Huawei Mate 9: Ahead of the November 3 launch event where Huawei is expected to unveil its Mate 9 phablet, the Shenzhen-based electronics multinational company has started to tease the upcoming smartphone on Chinese social networking website, Weibo. The teaser is all blue and intriguing and features the words “A Step Ahead” in English, along with the date scheduled for the event.
An interesting detail is added by the silhouette of a speeding car in the background, with many speculating that this perhaps is an indication of the new smartphone being powered by Huawei’s recently unveiled next-gen HiSilicon Kirin 960 octa-core processor, which, early benchmarks show, may be among the most powerful chips in the market today.
If rumours be true, then the Huawei Mate 9 will not come in one, but two different variants. The upcoming flagship device from Huawei will come in a Pro variant, dubbed the Long Island, which is expected to come with a dual-curved QHD display along with Android’s Daydream VR support. The standard version of the Mate 9 (Manhattan), on the other hand, is expected to come with a Full HD display.
Much about the Huawei Mate 9‘s key specs have been leaked by various sources over the last few weeks. Most notable among those are a 5.9-inch display and a Leica 20 MP dual camera setup at the back by with laser autofocus and dual-tone LED flash. A fingerprint scanner is supposed to be housed at the back just beneath the camera unit. Both the variants are expected to be powered by a 64-bit, eight-core HiSilicon Kirin 960 SOC coupled with up to 6 GB of RAM and 256 GB of onboard storage. Both smartphones will run Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box, backed by an impressive 4000 mAh battery. The Huawei Mate 9 Pro is likely to sport a larger build than the base model, and rumour has it that while the Mate 9 will be given a worldwide release, the availability of the curved screen variant may initially be restricted to China.
Huawei Mate 9 is scheduled to be released at an event in Germany on November 3, 2016.