The Huawei Mate 8 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 5, 2016 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Cortex A72
- Kirin 950
- Mate 8
- CES 2016
Conclusion & End Remarks
As we come to the end of the review I’m rather pleased with what Huawei was able to do with the Mate 8. Design-wise this is still very clearly a Mate device and fully embraces the form-factor and industrial design established by the Mate 7. This is clearly a large phone as the 6” screen is of the biggest on the market, and certainly one of the only devices of its size competing in the very high-end segment.
The small improvements that the Mate 8 design did bring were all beneficial. The move of the speakers to the bottom enables the phone to have better sound output, and we also saw improvement in build quality as the plastic top and bottom side-panels of the Mate 7 were replaced with aluminium ones. Although not sure if this affects other colour variants, I found the finish of the Mate 8 to be quite of a double-edged sword as while it offers very good grip for a metal phone it also is prone to collect smudges and due to the coarse anodization being hard to clean.
The screen of the Mate 8 has seen the least improvements over the Mate 7 as we’re still seeing usage of a JDI IPS-Neo 1080p panel with the same DDIC as last year’s model. It actually seems that this year’s display shows lower luminance efficiency which can slightly impact battery life. Display calibration has only seen slight improvements, although Huawei fixed the green tint that was present on the Mate 7, the Mate 8 still shows a calibration that favours a large colour gamut that exhibits more vivid and saturated colours.
Huawei continues to embrace dual-SIM capability in all of its phones and the Mate 8 is able to take advantage of this as well – although you have to sacrifice the microSD slot for the second nanoSIM. Coming in 32, 64 and 128GB variants with expandable storage the Mate 8 should offer plenty of space for even most avid power users.
Having discussed the Kirin 950 with HiSilicon during the November launch, I had sort of high expectations of the SoC as on paper it was able to show a lot of promise. Fast-forward to today and not only did the chipset fulfil the expectations and all of its promises, but it actually managed to exceed them as I hadn’t imagined that HiSilicon would be able to reduce CPU power consumption this much. This bodes well not only for the Kirin 950, but for what I hope is an indication of what other vendors with A72 silicon will be able to show. I’m now eagerly looking forward to testing the Snapdragon 820’s Kryo and Samsung’s Exynos 8890’s M1 to see if the two new CPU architectures will be able to match or beat the Cortex A72 implementation in the Kirin 950, as HiSilicon now sets the new bar in terms of power efficiency.
Performance of the Mate 8 was also extremely good. This was not only due to the 2.3GHz A72 CPU cores but also to what seems to be targeted software optimizations and improvements to Android. The Mate 8 is currently the fastest Android device on the market and should be able to perform very well against the upcoming generation of flagships.
On the GPU and 3D performance side Huawei and HiSilicon were able to show very large improvements compared to last year’s models. The new Mali T880MP4 at 900MHz enabled the Huawei device to showcase much needed performance boost. Although we saw large improvements, it’s unlikely that the Mate 8 will be able to compete against upcoming devices with new generation SoCs as the smaller Mali configuration of the Kirin 950 sacrifices power efficiency in favour of die size and thus when looking at overall power efficiency at the same TDP levels, the Mate 8 currently falls behind the competition. Nevertheless I applaud HiSilicon for balancing out the GPU in such a way that thermal throttling is not an issue, thus enabling the Mate 8 to be able to always operate at near its maximum performance, something we can’t say of many of today’s devices.
Through the efficient SoC and the large battery the Mate 8 is able to sport one of the best battery performances among today’s smartphones. It seems that the device is actually being held back by high RF power consumption, something especially visible in the LTE web browsing test where Mate 8 only narrowly manages to outperform the Nexus 6P. This skews usage patterns in favour of high CPU loads as that’s where the Mate 8’s strength lies, vastly outperforming the competition in terms of efficiency.
Still speaking of connectivity, Huawei has finally managed to equip one of its own devices with a competitive WiFi solution that is able to check all the feature boxes such as the much needed 5GHz band and 802.11ac compatibility. Performance is also good although we noticed some odd behaviour in the upstream bandwidth in the 5GHz band.
Lastly, there’s the Mate 8’s camera. In its current state with the B116 firmware version that the device was reviewed on the only way to accurately describe it is as a complete disaster. Huawei has promised that we’ll be seeing a software update in the near future that will be able to correct the problem – so until then we’ll hold out on a definitive conclusion. The Mate 8 did show promise in low-light photography so once and if the focus issue is alleviated and the camera sensor will be able to perform at its full potential, it should in theory be able to compete well against other flagships. Check back in the future as we’ll be updating the review for a complete camera evaluation.
As we arrive to the conclusion, I’m left relatively happy with the Mate 8. Over the last year since I reviewed the Honor 6 and Mate 7 I’ve seen Huawei being able to steadily identify and improve on its weaknesses. In terms of performance and power efficiency the Kirin 950 is able to mark an absolutely enormous jump over last year’s devices as we finally see a proper successor to 2014’s Kirin 920/925. Huawei has said that they’ve been able to gain a lot of software experience while working with Google on the Nexus 6P and it really shows in EmotionUI 4.0, as it showcases exemplary performance.
While this is definitely not a perfect device and Huawei can definitely improve in aspects such as screen quality, I’m tending towards calling the Mate 8 a worthwhile purchase – that is, if Huawei manages to fix the severe camera issues. Until we can revisit that aspect of the device and if the camera is a critical factor in one's purchasing decision of the phone, I’d recommend waiting out on the full evaluation before making a final decision.
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Ethos Evoss - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Test result battery stay last a quarter of day.. on s plus slightly more..s.yu - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link
Not enough people realize you're a stupid Huawei fanboy so they still bother trying to speak sense into you, what a waste of time.Ethos Evoss - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link
Jesus Christ you again ???I don't even own huawei phone there is no any waste time ..why u wasting time here replying u mental.. :DEthos Evoss - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
@Andrei FrumusanuI must say that THIS TIME Andrej u made an WONDERFUL, TRUTHFUL , NOT biased review for Huawei product ! WELL DONE !
I am starting like anandtech slowly ..
But one thing I need con.. ; Why such MEGA TERA in depth ? Isn't it too much ? silly ;)
Do we really need those cpu's or gpus instructions and those not really friendly graphs just to make call or browse net , play vid ? This review was very very in -depth than previous any smartphone review.. But still great .. I admire those ,who is truthful and real and this time you were..
But overall huawei disappointed me in more aspects..
Disappointments ;
* Yes agree very thick black borders around the screen .. it is just horrible huawei NEVER been like this .. Only solution is going for black screen..
* The display is really bad I can't believe , I had P8 which has the SAME mauf. same technology so how can be mate 8 screen so bad ? P8 is JDI IPS NEO too ...should be the same.. weird
* The battery is Ok thought will be better than Mate7 a lot more.. Can't understand how Mate 2 has the BEST battery life from all smartphones in the world.. But cannot believe that there was better battery life with iphone 6.. I DON'T believe that .. That's on paper DEFO not real world ! So may iphone 6 ppl wouldn't complain !
* The pictures are bad .. disappointment !
* The video recording is just horrible blurred not sharp .. Only one thing slightly saved it that 1080p 60 real motion .. that was cool I would record ONLY with 60fps.
*NO USB C and no fast charge very bad !
And Huawei phones prices increased dramatically so it is NOT Huawei as I knew this back in day !!!
I just purchased S6 Edge just for £280 from aliexpress and advantage is that it has nice brightest screen from all smartphones .. and very good whites .. (in the pas it was disaster with their whites.. looks like samsung learned )
boostern - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Yes we need more reviews like this one. If you want want to read reviews like "camera OK, display mmm, CPU Antutu over 9000!" there are plenty out here. I literally cum when I read a review such deep like this one.Ethos Evoss - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
''cum'' u DAFT ..s.yu - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link
This is Anandtech, you read the most detailed review anywhere. The second most detailed is Notebookcheck, they release more reviews but they're not as detailed. As for the "impression"s and "hands-on"s they're everywhere.ManuLM - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Strange: on display page, the luminance - Power curve shows 821mW for 200CD/m2 but in the table just below you rate it as ~419 mW. Typo, or I did not understand the table "Screen Luminance Power Efficiency 100% APL / White" ?Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
The power curve is power of the whole device, to just look at luminance efficiency I use the projected baseline at 0 nits to get a value for the backlight power only.zodiacfml - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
One trick pony with a high price.