Aussies looking for a big screen phone will be able to officially purchase Huawei’s Mate 9 from next month, with the release date pegged for February 7.
We stress 'officially' because the flagship phablet has been available through several grey-market importers since late last year. Happily, Huawei will sell the Mate 9 at a standard retail price of $999 – the same as those backdoor dealers have been asking.
The Mate 9 will be a welcome addition to the local line-up of big screen smartphones and could help fill the void left by the widely-reported recall of Samsung’s competing Galaxy Note 7.
For business travellers, the sprawling 5.9-inch screen and long battery life will be highly attractive features.
Huawei claims the 4000mAh battery can last for two days under general usage, with real-world reports suggesting a range of 14–18 hours of continuous use.
Other welcome traits include USB-C fast charging technology that'll get you a full day of usage from just 20 minutes of juicing up, plus a microSD card slot to dramatically boost the 64GB of onboard storage.
Powering the Mate 9 is a speedy Hisilicon Kirin 960 processor that can tackle complex tasks with ease, as well as two high-spec cameras developed in conjunction with Leica.
There’s no word yet from Huawei in regards to an Australian release of the slightly smaller Mate 9 Pro, which packs in a dual curved edge screen with 2K resolution, and puts the fingerprint scanner on the front rather than the back.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
01 Mar 2014
Total posts 4
Have had a OPO and a Xiaomi Mi4 in the past (both bought in China), and will never use Chinese phones again. Understand that not being Chinese they are not so suitable for me as the apps I need and want I can't get, but there were a lot of OS issues. Oh, and the Mi4 screen cracked from the slightest impact.
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