resistant. We hope that this year the company carries forward this feature to the new Mate S2 version. While the S2 should most likely feature a dual camera setup, we are still not sure whether they would be 20MP Leica certified setup, which the Mate 9 is expected to feature. With upgraded specs, the Mate S2 can still be a powerful competitor to the upcoming iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy Note 7 models.

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IFA 2016 which will be held in Berlin starts from September 2 and ends on September 7. This means that there is still a few months left for the event. However, that didn’t stop Huawei from sending out invites for a launch event, just a day before the IFA.

IFA has always been an important event for Huawei since for the past few years, we have been meeting the new Mate series flagships at the event. The company announced the Mate 7 in September IFA 2014, and last year, we saw a new flagship, the Mate S at IFA 2015. So, this year, we can expect to see a brand new Mate smartphone at IFA 2016. However, considering that last year, the Mate S was announced at this event and the Mate 8 was released only a couple of months later, we wonder whether that will be the case this year as well.

Huawei could unveil the successor to the Mate S, and there are some things which support this possibility. An upgraded Mate S, which could be called as the Mate S2 may debut with Huawei’s new version of Force Touch which is said to come with more functions. But we also have to take into account that Huawei Mate S wasn’t really a big success for the company. So, it’s still doubtful whether this Chinese giant will update the lineup this year.

RELATED: Mate 9 Said To Come With Dual 20MP Cameras Certified By Leica

Another possibility is that, instead of waiting till the very end of 2016, Huawei could unleash its big guns, the Huawei Mate 9 at this event. This would be an ideal time for the launch, since then, the phone can take on the Galaxy Note 7 (another phablet flagship launching in Aug this year) and the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus which should be announced a few weeks later.

Anyway, it’s too early to speculate on the device that will meet us at the event. So, let’s wait for more details in the coming weeks.

(via)

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Yesterday, Pan Jiutang revealed some of the possible specs of the Huawei Kirin 960 chipset. Along with that information, he further added that Huawei’s Mate 9 flagship will feature this chip inside, most likely making it the first in the market. The upcoming Kirin 960 is expected to be much better than Kirin 950, featuring the still unannounced ARM’s Artemis cores and an octa-core architecture.

Along with this information, he also revealed that Huawei Mate 9 could come with 20MP dual rear cameras. As we know, the company is not new to the concept of dual cameras, with the most recent flagship Huawei P9 featuring 12MP dual cameras certified by Leica. While the source didn’t reveal whether the setup on the Mate 9 will also be certified by Leica, it’s possible, since Huawei seems to be invested heavily in this partnership with the legendary lens maker.

The Kirin 960 chip is also expected to upgrade the baseband to support Cat. 12 LTE speeds as well as CDMA networks. So, it could become the first true full netcom chipset from the company. Even the GPU is expected to be upgraded to an octa-core setup, which would definitely boost the graphics performance of the chip.

So, it looks like the Mate 9 is going to be a powerful flagship. Considering the usual release period of the company, we can expect the Mate 9 to meet us sometime late 2016.

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