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.

Camera Video, NAND & WiFi Performance
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  • jay401 - Monday, January 11, 2016 - link

    Mate 8? Why not just name it the "M8".
  • huberddp - Monday, January 18, 2016 - link

    I have a Nexus 6P and it never gets hot. Only the battery when charging.
  • fanofanand - Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - link

    $700+ for a Chinese device, yeah good luck with that. They really think people are going to choose this over a shiny new iPhone? They need to approach Western markets the way Hyundai and Toyota/Lexus did. Very few people will risk that kind of coin when there are proven alternatives available at the same price. That's why Lexus and Hyundai went with the "Everything the other guy has but 10% cheaper" kind of thing. If they were selling this phone for $450 people would take the risk, but I can't imagine this will be a smashing success in the West.
  • beggerking@yahoo.com - Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - link

    i take my $100 Blu phone over any icrap any day.
  • niva - Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - link

    I'm more concerned about the software on these phones than anything else. The reason why the Nexus 6P is doing so well is because Google manages their software and people are inclined to trust that process. Any other phones by Huawei will not sell well here, especially at those high prices.
  • johnny_boy - Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - link

    Huawei is pretty good from my experience. I own a Honor 6 and it got a relatively timely update to lollipop last year (though you need to download it from the Indian support site). There is reportedly Marshmallow update plans scheduled for this year, too. If this device gets Marshmallow, that will be quite impressive.
  • Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Yes I just purchased Honor 6 Plus just for £120 and it is very good phone..
    Marshmallow is coming on both honor 6 and plus so that is awesome ! http://forum.xda-developers.com/honor-6/general/hu...

    The sound is NOT good as on Vivo X5Pro but that IPS screen .aah whites are much much better still than ON AMOLED.. I really can't wait to receive S6 edge to compare the whites and the brightness
  • s.yu - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link

    Stupid Huawei fanboy you don't even know how to make a proper comparison. If you need the "blazing" white as some put it, using adaptive mode solves it. If you want an accurate white, there are basic and AMOLED photo modes.
  • Ethos Evoss - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link

    You ashole qhy I would be fanboy?of this phone? When I have iPhone 6,s6 edge ,vivox5pro, P7 ..
    I just ignore you kiddo ;)
  • SanX - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link

    Generally agree. I tried Blu 6" 1080p not for $100 but for $200 as a temporal substitute. Aside from speed in games it was OK. Of course Nexus 6 is better but not that much really. And the screen of Blu is way brighter. Every next gen of cheapo phones make all other phones more and more marginally different. Advantages? You do not care to lose or drop them. Companies must think of allowing multiple phones with the same phone # so that we will never search for the misplaced phones LOL

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