Huawei Mate 9 launched with Kirin 960, Dual Leica Cameras, Android 7.0 Nougat

After numerous leaks and reports, the Huawei Mate 9 just went official in an event in Munich, Germany. The metal clad Mate 9 comes with a 5.9-inch IPS display with 1080p resolution covered in 2.5 glass but there is no word if that Gorilla Glass or not.

Running on the inside is the new Kirin 960 chipset which packs four Cortex-A73 cores running at 2.4GHz and a set of power-efficient Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.8GHz in a big.LITTLE arrangement. Huawei has also gone with the ARM Mali-G71 MP8 GPU for some powerful graphics. All this is kept running smooth with 4GB RAM and 64GB onboard storage which is expandable.

Just like the P9, the Huawei Mate 9 also packs dual-camera optics for the rear camera, but things have changed quite a lot. The dual camera setup has now been upgraded to a 20MP f/2.2 monochrome camera and a 12MP f/2.2 color sensor. This is accompanied by a dual-tone LED flash on the left and a hybrid autofocusing system which combines laser, phase-detection, depth and contrast based. Then there's Optical Image Stabilization available here as well along with 4K video capture.

Just like the 2X optical zoom on the iPhone 7 Plus, Huawei also claims that we have a Hybrid Zoom feature although there's not much detail on how that works. According to the company, there's 2X magnification available here without any significant loss in detail.

For the first time in its flagship smartphones, Huawei is bringing a new fast charging tech Super Charge which uses a 5A charger to juice up the 4000 mAh battery quickly.

On the software front, you have Android 7.0 Nougat running the show with EMUI 5.0 on top which now adds the option for an app drawer unlike previous iterations with iOS like homescreens for apps. It also adds a lot of new features including themes and gestures. Speaking of gestures, the rear fingerprint scanner also supports gestures and the ability to capture images with it.

The Huawei Mate 9 will come in Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Champagne Gold, Mocha Brown, Ceramic White, and Black color options priced at EUR 699 (Rs. 51,500 / $770). Huawei will be launching the Mate 9 in the following regions at start but would add more markets soon:

• China
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Kuwait
• Malaysia
• Poland
• Saudi Arabia
• Spain
• Thailand
• United Arab Emirates