Going for the premium choice
IN THE Android phone market, there are many affordable or mid-range devices offered by phone makers that are unfortunately devoid of any discerning identity.
But Huawei dares to rise above these to vie for a place in the pantheon of premium smartphones.
Its first champion was the Huawei Mate 9, a custom-chipped powerhouse that featured a 5.9in full high-definition LCD display, 64GB of expandable memory, 4GB of RAM, a fingerprint reader at the back, and dual cameras co-engineered with world-renowned camera and lens maker Leica.
Then came the Huawei Mate 9 Pro.
Right out of the box, the Mate 9 Pro does it right by coming bundled with a screen protector and a plastic rear case. It is heartening to see a premium smartphone of this calibre come with all the accessories you need upon purchase.
Sporting a 5.5in Amoled display, the Mate 9 Pro fits well in the hand. Its curved screen design, although reminiscent of another premium smartphone, is not as overly-sensitive to accidental taps.
The display is also of a higher resolution than the Mate 9, at 1440x2560 pixels, offering a better-viewing experience.
Underneath the display is the speedy and accurate fingerprint reader. Some may prefer the reader to be placed at the back like the Mate 9, but since the phone is not too big in the hand, a front-facing reader is still practical.
The phone also excels in its audio. Despite not having forward-facing speakers, the Mate 9 Pro replicates a soundstage well.
There is also an option for the audio to automatically switch to stereo, depending on the phone's orientation.
This makes the Mate 9 Pro a good device to enjoy videos or play games. It also helps that the phone has a large 4,000mAh battery.
In our tests, the phone could last a day with normal usage, which includes browsing and posting on social networks, browsing the internet, taking pictures, watching short videos, and using it as a GPS device.
Games, of course, would drain the battery faster.
Both the Mate 9 Pro and Mate 9 share the same processor, a Hisilicon Kirin 960. It is snappy, fast, and handled all the tasks we threw at it, including games and media playback.
However, the Mate 9 Pro has an edge over the Mate 9, with 6GB of RAM giving it the ability to handle heavy-hitting apps.
It is worth noting that the Mate 9 Pro's 128GB storage is not expandable, which is unfortunate.
Nevertheless, 128GB is a lot of storage, and cloud services like Google Drive can help alleviate any of your storage woes if needed.
Huawei's Emotion UI 5.0 is a vast improvement over its predecessor. With a simple switch in the settings, you can activate the much-welcomed app drawer.
Additionally, the overall feel of the interface is very close to Android 7.0 Nougat, but with a few tweaks.
One of the unique additions is the App Twin feature, which lets you run two instances of an app at the same time, useful for those with multiple accounts such as Facebook and WhatsApp. It is also lighter on bloatware.
The main feature of the Mate 9 Pro is its cameras.
The phone has two at its rear, a normal 12MP camera and a 20MP monochrome camera, both fitted with a relatively dark f2.2 lens.
When a picture is taken, the phone uses both lenses at once, and Huawei's software then stitches the two images together, resulting in a brighter image with more details.
In practice, the Mate 9 Pro has one of the better camera features we have seen on a smartphone. As a point-and-shoot, it is better than average, but falters a little in low-light and other difficult conditions.
Its best photos could only be achieved with some tweaking in the settings.
The Huawei Mate 9 Pro's most underrated feature has to be its call quality.
Leveraging on Huawei's own knowledge of mobile networks, and the phone's multiple microphones and capabilities, calls made on the phone come through crisp and clear, with built-in ambient noise reduction and HD sound.
At RM3,399 (compared to RM2,699 for the Huawei Mate 9) the Huawei Mate 9 Pro has more than enough features to justify the price difference.
But it is up to you if the RM700 difference is worth it to own one of the best Android phones available today.
For more, visit the Huawei Malaysia website : http://consumer.huawei.com/my/index.htm