Huawei Mate 8 Review

Huawei, a China based company is growing into a large smartphone manufacturer and has grasped a hefty amount of market share worldwide. The company being the manufacturer of the Google Nexus 6P which has played a key role in its recognition to many in the world. The company announced the Mate 8 in January at CES 2016.

Mate 8

The Huawei Mate 8 is one of the greatest device released so far in 2016. Its all metal chassis gives it a very premium feel to the touch. Its made from aircraft grade aluminium which is now becoming a popular feature in the metal clad phones. 

Talking about the specs, we have monstrous 6 inch Full HD display covered with Gorilla Glass 4,which has very good viewing angles and proper color saturation. Although Quad HD is the new benchmark, Huawei stuck with a Full HD panel because of the main issue a smartphone faces, Battery Life. The device is a power packed beast with a Huawei's own SoC, the HiSilicon Kirin 950. The Chipset's has a big.Little construction. Every manufacturer nowadays uses the Cortex A57 and the A53 in their big.Little constructuon but Huawei went with the A72 instead of the A57. It is coupled with a Mali T-880 MP4 GPU. This makes the phone a great deal for its price point. The main camera is a 16 megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 aperture but can shoot only 1080p videos  which is a hands down for the phone. It has OIS(Optical Image Stabilization) for the people out there with shaky hands and can also shoot slow motion videos at 720p resoltuion and at 120fps. The camera is assisted by the a dual tone LED flash housing at left of the camera which helps the camera maintain the color saturation during low light condition. On the secondary camera unit we have a 8 megapixel sensor with an f/2.4 aperture and can shoot 1080p videos. It has 3 gigabytes of RAM in the 32 GB version and 4 gigabytes of RAM for the 64 GB version. It has expandable memory only on the dual sim version which has a hybrid construction i.e you can use either a micro SD card and a sim card or two sim cards with no SD card at a time. The phone weighs at 185 grams, which makes it a pretty heavy device but then again it has a large form factor which spreads the weight of the device giving a sturdy and premium device. All the top of the line hardware is powered by a beefed up power package. It has a 4000mAh battery which is appropriate for a smartphone of this size and specifications. Under the camera is a fingerprint scanner which is one of the fastest sensors out there in the market.

Comming to the software section, it runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box with EMUI 4.0 on top of it. The UI again doesnt provide an app drawer which is the key feature of all the Chinese UI's. The battery optimization done by the software is amazing. Its lasted me a day and a half with a moderate use and almost a day with high usage. It's screen on time is a paradise on earth. It pushed almost 7 hours of on screen time in a moderate use day and almost 5.5 hours on a heavy usage day. This is one of the main reasons why i would recommend this device to someone. 

All this aside, the price at which you can get this device is very promising. The 32 gigabyte version is priced at around $470 and $580 for the 64 gigabyte version.

Verdict
The Huawei Mate 8 is an outstanding device with great hardware, decent cameras, and a compelling price point. But the deal breaker here to some people is the display which is 1080p compared to its other competitors having Quad HD displays at this price point. Its rival is its own housed manufactured device, the Nexus 6P which has great specs and has a better display, camera and most important to me is that, it runs on stock android which is the main feature of a Nexus device. On the other hand the Mate 8 has a overhauled UI which has gimmicky features like the knocking on screen gestures which allow to fire up different apps or peripherals and the software is a very sluggish one with apps taking longer time to start, lags and stutters while browsing.

At last, my opinion would be goto because of all it delivers at this price point. What are your thoghts about the Huawei Mate 8? Are you intrested or not let me know in the comments below.


SPECIFICATIONS:
Display: 6.0 inch FULL HD IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4
Display Resolution: 1920x1080 
Dimensions: 157.1 x 80.6 x 7.9 (mm)
Storage: 32GB with 3GB RAM 
               64GB with 4GB RAM
CPU: HiSilicon Kirin 950 clocked at 2.3Ghz + 1.8Ghz
GPU: Mali T880 MP4
Main Camera: 16 MP at f/2.0 aperture with OIS and dual tone LED flash 
Secondary Camera: 8 MP at f/2.4 aperture
Battery: 4000mAh
MISC: NFC,GPS(GLONASS,A-GPS and BDS),Bluetooth V4.2 with EDR,LE,A2DP
Colours: Moonlight Silver, Space Grey, Mocha Brown, Champagne Gold

Top 5 Smartphones Announced at MWC 2016

After all the buzz and hype it created, the Mobile World Congress (MWC), one of the largest mobile tech shows brought many new and improved devices. The event was held at Barcelona from 22nd of  February to 25th February,2016. It brought some of the most sophisticated and latest pieces of machinery in the mobile world. Here are the selected top 5 picks from the event.

Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

The Galaxy S7 and the S7 egde are the best smartphones of Mobile World Congress. They both are having same design language,same display resolutions, same color options. What's different on these two devices are the display sizes. The regular S7 has 5.1-inch Quad HD

Super AMOLED panel with a pixel density of 577ppi. On the other hand, the S7 edge has a bigger and curvier display. It rocks a 5.5-inch panel with the same Quad HD Super AMOLED display with two curvatures or edges at both sides and has apixel density of 534ppi

Talking about the internals, both  the phones run on top of the line chipsets. There are two variants, one having the Qualcomm's latest and greatest, the Snadragon 820 SoC and the other model has Samsung's inhouse processing package, the Exyno 8890 which is a beast of a chipset.

On the optics, this time around a new sensor which Samsung claims to be the best camera on any smartphone. The sensor  has a resolution of 12 megapixels with an f/1.7 aperture and this time around has a beefed up pixel size of 1.4µ giving a clearer image quality. The camera also has Optical Image Stabilization(OIS) which will result in stable videos for those who has shaky hands. The secondary unit is 5 megapixel unit which gives wide and sharp selfies. 

Other features like the fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button, the wireless charging, fast charging and some other features are back from its predecessor the Galaxy S6/edge.The greatest upgrade this year from last year's iteration is the resurrection of the Micro SD card slot and Waterproofing(IP68) which will take tumbles and dips in the water for 30 minutes upto 1.5 metres & dust resitance is back too.Its available in four colour options: Black Onyx, Gold Platinum, Pearl White and Silver Titanium.

The battery this time around is also leveled up to 3000mAh on the S7 and 3600mAh on the S7 edge from the 2550mAh on the S6 and 2600mAh on the S6 edge. Samsung has once again brought the Ultra Power Saving Mode.

Software wise, both the devices run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Samsung's own Touch WIz UI on top. Samsung toned down the touch wiz a lot last year and this time again they toned it way more down just keeping the colorful UI on the top.The S7 edge features have been updated to increase the usability of the edges.The People Egde is back again with more slots for apps edge and a news feed is added for quick news on the go.

LG G5

LG’s latest flagship was the other star that brightened the MWC, the modular design G5 allow not just to swap batteries but to plug in different accessories to it as well.

The slim metal body smart phone is powered by a Snapdragon 820 processor, with 4GB of ram and 32GB of internal storage and expandable storage option.However the company downgraded its smartphone screen wise, dropping 0.2 inches of its size standing at 5.3 inch but still has a Quad HD IPS panel for great sunlight visibility which is protected ny Gorilla Glass 4 proctection. The beast is powerd by 2,800 mAh removable battery which doesnt seem ok to many.Other specs include a USB Type-C 2.0 port that is USB 3.0 compatible, NFC, Bluetooth 4.2, and Wi-Fi 802.11 a, b, g, n, ac.

The camera seems to impress this time around too. It has dual camera setup of a 16 megapixel which takes high resolution photos and the other is a 8 megapixel sensor which will take wide angle photos. The front camera is a 8 megapixel shooter which provides decent quality images.

Talking about the design, its a totally built from scratch design and nothing like the last year's G4. The device has an all metal unibody design. On the back it houses the camera setup and the fingerprint sensor. 

The accesories that are announced with the G5 are of different types. LG likes to call them the FRIENDS. There are three modules announced. There is a module which will add hardware keys like a camera and also has 1200mAh battery built in which will make a great 4000mAh battery giving a monstrous backup. The other module is a module for those audiophile who loves and creates musics. It will add a DAC, which will result in great sound quality from the added speaker on the module. 

Xiaomi MI5 Pro

Xiaomi, launched its latest handset after a two years, known to deliver premium handsets but with economical price tag.

The Chinese smartphone comes with a ceramic body, in contrast to most rivals which use glass, metal or plastic cases. The 5.15 inch Full HD device is rocking the Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor coupled with 4 gigabytes of RAM. This time it has a fingerprint Scanner at the front with two capacitive buttons(two dots) which can be interchanged by the user according to his/her preference. Both the front and rear panels are protected by Gorilla Glass 4.

Camera wise, the Mi 5 features a 16 meagpixel camera with a new "four-axis" optical stabilisation feature to prevent blurry photos in dim-lit surroundings. Xiaomi claims that their OIS technology is better in all forms than its competitors. Up front, there is 4 megapixel sefie shooter with 2µ pixel for better selfies and videos and has live beautificaton modes both for pictures and videos.

Sony X Performance

Sony has announced a new flasgship line with the three devices. Among them the flagship is the X Performance.

The Sony Xperia X Performance has a 5 inch Full HD LCD panel with Gorilla Glass 4 on top. Underneath runs the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and has 3 gigabytes of RAM. The primary camera is a 23 megapixel with f/2.0 aperture and Phase Detection Auto Focus(PDAF). The Front camera is a whopping 13 megapixel sensor which should provide best quality selfies and videos. It has a 2700mAh battery which seems to run out quickly but then again Sony's battery optimization is the best in market. It runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box with a very minute amount of customization otherwise its just gives the experience of stock android.

Alcatel Idol 4S

Alcatel launched the Alcatel 4 series at MWC this year.

The Alcatel Idol 4S is the flagship for the company.It has a new feature called the “Boom Key” on the side of the phone, which offers access to quick functions to the camera, gallery, etc. The device runs on the latest version of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.

The 4S is the premium device, with a 5.5-inch Quad HD AMOLED display powered by the Octa Core Snapdragon 652 SoC, 3 gigabytes of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage and a 3,000mAh battery to boost the device. It also has expandable MicroSD storage which goes upto 512GB.

Camer wise the Alcatel latest comes with a sharp 16-mexapixel image using an f/2.0 aperture lens while the front-facing camera manages to take great sefies and videos at 8 megapixels and even features flash.The device has two dual speakers i.e two on the front and two on the back. The company states that no matter which way you keep your Idol 4S, you will get loud and clear audio. Other features like the orientation feature found in the Idol 3 series which gives the user the ability to use the phone both straight or upside down.