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Huawei Mate 9 phones unveiled
- Thread starter deany
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Just ordered the Mate 9 off of Amazon. Should be here tomorrow. It was a complete impulse buy (which is not normal for me, but I can afford it so whatever..).
I'm coming from a Nexus 6p (with terrible battery life) so I can provide some first impressions when it gets in if anyone is interested. I was able to get it for $499+tax for a "Very Good" condition amazon warehouse deal. I feel like for that price it is worth at least giving a try. I haven't tried anything non-Nexus in years so I am pretty nervous about the software, but the idea of having class leading battery life plus that big screen (I think I'll be ok with 1080p) was too tempting.
I'm coming from a Nexus 6p (with terrible battery life) so I can provide some first impressions when it gets in if anyone is interested. I was able to get it for $499+tax for a "Very Good" condition amazon warehouse deal. I feel like for that price it is worth at least giving a try. I haven't tried anything non-Nexus in years so I am pretty nervous about the software, but the idea of having class leading battery life plus that big screen (I think I'll be ok with 1080p) was too tempting.
Before i bought my phone i was looking at the Mate 9 / 9 Pro very closely. Surprisingly, i don't remember a single person who had an overall negative opinion of EMUI. Ymmv of course but i hope you enjoy the phone.
Let us know what you think of it. I was interested in buying it but I have a Huawei with EMUI 4.1 and the lock screen drives me nuts. Triage and interaction of lock screen notifications is severely limited and altered compared to stock Android and even my Galaxy S6. I think some YouTube reviewers noted their same frustration.
See above.
Sadly Amazon sent some completely different Huawei phone (at&t branded). Last time I trust an Amazon warehouse deal for a phone. Still processing the return and will probably just wait for the pixel 2 at this point. Sigh...
If you wait for the Pixel 2 you will at least be likely to get a much better camera. I tried the demo unit at Best Buy and on auto mode color accuracy was very poor. Purples looked blue. Video was awful. You can't pan without getting artifacts and even modest zooming induces an unacceptable amount of noise compared to IPhone 7 Plus and Samsung. This supports the results I've seen on you tube reviews.
There was a considerable amount of lag, too, but this could be because it was demo unit.
I watched a Mate 9 vs iPhone 7 Plus video (on their video recording) last night from Btekt. Honestly, the video between the two phones was VERY comparable to my eye. And the audio on the Mate 9 was considerably better. This is a very capable phone, regardless of price.
I have seen the videos, too, that make them seem comparable. Which is why I was excited about the Mate 9 and so was my husband. Not because of what we need now, but in the future when we are living on retirement income but still paying at least part of college tuition for our kid who is soon to be in middle school next fall. And by then it's very possible the two brands will be comparable. Or by then we may all be cyborgs serving different AI overlords like Borg Queen Siri. {{{{Shivers}}}}
I have, however, seen other videos that showed the weaknesses I saw in person in the demo unit in Best Buy: Skaking shuddering panning with heavy artifacting in videos, and still photos with color reproduction that was off on certain hues. For still photos, I could do a white balance correction to fix the colors somewhat. The Mate 9 does have a feature rich manual mode but it is not the easiest to use. Especially on a touch screen, even with my small fingers.
Audio was indeed just a bit inaccurate. While it bested the IPhone 7 in that it can record in a very immersive stereo audio, the richness in human voices is stripped out a bit and the result is a squeakier reproduction of voices. The IPhone 7 does not record stereo audio but speaking voices retain their original timbre and richness for the most part. I can see having a preference for one over the other based on circumstances. So there's no absolute winner here.
The best comparison would be to the stereo audio of higher end Samsung Galaxy units I've worked with in 2016. They do immersive audio but also reproduce vocals more faithfully.
So, there are tradeoffs in quality associated with going to a lower price level, at least with the camera. In all other respects, I've heard and read nothing but good things about the rest of the Mate 9's smart phone functions.
If I were on retirement income right now, with the kid in college right now, I would choose the Mate 9 over the IPhone 7 because the iPhone and Samsung prices are heading into the stratosphere.
I'm not going any higher than $599 for a smartphone any longer and I'll just buy outright. The Mate 9 has been excellent. I do have a jump upcoming on t-mobile but what the heck would I be paying monthly for an s8 or new iPhone and then adding in the monthly service?
No thanks.
No thanks.
I think more and more people are going to start to experience price burnout/fatigue. It will be interesting to see what Apple does in response to this, if they do anything at all.
Sadly it's not just Apple, Samsung S8 is expected to start around €850 and around €1,000 here for S8+
If Pixel 2 does indeed have price increase we're looking at similar with it too.
It's just getting near impossible even for someone like me (irresponsible tech addict) to justify this pricing anymore ....
It is a disincentive to upgrade each year.
When you consider what €450-500 can buy you from other manufacturers, and it's not like we're getting half the quality by comparison either.
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Ugh, I hear you and I feel your pain.
I'm still delighted with my 2016 purchases so I'm probably not going to upgrade to 2017 versions of my Samsung phones or my HTC 10. Not at the prices the rumors are indicating and not with the features that are rumored.
I'm frankly still in awe of the quality I found in my HTC 10 for the $525 I paid for it. It's great that other people were able to get it for even less. It was tremendous value for the money and one of the best smartphone purchases I've ever made.
Happiness: my S7 Edge was free and came with a fabulous 4G enabled Gear S2 watch and 256 GB high speed SD card...and thanks to Christmas deals, my unlocked S7 was also around $500 and came with free VR headset and free wireless earbuds, which don't sound great but are still useful.
Because of the deals Samsung offers, at least to US customers, Samsung phones can still be very good values for the money. Especially if you're willing to enter a two year upgrade cycle with AT&T. That was the length of the deal we signed to get two S7 Edges for the price of one.
On the one hand it's disappointing that the Samsung display is now rumored to NOT be a 4K display. I would have liked that for VR. It is going to be a gorgeous upgrade but probably not enough to cause me to ditch the deals I got.
If Samsung didn't offer the deals and incentives that they have been doing so far, I would cross them off my list. But they're always full of surprises and not all of their surprises involve fire hazards.
With Pixel and IPhone I feel I'm being gouged a bit. The Asian phone manufacturers seem more generous throwing in things like free screen protectors and free cases (Huawei does and I think Axon also does). I've got enough Asian cultural connections to know that sort of generous gesture is expected by customers and western companies neglect it at their own peril.
HTC and Huawei have free "Oops" type insurance. My HTC 10 isn't even rated as water resistant, yet it is covered against water damage for a year for FREE. With Pixel and IPhone you get the feeling they are trying to give you the bare minimum that they can get away with. It feels stingy.
I wonder if part of the reason for the decline of Apple's popularity in China is that they've ignored for too long the Asian customer's expectation of "service" (the little extras to show appreciation).
Heck, when I buy stuff off of Amazon from most Asian vendors, I get all kinds of cute little gifts thrown in. I ordered a cheap wallet case for my SE once and found a free screen protector and stylus and cute sticker sheet thrown in.
I have this phone. 1 year on and still love it.
it truly is learning software and still snappy as day one!
no lag and my clean up app never finds anything to remove phones does it by itself!
It has has 3 updates since I had it.
my contract not out til July 2018.
may go for another hauwei.
had iphone 6s+ before this phone.
the only bug/issue is with facebook messenger, randomly get thrown off and got sign in again. and needs rebooting every 4-6 weeks or facebook videos stop playing.
it truly is learning software and still snappy as day one!
no lag and my clean up app never finds anything to remove phones does it by itself!
It has has 3 updates since I had it.
my contract not out til July 2018.
may go for another hauwei.
had iphone 6s+ before this phone.
the only bug/issue is with facebook messenger, randomly get thrown off and got sign in again. and needs rebooting every 4-6 weeks or facebook videos stop playing.
I'm considering getting this phone as it still has a larger screen than any other phone in that size category (I define larger as not only longer) and it's now down to €500 brand new.
Do you have any experience with gaming on yours? If so did you play any graphics intensive games and how did they work?
The Huawei Mate 10 is launching on the 16th Oct, looking nice, not sure whether it will be in the €500 range though.
Yeah and unfortunately it seems to be 18:9 aspect ratio which is what's making me look elsewhere than the Note 8, V30 et al. Mate 9 is still the only truly top specs phone with a really large 16:9 display. I'll be gutted if the rumors are true and Huawei end up abandoning that format like everyone else.
I have not loaded any intense gaming yet.
it is a good phablet device.
it has loads of ram and a decent gpu.
I will reload airborne soon which was on my s7 sedge.
it has usb C port but comes with a C to micro b adaptor in box which was nice.
and massive 64GB built in too again quite nice not worry about space for a bit.
even if you do not use the special charger it came with even my old samsung usb adaptor charges it fast.
it has a li-po battery which most phones do not have, making the battery lighter than some other brands.
it is a good phablet device.
it has loads of ram and a decent gpu.
I will reload airborne soon which was on my s7 sedge.
it has usb C port but comes with a C to micro b adaptor in box which was nice.
and massive 64GB built in too again quite nice not worry about space for a bit.
even if you do not use the special charger it came with even my old samsung usb adaptor charges it fast.
it has a li-po battery which most phones do not have, making the battery lighter than some other brands.
Nice phone with that 16:9 ratio, better than the Note 8 just in form factor alone. Unfortunately it's GSM only, so no Verizon, sigh. I wonder if the Mate 10 series will be GSM only as well.
Is that the Mate 9? Hmm, I searched and kept finding everyone saying it didn't fully support Verizon. Anyone have any experience with it.
Also I'm assuming it's on Nougat, has Huawei announced any Oreo availability?
[doublepost=1506547523][/doublepost]Also how easy is it to root?
yes those are mate 9 specs from gsm arena.
but note it says MHA-L29 for CDMA, I have a MHA-L09 here in UK
I have no idea about rooting it.
but note it says MHA-L29 for CDMA, I have a MHA-L09 here in UK
I have no idea about rooting it.
Some 2018 phones just got their Android 9 Pie updates, so this is quite impressive for a 2016 device to be getting it same time as some 2018 devices.
https://m.gsmarena.com/huawei_relea..._for_mate_9_series_and_nova_2s-news-35775.php