Huawei Mate 8 Review

Huawei’s newest and fastest Android flagship has arrived in the Philippines — the Mate 8. With its beastly specifications like the home-baked Kirin 950 processor with 4GB RAM and choice design material, the successor to the Mate 7 is surely something to look forward to. Here’s our review of the Huawei Mate 8.

Table of Contents

Design and Construction

The Mate 8 is your common candy bar phablet but with added premium flare to it. Even though it has an enormous 6-inch display, it doesn’t feel as big as other 6-inchers in the market thanks to its roughly 83% screen-to-body ratio. Since the handset’s chassis is made of aluminum, the device is pleasant to the touch especially when in a cold environment. Its edges are chamfered which can be a bit sharp for some.

Up front, we have the large 6-inch Full HD display along with a couple of sensors, earpiece, and the front-facing camera on top. The top and bottom bezel have a circular pattern which is more visible when under a direct light source. All of the these are protected by a whole slab of Corning Gorilla 4 with a 2.5D curved edge.

On the right we have two separate buttons for the volume rocker and the power/lock key while on the left is the SIM tray slot which is accessible when poked through the small pinhole.

The top shows the 3.5mm headphone jack with a single microphone pinhole on the side. The bottom is quite full with the micro-USB at the center and open speaker grilles and screws on its left and right sides.

The back is pretty sleek thanks to the clean finish of the cold aluminum. Here we have the primary camera with its dual-tone LED flash and the fingerprint scanner positioned just below it. There are also a handful of labels and a pair of plastic strips for the radios but it’s got a subtle finish that blends in the overall design of the device.

The thinness of 7.9mm is not the slimmest around but considering there’s a huge 4000mAh battery inside, it’s an impressive waistline.

Display and Multimedia

As mentioned, the Mate 8 sports a massive 6-inch display, particularly an IPS-NEO panel. Despite the large screen, Huawei opted to just give it a Full HD resolution or 1920 x 1080 pixels. Stretching that to 6 inches will result in 368ppi density which is by common standards is already sharp, but we expected more given its caliber. Nevertheless, the display has all the goodies in term of quality. There’s a good amount of saturation but not as exaggerated as AMOLED and it is still viewable even at extreme angles. As for tweaking the display, you can adjust the color temperature through the settings panel.

And if you’re wondering if the Mate 8 has stereo speakers, we’re sorry to tell that it only has one down firing speaker. But do not belittle it as it can get loud with decent quality coming from a small opening. We suspect the other grille to conveniently hide the main microphone for calling and anything else related. If you prefer intimate listening, the included pair of a headset is handy at times and has good quality to it.

Next Page: OS, Apps, and UI / Camera / Performance and Benchmarks

Daniel Morial

This article was contributed by Daniel Morial, a film school graduate and technology enthusiast. He's the geeky encyclopedia and salesman among his friends for anything tech.

http://www.yugatech.com

8 Comments

Avery says:

7 years ago

Is it gorilla glass 4 or just gorilla glass 3?
- Reply
Miko Puracan says:

9 years ago

Mag cocomment lang ako na crush ko ang nag review ng unit <3 hahaha
- Reply
S820 says:

9 years ago

performance review kuno pero walang GPU
- Reply
S820 says:

9 years ago

so kilangan pa talaga basahin ang buong article para malaman ang specs? hindi mo ba alam na ito agad ang hinahanap ng karamihan? bakit hindi mo nalang ilagay ang buong specs sa isang page. gayahin mo gsmarena first page nalagay na ang specs. bakit kasi kailangan pa pahirapan ang mga readers?
- Reply
jamich says:

9 years ago

gwapo nung writer sa selfie
- Reply

jamich says:

9 years ago

Ito sya para walang confusion http://www.yugatech.com/mobile/huawei-mate-8-review/attachment/bty/
infer says:

9 years ago

+1 ;) ;)

anon says:

9 years ago

The low resolution is a good thing. That’s how the Mate 8 can last for so long on a single charge. QHD is unnecessary outside of VR anyway.

Imagine if the Galaxy S7 Edge had the same battery with a full HD instead of QHD display. It would easily last two days.
- Reply