Huawei’s Mate 8 might not be one of the best known phablets on the market, but it offers solid specs at a more affordable price than its competitors. It’s not without faults, but the Mate 8 is one of the best choices if you want a larger Android phone.
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.
The phone has a smooth back that looks like it could be slippery, but I had no issues at all in use. That’s a surprise considering the size as well – it comes in at 157 x 80 x 7.9mm, so it’s not a small phone. It has to fit in a 6-inch display, but the bezels have been trimmed down so far that the phone isn’t that much larger than the screen itself.
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.Camera
Huawei’s done an excellent job with the Mate’s camera. The smartphone’s primary snapper is a 16-megapixel affair with optical image stabilisation, a dual-tone flash and an HDR mode. It fires up quickly and really springs into action, so you can focus and snap without a second’s delay.The camera app is eerily reminiscent of the iPhone’s, but most importantly it’s easy to use. There are a bunch of options and effects to choose from too, such as time-lapse and ‘light painting’, which essentially blurs and brightens your photos into arty messes.
The automatic photo mode is great, with images coming out sharp and accurate. Low light performance is impressive too, thanks to OIS.
We have one thing to say about the 8-megapixel selfie camera: beauty mode. Huawei really rams the feature down your throat, and we can’t understand why. It smooths out your facial features, transforming you into a weird doll/waxwork figure, and it’s really not for us. With beauty mode disabled, however, selfies come out looking banging.
Specification of The Huawei Mate 8
OS: Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) w/ EMUI 4.0CPU: Octa-core Kirin 950
Screen: 6-inch, 1,920 x 1,080
RAM: 3GB
Storage: 32GB
Camera: 16-megapixel rear camera / 8-megapixel front camera
Battery: 4,000mAh
Colours: Space grey, champagne gold, moonlight silver, mocha brown
Price and Availability: £429
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