Huawei Mate 9 Pro Review: The Best Camera Phone

I have been using the Huawei Mate 9 Pro for the past couple of months as my primary device; I have to admit that it was a surprisingly positive experience. Once you start taking pictures with your Huawei Dual Lens Leica camera, it becomes very hard to put it down and go back to any other phone.

Let’s admit it, in the mobile-first era; we have let go of many devices in favor of our mobile phone. Our smartphone is now a phone, a computer, a camera, a way to access the internet, connect and chat with friends, a navigator, etc.

Huawei Mate 9 Pro Features:

The Mate 9 Pro is a powerful and performing device; it has a 5.5-inch 2K curved screen, Kirin 960 processor, 4000mAh battery with SuperCharge technology, Leica dual lens (12MP RGB sensor and 20MP monochrome sensor), 8MP selfie camera, 4K video, Dual SIM support, 6GB RAM, 128GB ROM.

1- Camera:

Scroll to check all the pictures in the above gallery. The pictures are not retouched, nor color corrected, only saved in lower quality for the web.

The Huawei-Leica alliance created a hard-to-beat device. Today, when choosing a smartphone, our decision is profoundly affected by the camera/picture quality. I am an advanced photographer; I usually move around with my professional camera. For the past few weeks, I have been using the Mate 9 Pro as my camera and I have taken some cool pictures.

With light painting, you can experiment and shoot like a pro

The camera menu is very user-friendly, you can quickly switch between automatic and fully manual control in an intuitive way to get the best out of your pictures. Huawei installed some pre-set modes to help you get better pics in different settings. My favorite is the light painting mode (check some of the pics in the above gallery)

2- Look and Feel:

Huawei Mate 9 Pro

Huawei is improving the l ook and feel with every device. The Mate 9 Pro is a decent looking device; its curved screen is not annoying. I was always struggling with my Samsung S7 Edge curved screen’s sensitivity especially when taking a selfie. With the Mate 9 Pro it’s not the case. The Huawei Mate 9 Pro is a little smaller in size than the iPhone 7 Plus, given that it packs almost identical features.

3- Home Button:

The home button is very responsive; it is not a press button but rather a touch sensor. The Huawei Mate 9 Pro has one of fastest fingerprint sensors; it immediately unlocks the device upon touch.

4- USB-C

If you have the new MacBook Pro then you will love the compatibility of this device with your laptop. It supports the same connectivity that was introduced with the new MacBook and requires no USB adapter in order to be connected to the laptop. You can use the native MacBook Pro power cable to connect the phone to the Laptop.

5- Battery Life and Fast Charging:

Huawei Mate 9 Pro Fast Charge

The battery life on the device is quite impressive. If you are not consuming a big amount of media, then it can last you a full day. The cool thing is that if you are running low on power a 20min charge can give you enough juice to watch a full movie and a 40min charge can give you a 100% full charge.

The details are stunning, the full resolution picture shows the little hair particles

5- Audio and Microphone:

The Huawei Mate 9 Pro features 4 microphones equipped with noise canceling technology to eliminate background noise. It also has directional audio capture for videos which gives the movie a 360-degree audio feeling.

6- Dual SIM:

Huawei Mate 9 Pro Dual SIM

If you have two lines or you travel a lot, you can use two SIM cards with the Huawei Mate 9 Pro. SIM 1 supports 4G and SIM 2 supports 3G services. From the Dual SIM management menu, you can choose which card is the default for calling and which is the default for data. There is also a very nice feature called App Twin that lets you use two different accounts on WhatsApp and Facebook without having to download additional third party apps.

The ability to capture high-speed moving elements and still manage to show the details is impressive

7- In The Box:

What I liked most about the box is that it contained a transparent phone cover, it’s a nice gesture from Huawei as most people won’t carry their devices without a protective case. Also included a USB-C cable and a USB-C to Micro USB adapter.

The earphones, on the other hand, are an ugly version of Apple’s earphones, they are not practical to use and constantly fall off my ears.

You can still get details and color depth in low light environments

8- Huawei ID:

The idea of carrying an Android phone is to have a universal Google experience across all Android devices. Hardware manufacturers like Huawei tend to create their systems in parallel to Google to backup your personal data and improve the AI on the device. The downside is that this becomes problematic and confusing for users and it becomes hard to transfer data from one device to another. What I do is disable Huawei ID and make sure I am fully functioning on my Google account, this way everything including contacts is centralized on Google rather than split on both accounts.

Foodies will love the camera on this phone. The colors, the details, everything they need for a good picture.

Overall:

Huawei did an excellent job with this device. In my opinion, it is one of the best Android devices on the market. The Dual lens Leica camera is still unmatched by any other smartphone camera and will make you fall in love with photography and the device.

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