Huawei Mate 9 review: A great phone but a touch on the pricey side

Though often the subject of ridicule, there is a section of smartphone buyers who people who want a big handset but right now the choice is limited. In fact, after Samsung withdrew all the Samsung Galaxy Note 7s it sold earlier this year when they turned out to be a fire hazard, it left the playing field pretty low on big handsets.

The iPhone 7 Plus is 5.5in, as is the Google Pixel XL. You could stump up for the 5.7in Nexus 6P, but it’s over a year old now. Who will make a handset for the big-handed? Only one big-name manufacturer is left: Huawei, and its latest is the Huawei Mate 9. 

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Huawei Mate 9: Design

Like the Mate 8 before it, the Huawei Mate 9 is a real handful. Its 5.9in frame makes it even bigger than the Note 7, though it does lack the built-in S Pen that, many would say, was the main appeal of Samsung’s gone-but-not-forgotten phablet.

This is just a plain old phone, but a very handsome one despite its bulky frame. Indeed, the bezel is so thin that the majority of its body is taken up by screen – there’s barely room for anything else. There’s no home button (which appears permanently onscreen unless an app is full-screened), with just the top speaker, front-facing camera and Huawei logo taking away from the clean front design.[gallery:4]

Flip it over and it’s a similar story: a smooth, metal design with very few distractions. There are two lenses for the camera – one dedicated to monochrome shots, but more on that later – and the same circular fingerprint sensor that Huawei put on its Nova and Nova Plus handsets earlier this year.

The headphone jack is in the top of the handset, interestingly, and it charges via USB Type-C cable. Helpfully, though, Huawei put a micro-USB to Type-C converter in the box, which is a genuinely classy touch.

Huawei Mate 9: Screen

Let’s get one thing out of the way right away: despite having a screen size that’s a good inch larger than most other flagship handsets, Huawei’s offering comes in at a lower resolution. If ever proof were needed that Quad HD or 4K are wasted on a screen this size, the Mate 9 is it, because despite only being 1080p, it’s a super screen. That means it’s roughly 373 pixels per inch, and yes, that’s absolutely fine for your needs, unless you’re planning on sticking it very close to your face in a VR headset.

And it scores brilliantly elsewhere in our tests, too. At a peak brightness of 622cd/m2, it’s almost twice the brightness of the now deceased Galaxy Note 7 (albeit with an IPS display rather than AMOLED), and it covers 98.7% of the sRGB colour gamut. Its contrast, at 1,529:1, is also excellent.

But let’s take a step back and see how it ranks alongside other phablets. For the purposes of this, I’ve included screen size because, if you’re reading this, that’s likely to be key.

As you can see, that makes for a very good screen indeed – and a clear improvement on the (far cheaper) Nova Plus. It’s worth noting that in terms of contrast, the Mate 9 can’t compete with the Note 7 and Pixel XL, which both use AMOLED screens.

But this shouldn’t put you off. The screen on the Huawei Mate 9 is big and beautiful.

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Huawei Mate 9: Performance and battery life

Things carry on well into the performance of the device too. The Huawei Mate 9 is powered by an octa-core 2.4GHz Kirin 960 processor, backed up by 4GB of RAM and a whopping 64GB of storage space. If that’s not enough space for your photos, videos and music, the Mate 9 has expandable storage space for a 256GB microSD card.

These are premium specs, and they achieve premium performance. The Mate 9 is the fastest device we’ve encountered. It achieved a stunning 6,244 in our Geekbench 4 multi-core tests, leaving everything – even the Note 7 – in the dust.

Unfortunately, while the Kiran 960 processor seems to cope fine with multitasking and 2D animation, it struggles a touch when it comes to 3D. In our GFXBench GL Manhattan 3 test, the Huawei Mate 9 managed 37fps – not bad, but some way off the OnePlus 3, which managed 47fps.

This was confirmed in the real world, too. We noticed this manifesting itself in some sluggish frame rates in Hearthstone, which is a shame. But to be clear, this is still a fast phone – especially if you’re not interested in gaming.[gallery:7]

Then there’s the battery. A 4,000mAh cell should give you plenty of juice, and anecdotally you’re looking at a phone that comfortably manages to go over a day without charging. Curiously, though, like the Mate 8 last year, this performance wasn’t matched by our actual battery test: a 720p looped video in airplane mode, at 170cd/m2 screen brightness. Here, the Mate 9 managed just 13hrs 17mins before giving up the ghost. That’s pretty average – well behind the Note 7’s 21hrs 57mins, and nowhere near our new stamina champion, the Lenovo Moto Z Play, which reached 23hrs 45mins.

Huawei Mate 9: Camera

The camera is one area where the Mate 9 is a marked improvement on last year’s Mate 8 – on paper, anyway. The cameras on the Mate 9 have been developed in conjunction with German manufacturer Leica, with two sensors on the back of the device: one wholly dedicated to monochrome shots.

Both the lenses have a f/2.2 aperture, with built-in optical image stablisation. But, on paper at least, the monochrome sensor has a big advantage over the RGB one: it’s 20 megapixels, compared to 12. Despite this, you can take 20-megapixel images, no matter whether you want them in full colour or in black and white.[gallery:8]

So, why would you want a dedicated monochrome sensor? Huawei thinks you’ll be smitten, as it can capture much more detail than your common or garden RGB lens. That’s possibly true, but we found that images were too dark to really tell. Images came out well exposed, but with muted colour vibrancy. The camera also struggles with low-light conditions, as many smartphone cameras do.

People for whom a camera is just an afterthought with a phone most likely won’t notice. But photography buffs can definitely do better by shopping around – disappointing in a phone this price.

Huawei Mate 9: Verdict

Which neatly brings me to the conclusion. Huawei phones are getting better and better, and the Mate 9 is no exception to this trend. The trouble is that past handsets have been solid and competitively priced, and the Mate 9 certainly isn’t. Last year’s Mate 8 retailed for £429. This year’s model is €699, which converts to around £600.

Six HUNDRED pounds. You read that right.

It may be the most powerful phone we’ve seen to date (if you discount 3D performance), but that’s a hugely unpleasant pill to swallow. To put that into perspective, the Samsung Galaxy S7 launched for £569. The iPhone 7 started at £599. Huawei, to put it bluntly, doesn’t yet have the reputation in Europe to pull off that kind of audacious pricing.

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And that’s just talking in reputational terms, before you even get into value. One phone that wasn’t included in my earlier comparisons was the OnePlus 3, but if I had, it would have run the Mate 9 close in 2D performance, and beaten it in the 3D (47fps, since you ask). It has a stronger camera, and costs £271 less. If you want to push the boat out, they’ve just announced an even better version, but that’s only £200 cheaper.

The only hitch: neither are 5.9in phablets. And it’s true: if you want a big phone in 2016 then, with the death of the Note 7, the Mate 9 stands virtually alone. You’ll be very happy with Huawei, but you need to really want that extra inch to make the Mate 9 a must-buy.

Huawei Mate 9 specifications
Processor	Octa-core 2.4GHz Kirin 960
RAM	4GB
Screen size	5.9in
Screen resolution	1,920 x 1,080
Screen type	IPS
Front camera	8 megapixels
Rear camera	Dual 20 megapixels
Flash	LED
GPS	Yes
Compass	Yes
Storage (free)	64GB (52.6GB)
Memory card slot (supplied)	microSD (up to 256GB)
Wi-Fi	802.11ac
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2
NFC	Yes
Wireless data	3G, 4G
Dimensions	157 x 79 x 7.9mm
Weight	190g
Operating system	Android 7.0
Battery size	4,000mAh