Chinese smartphone maker Huawei on Thursday unveiled its long-rumored Mate 9 smartphone, a flagship that'll eventually find its way to US shores.
The Huawei Mate 9 features a large 5.9-inch display operating at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 with 2.5D glass that's powered by a Kirin 960 octa-core processor and 4GB of RAM.
It also includes 64GB of local flash (expandable via microSD card slot), a rear-facing dual camera system comprised of 12-megapixel and 20-megapixel f/2.2 aperture cameras with optical image stabilization, an 8-megapixel f/1.9 aperture selfie camera up front, a fingerprint sensor and a large 4,000mAh non-removable battery with fast charging technology.
As Engadget details, Huawei built in a machine-learning algorithm that aims to learn your phone habits and optimize resources accordingly. For example, if you often play a specific game immediately after checking Twitter, the Mate 9 can pick up on this and prepare the CPU and RAM for a faster launch. The idea is to prevent your phone from running more slowly over time and thus, extend its usable life.
Huawei has also reportedly spruced up EMUI 5.0, its Android 7.0 Nougat overlay. After spending some time with it, Engadget says the UI does feel a little less cluttered as icons have been redesigned and shuffled around in a meaningful way.
Huawei didn't say exactly when the Mate 9 would arrive in the US although a person reportedly familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that it'll debut in the states in January. It's a real shame to consumers that Huawei's Mate 9 will miss the holiday buying season as there's a huge gap in the market left by the early exit of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7.