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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  • darkich - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Wow, the efficiency of the A72 seems the best out of any CPU.
    If I'm not mistaken, it consumes less than 50% of what the Apple Twister in iPhones needs
  • name99 - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Read my comments above.
    The SPEC numbers seem tainted and untrustworthy. I wouldn't trust them in the slightest until AnandTech (or someone else) has had a chance to validate them. In particular the vpr number still seems unlikely.

    As for your efficiency of A72, I don't know where you're getting that claim from. In particular the sort of fine-grained per-core power data needed to make the determination has not been made available for iOS. The best we can do is macro-level tests like the WiFi and LTE battery life tests, and obviously iPhone does fine on those. (Which is not to denigrate ARM/TSMC/Huawei's achievement --- this does look like a very nice CPU, unlike the somewhat more problematic A57.)
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    I made sure all the tests passed validation so the scores should be correct this time around.
  • fackamato - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Disappointed to not see the OnePlus 2 in the benchmarks, seeing as it's a dual SIM phone as well.
  • zeeBomb - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Well damn. I should have woke up early to read this review.
  • kadeep - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Iphones appear in charts only when they are ahead lol
  • Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    What smartphone sites and reviewers doing wrong is comparing two completely different systems which is VERY WRONG and misleading to the ppl on internet !!!
    It is simply inapplicable ! If Apple would manufacture their iphone with android system then their pone wouldn't even start .. ! And it would be MEGA slow But IF iOS for iphone would be on an android (latest) device , you would not even realize when the phone iOS booted to home screen..
    That is the FACT ! The main reason is that android is and true operating system where are 5x more processes than on poor simple iOS which is just the ''shell'' system.. there are no many processes in background as on android system.. android is linux which is VERY VERY similar to Desktop PC linux.. AND THAT is WHY Apple DENIED put iphone's iOS onto MACs or MacBook PROs or OSX onto iphones !!
    There is ''behind the scenes'' big game around and about this ''secret'' Apple's software but unfort. many ppl HAS NO IDEA unfortunately ! ..
  • TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    You appear to have misplaced your tinfoil hat. There is no reason android wouldn't run on an iPhone if Apple decided to do that. Literally no reason. It also wouldn't be MEGA slow, since the a9 is one of the finest SoCs ever made. The rest of your post appears to be uninformed dribble and garbage.
  • Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    OK u unknowledged person I won't be even bothering with you .. who DOESN'T understands the reality which is in the world.. A9 finest ? pleease .. you are so stupid bcos u believe media and advertise marketing.. and maybe fake benchmarks when it comes to iphone .. such common person you are.. live you in your dreams.. ;)
  • osxandwindows - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link

    Well, since you claim that the tests for the a9 are fake, you mind sharing tests of your own?

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