Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design
Huawei caught everyone by surprise with the
limited edition Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design. The fashion-focused subsidiary of
the legendary car maker is not new to phones, but this is its first partnership
with Huawei.
The Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is smaller than its
mass-market sibling - it has a curved 5.5” display. It is sharper (QHD
resolution, 534ppi vs. 1080p, 373ppi) and it is an AMOLED to boot. It’s thinner
and lighter too - 7.5 mm, 169 gr, but keeps the 4,000 mAh battery of the burlier
Mate 9.
The phone borrows the Kirin 960 chipset, but ups the
memory to 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (up from 4GB/64GB). You lose the
microSD slot, not that you'd notice. This is a premium offering in electronics
terms, not just design.
Talked-about camera adorns the back -
Leica-branded with a 12MP color sensor and a 20MP black & white sensor.
This is the second generation of the camera found on the P9 (which was 12MP +
12MP instead). The latest Kirin chipset is capable of 4K 2160p video capture,
so that’s another leg up on the P9. The combined cameras do Hybrid Zoom - a 2x
digital zoom that combines information from both sensors (which the rumor mill
confused for optical zoom).
The big battery (4,000 mAh), but how
it’s charged is even more impressive - Huawei SuperCharge technology pushes a
whopping 5A over the USB Type-C cable (for a total of 25W). In 20 minutes, you
can charge the Mate 9 enough for a full day’s use. If you only have 10 minutes,
then you can still charge enough for two full movies.
This premium handset will
be available in the European Porsche Design Stores starting in late December.
But you better have been really, really good this year - as the Huawei Mate 9
Porsche Design will set you back € 1,395. The phone will be available in Porsche
Design Stores worldwide (aside from the US) and select Huawei stores in Asia,
the Middle East and Europe, but that will be in January next year.
