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7 reasons to buy the Huawei Mate 8

AndroidPIT huawei mate 8 screen apps new
© nextpit

We think that the Huawei Mate 8 is almost perfect - or at least, it is unless you have really small hands or a really tight budget. It lasts for ages, looks great, runs fantastically well and is well built to boot. Fancy some specifics? Here are 7 reasons to buy the Huawei Mate 8.

Huawei Mate 8
Plastic no more: the Mate 8 is mainly made of metal. / © ANDROIDPIT

1. It’s very metal

Where previous Huawei Mate devices were plastic, the Mate 8 introduces a new design language for the company that makes its devices look an awful lot classier. Plastic is largely gone, limited to just two little strips on the front. The rest is glass and metal, with tiny bezels on the left and right of the huge display and deliberately roughened edges to make the Mate 8 less slippy than other metal and glass phablets. It looks and feels like a premium device, which it is.

AndroidPIT huawei mate 8
The Mate 8 looks and feels reassuringly expensive. / © ANDROIDPIT

2. It’s got a clever SIM slot

The Huawei Mate 8 has a dual-SIM slot with a double life: if you don’t need a second SIM card, you can pop a microSD card in there instead to add extra storage without breaking the bank.

3. Its display is really bright

The Mate 8 may not have the AMOLED display you’ll find in the Mate S and it doesn’t have the same pixel density as a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, but its IPS panel delivers a decent 1,920 x 1,080 pixels at 368 ppi and it’s much brighter than an AMOLED. Viewing angles are really good.

Huawei Mate 8 1
It's not an AMOLED, but the display is crisp and very bright. / © Xiaomi Today

4 It’s got a fingerprint scanner

Fingerprint scanning is becoming important: more and more apps are starting to take advantage of it and Android itself likes fingerprints a lot. Fingerprints are more secure than PIN codes or patterns, they enable you to unlock your phone more quickly, they’re really handy for authenticating payments online or in shops and the likelihood of someone stealing your phone and running away with your finger is pretty small.

AndroidPIT huawei mate 8 camera new
The Mate 8 really wants to see those fingers. / © ANDROIDPIT

5 It’s quick

The Mate 8 uses the new HiSilicon Kirin 950 processor, with four 1.8 GHz cores and four 2.3 GHz cores backed by 3 GB of RAM. The fastest cores aren’t used all the time - battery life would be awful - but they kick in whenever they’re needed, for example when you’re playing a 3D game or decoding video. Have no fear, when the Mate 8 is running at full tilt it’s a seriously fast device: in our benchmarks we found that the Kirin 950 outperformed the Exynos 7420 you’ll find in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.

Huawei Mate 8 Vellamo
In a word: wheeeeeeeeeee! / © ANDROIDPIT

6 The battery’s bigger than something really big

Some phablets think that a 3,000 mAh battery means they’re all that. The Mate 8 laughs at those phablets, because its enormous 4,000 mAh battery is one of the biggest around (although it’s actually a little bit smaller than the 4,100 mAh in the Mate 7). We easily achieved a day and a half of intensive use, and there’s no reason why the Mate 8 couldn’t get two and a half days from a single charge if you didn’t go crazy with it.

7 It’s got Marshmallow

Some phablets are still waiting for the Android Marshmallow upgrade, but not the Mate 8: it ships with Android 6.0 and EMUI 4.0. That helps explain the amazing battery life, because Android Marshmallow is packed with battery optimization features including Doze, which puts some apps into a deep sleep in order to conserve power and prolong the battery.

Huawei Mate 8 Benchmark Battery
Marshmallow + big battery = happy Mate owners. / © ANDROIDPIT

...and now for a little bit of criticism

We said the Mate 8 was “almost perfect”, and it is. The only thing that really lets it down is the camera, which promises to be above average but which we found to be pretty mediocre. It’s not hopeless by any means, but it’s far from the standard set by rival flagships from the likes of Samsung, Sony and LG. If that isn’t a deal breaker, however, the Mate 8 is a really good buy.

What do you think? Can you live without a cutting edge camera in your device, or has Huawei cut the wrong corner here? Let us know in the comments.

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Gary Marshall

Gary Marshall
Freelance writer

Former lion tamer, Girls Aloud backing dancer and habitual liar Gary Marshall has been writing about technology since Google was two guys in a garage. He's written for many fine magazines, newspapers and websites, written a range of how-to-books and a novel, co-written a BBC documentary series and dishes out weekly tech advice on BBC Radio Scotland.

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  • 18
    Deactivated Account Feb 21, 2016 Link to comment

    Cool device as well article also.


  • 2
    Riche-Andre Jean Feb 21, 2016 Link to comment

    Anyone please help me with an equivalent of "Adobe Flash Player" for Android Phone. I need to download a flash payer for my phone so i can watch some TV Channels. I was a blackberry user since i switched to Android i can't watch my favorite TV Channels on my phone. Some of them ask me to download "Adobe Flash Player" which is not supported by my NEXUS6. I need your help guys.
    Thank you already!


  • 49
    storm Feb 19, 2016 Link to comment

    Point 1, equating metal to premium is a flawed argument.

    By weight, something we should be trying to eliminate in a pocket phone, plastic can be as strong or stronger than metal.

    It's cheaper to manufacture and repair/replace when damaged compared to metal.

    Metal wears poorly for pocket and hand duty. It's slippery, shows all wear instantly and permanently where plastic is more easily remedied by the end user or resists the damage such as dents and dings.

    Metal impairs reception-- a metal case makes for a Faraday cage --leading to unsightly antenna lines or other kluges in design.

    I've yet to see an argument that really holds up for metal phones being premium. Mostly this is the mistaken idea that heft or density means premium feel. It's naive and poorly informed. If the masses buy it is no reason to perpetuate it. Make a clear substantive argument that cheapo aluminum shiny aluminum is premium. To say that plastic feels plasticky is not necessarily a negative. Something being what it is is not inherently negative. Especially when phones are usually cased. Even more reason to use plastic then for weight and size savings prior to encasing.

    I'll start it for you.

    A metal frame can be a smart in a phone for added bend resistance and rigidity.

    Metal can make sense for improving heat dissipation.

    Deactivated Account


    • 46
      Deactivated Account Feb 19, 2016 Link to comment

      I could not have said it better. Give me a plastic phone with all the specs I want. Which must include a removable battery and Micro SD support over all metal any day. My S3 all plastic phone still look great after 3.5 + years.


    • 1
      Phuz Feb 19, 2016 Link to comment

      Or how about these extra points. Huawei sucks balls. My G7 mid range huawei takes 3 seconds for letters to register after being touched. One small drop and my screen shattered, my Xiaomi red rice survived tons of similiar falls. The speaker may as well be non existent, the sound quality is nothing short of pathetic. Update? Upwhat? Unheard of. Lag was always something I thought picky geeks talk about but now I know the full definition of lag. Will never waste money on Huawei again. Xiaomi kick Huaweis ass and for half the price. I bought this for battery and screen. Everything else is so bad that the only 2 plus points become irrelevant. It is virtually unusable.

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