Huawei Mate 9

The Huawei Mate 8 was one of the big shocks of last year. I say, shock, because I didn’t expect to fall head over heels in love with a phone made by a company called Huawei. But fall in love I did; the Huawei Mate 8 was an exceptional handset in almost every regard.

My only real issue with it is the horrible software Huawei insists on skinning its phones with. The bloatware-packed pigskin is annoying to look at, use and run on a daily basis. But this isn’t a deal breaker as you can just download Google Now Launcher or something similar and that solves this issue nicely.

And now, as we approach mid-way through 2016, it is almost time for the next instalment of Huawei’s Mate series — the Huawei Mate 9.

Still, I have to say we find the Huawei "Mate" series naming convention very odd indeed, maybe it's because we're British and it's a fairly well-established colloquialism here, but any way you slice it, the term means companion, buddy, or friend; which yes, we get it, your phone can very much be a "companion" device, so to speak, but it kind of reminds us of The Inbetweeners making us think of it as "ooooh! phone friend!" It just seems a bit nerdy is all.

Anyway, the previous model, the Huawei Mate 8, was a fantastic device with unbelievable battery performance; the processor performance was also pretty damn good because it implemented Huawei's own Kirin processor series technology, which is quite capable stuff that even gives Samsung's Exynos and Qualcomm's Snapdragon tech a run for its money.

Following on from the Huawei P9, rumours are now emerging (via Gizmochina) that Huawei will next revive the Mate series with the Huawei Mate 9 - although it must be said the Huawei Mate 8 isn't all that old, it's only been on the market a few months. Still, the Mate 9 sounds promising an allegedly features the as-yet unannounced next-gen Kirin 960 octa-core processor, which in turn uses as-yet unnanounced ARM Artemis core architecure. In other words it's going to be a powerhouse.

Not much else is known about the device at this stage, and we have no idea when it might come to market. However, one other snippet of info is the camera setup, and given the hardware on the Huawei P9 (and the LG G5, and the rumours about forthcoming iPhones) it should be no surprise that it's a dual-sensor setup. The sources say the handset will have a pair of 20MP sensors on the rear, an uplift in the megapixel rating from the Huawei P9's 12MP setup, however, it is not yet known if it sports Leica branding and co-engineered technology like the Huawei P9.