The Huawei Mate 8 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 5, 2016 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Cortex A72
- Kirin 950
- Mate 8
- CES 2016
It’s been over a year since we reviewed the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 and Ascend Mate 2. For many people and including ourselves at AnandTech these were among one of the first experiences with Huawei as a smartphone device manufacturer. Ever since our review of the Honor 6 I kind of fell into the position of being the main editor in charge of Huawei device reviews and thus experienced first-hand the company’s efforts in the high-end as well as their increasingly visible expansion into western markets.
The Mate 8 is the successor to the Ascend Mate 7, and in a similar fashion to the P8 last spring the phone drops the Ascend name in favour of better establishing the Mate brand for Huawei's large premium phablet models. The Mate 8 is in a lot aspects an evolutionary design over the Mate 7, but at same time comes at the moment of a generational shift brought forth by the adoption of the new Kirin 950 SoC. With help of the new chipset and other improvements we’ll see that Mate 8 not only manages to raise the bar for Huawei but also to deal blows to competing devices in several aspects, making the phone a worthy candidate in the upcoming 2016 smartphone generation battle.
Introduction & Design
So let’s dive in for a comprehensive look at what Huawei has managed to bring this year for the Mate series and determine its strengths and possible weaknesses.
Huawei Mate 8 | ||
SoC | HiSilicon Kirin 950 4x Cortex A53 @ 1.8GHz 4x Cortex A72 @ 2.3GHz Mali-T880MP4 @ 900MHz |
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RAM | 3-4GB LPDDR4 @ 1333MHz | |
NAND (NXT-AL10) |
32GB / 64GB / 128GB NAND + microSD |
|
Display | 6” 1080p JDI IPS-Neo LCD | |
Modem | 2G/3G/4G LTE Cat 6 (Integrated HiSilicon Balong Modem) |
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Networks (NXT-AL10) (NXT-L29) (NXT-L09) |
TDD LTE | B38 / B39 / B40 / B41 |
FDD LTE | B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5 / B6-B6 / B7 / B8 / B12 / B17 / B18 / B19 / B20 / B26 / B28 | |
UMTS | 850 / 900 / AWS / 1900 / 2100 ( B19 / B8 / B6 / B5 / B4 / B2 / B1) |
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GSM | 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 | |
Dimensions | 157.1 (h) x 80.6 (w) x 7.9 (d) mm 185g weight |
|
Camera | Rear Camera w/ OIS 16MP ( 4608 × 3456 ) Sony IMX298 1/2.8" w/ 1.12µm pixels F/2.0 aperture, 27mm eq. |
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Front Facing Camera 8MP ( 3264 × 2448 ) Sony IMX179 1/3.2" w/ 1.4µm pixels F/2.4 aperture, 26mm eq. |
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Battery | 4000mAh (15.2 Whr) | |
OS | Android 6.0 with EmotionUI 4.0 |
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Connectivity | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band 2.4 & 5GHz BT 4.2, microUSB2.0, GPS/GNSS, DLNA, NFC |
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SIM Size | NanoSIM + NanoSIM (w/o microSD) (NXT-L09 is single-SIM) |
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MSRP | 3GB + 32GB | China: ¥2999-3199 (USD~479, ~449€) - Europe: 599€ |
4GB + 64GB | China: ¥3699 (USD~591, ~554€) - Europe: 699€ | |
4GB + 128GB | China: ¥4399 (USD~703, ~659€) - Europe: N/A |
At the heart of the Mate 8 we find HiSilicon’s new Kirin 950 SoC. We were lucky enough to be one of the few western media outlets able to attend the SoC’s launch event in Beijing earlier in November and deliver an in-depth look at what the new chipset promises in terms of improvements over past Kirin generations. As a short overview, the Kirin 950 is a big.LITTLE SoC with the first mobile implementation of ARM’s Cortex A72 cores in a quad-core configuration clocked in at 2.3GHz, accompanied by a quad-core Cortex A53 at 1.8GHz acting as the little cluster. Graphics is powered by a Mali T880MP4 GPU with a frequency of 900MHz. Past Huawei devices’ major weak-points were related to the choice of SoC and as we’ll see shortly in the dedicated SoC section we’ll see that HiSilicon was able to fulfil and even exceed some of our expectations of both ARM’s new Cortex A72 as well as the Kirin chipset as a whole.
In terms of memory the Mate 8 comes in either 3 or 4GB RAM variants, depending on whether one chooses the 32 or the larger 64GB and 128GB NAND storage models. Expandable storage is par for the course as we have a combo-dual SIM slot with the choice of either employing a second (2G only) nanoSIM or to use the slot as a microSD card expansion.
Going over the design we see a front exterior that doesn’t change all that much when compared to the Mate 7, with only subtle details being able to give hints that this is a new model. Keeping the same form-factor, the Mate 8 maintains a fairly large size coming in at 157.1 x 80.6 x 7.9mm. Even though the device is large, it’s able to sport a very good screen-to-body ratio for the large 6” 1080p JDI Neo-IPS screen. The top and bottom bezels particularly make the Mate 8 quite short compared to other devices of similar screen size.
Mate 8 vs Mate S - Mate 7 vs Mate 8
A rather disappointing continuation of the Mate 7 design is the reintroduction of a ~2.5mm thick inactive black border around the screen that is found on all colour-variants of the phone. This creates a quite distracting window-frame effect on the lighter coloured models. I wish Huawei had been able to get rid of the distracting feature or at least chosen to keep the front all black for all colour models.
It’s on the back and sides where we see the Mate 8 diverge from the Mate 7’s features as there are several design language changes for the various components. First of all the square trio of camera lens, LED flash as well as fingerprint sensor have now become circular. The finger-print sensor saw the biggest design change as the is no longer a visible metal rim around it and is now similar to the one found on the Mate S and Nexus 6P. Previously the feature on the Mate 7 was described as being used to detect one’s finger while the device and fingerprint sensor were asleep, something the new models either are able to camouflage away or outright no longer require. The Mate 8 also was able to dispose of the small gap above the camera which served as an antenna line for the NFC coil, all while still keeping NFC funtionality.
The main camera is now powered by a Sony IMX298 16MP sensor module with OIS and an F/2.0 aperture optical lens system. This is a normal Bayer RGB sensor as opposed to last year’s main usage of the RGBW IMX278. Huawei also drops the usage of an external Altek ISP and instead relies on the Kirin 950’s new ISP capabilities. The front camera remains the same IMX179 F/2.4 8MP module as found on the P8, Mate S and Nexus 6P which I found to take excellent front-facing shots.
The top and bottom of the phone is no longer wholly composed of plastic covers that go over the sides of the device, but is now composed of aluminium separated by antenna lines on the sides and with a plastic lid on the back side. In a sense this design stands out less than the antenna lines on the Mate S and may be the rationale behind the choice. On all sides we find a coarse brushed metal finish (actual brushed metal) that gives the device much firmer grip than other devices but is also harder to clean if dirtied by fine elements.
The speaker is moved from the back of the phone onto the bottom, much in the same layout as found on the P8 and Mate S. Also the same as the previous designs who introduced this new layout, there’s only one speaker to be found as the other grill only serves for aesthetical symmetry and the main microphone.
A large ergonomic improvement is found on the sides of the device as the new 2.5D glass screen is no longer surrounded by a raised plastic edge but instead uses the same hard compound filling between the glass and metal body. The back also has a curvature of a larger radius, which together with the 2.5D glass gives the impression of a thinner device although the Mate 8 isn't any thinner than the Mate 7 at its maximum thickness.
My sample was a 32GB silver variant, so I can only comment on the finish of this model; I found that the new anodized aluminium finish to be quite hard to clean as dirt was very easy to stick to the grain of the metal. The positive side of this characteristic was that the device was much better to grip than the comparatively smoother finish of the silver Mate 7, with the gunmetal grey of the Mate S representing a happy medium between both designs.
116 Comments
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darkich - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Wow, the efficiency of the A72 seems the best out of any CPU.If I'm not mistaken, it consumes less than 50% of what the Apple Twister in iPhones needs
name99 - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Read my comments above.The SPEC numbers seem tainted and untrustworthy. I wouldn't trust them in the slightest until AnandTech (or someone else) has had a chance to validate them. In particular the vpr number still seems unlikely.
As for your efficiency of A72, I don't know where you're getting that claim from. In particular the sort of fine-grained per-core power data needed to make the determination has not been made available for iOS. The best we can do is macro-level tests like the WiFi and LTE battery life tests, and obviously iPhone does fine on those. (Which is not to denigrate ARM/TSMC/Huawei's achievement --- this does look like a very nice CPU, unlike the somewhat more problematic A57.)
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I made sure all the tests passed validation so the scores should be correct this time around.fackamato - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Disappointed to not see the OnePlus 2 in the benchmarks, seeing as it's a dual SIM phone as well.zeeBomb - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Well damn. I should have woke up early to read this review.kadeep - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Iphones appear in charts only when they are ahead lolEthos Evoss - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
What smartphone sites and reviewers doing wrong is comparing two completely different systems which is VERY WRONG and misleading to the ppl on internet !!!It is simply inapplicable ! If Apple would manufacture their iphone with android system then their pone wouldn't even start .. ! And it would be MEGA slow But IF iOS for iphone would be on an android (latest) device , you would not even realize when the phone iOS booted to home screen..
That is the FACT ! The main reason is that android is and true operating system where are 5x more processes than on poor simple iOS which is just the ''shell'' system.. there are no many processes in background as on android system.. android is linux which is VERY VERY similar to Desktop PC linux.. AND THAT is WHY Apple DENIED put iphone's iOS onto MACs or MacBook PROs or OSX onto iphones !!
There is ''behind the scenes'' big game around and about this ''secret'' Apple's software but unfort. many ppl HAS NO IDEA unfortunately ! ..
TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
You appear to have misplaced your tinfoil hat. There is no reason android wouldn't run on an iPhone if Apple decided to do that. Literally no reason. It also wouldn't be MEGA slow, since the a9 is one of the finest SoCs ever made. The rest of your post appears to be uninformed dribble and garbage.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
OK u unknowledged person I won't be even bothering with you .. who DOESN'T understands the reality which is in the world.. A9 finest ? pleease .. you are so stupid bcos u believe media and advertise marketing.. and maybe fake benchmarks when it comes to iphone .. such common person you are.. live you in your dreams.. ;)osxandwindows - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Well, since you claim that the tests for the a9 are fake, you mind sharing tests of your own?