Huawei's holding a launch event in Munich, Germany on November 3 for a "new flagship device", and that almost certainly means the Mate 9 is on its way. The latest in Huawei's series of big-screened phones is likely to pack the very best of the company's high-end hardware, along with the anticipated EMUI 5 interface, based on Android 7.0 Nougat.
Recent leaks out of China point to the Mate 9 being a beast of a phone.
Recent leaks out of China have given us a sneak peek at the phone, which comes in three price tiers and six colors, with up to 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It's also believed to the first phone to run Huawei's homegrown Kirin 960 chip, the first to utilize ARM's speedy new Cortex-A73 cores. In short: Expect a beast of a phone.
The software side of things is equally important. Huawei has drawn criticism over its EMUI interface for years. And based on a leaked version of EMUI 5 that appeared on the P9 over the summer, the new version promises to banish many of the bugbears of earlier versions, like lock screen weirdness, notification area glitches and overbearing visual customizations. The dream of a Huawei phone without weird software could finally be coming true.
A November launch event means the Mate 9 should be on sale in Europe in time for the holidays — an earlier launch window than last year. What's more, the ongoing difficulties faced by Samsung's Note 7 could present Huawei's new "phablet"-class device with a shot at mainstream success.
