Huawei, a Chinese firm that is looking to expand outside of Asia and in fact made the Nexus 6P this year, announced the Mate S back at IFA in Berlin last month. It’s their fourth-generation Mate. Following the success of the Ascend Mate, Ascend Mate 2, Ascend Mate 7 and now the Mate S. Yes, they decided to drop the “Ascend” this year. The Mate S shrunk a bit compared to its predecessors, which all sported 6-inch displays or larger. This time around Huawei went with a 5.5-inch display on the Mate S. They are using a 1080p AMOLED panel this year. It’s powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 935 processor which is an octa-core processor (quad-core 2.2GHz + quad-core 1.5GHz). along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Huawei has also included a microSD card slot on this model. There’s a 13MP camera around back which seems to do quite well, additionally, we have a 8MP front-facing camera and it’s all powered by a 2700mAh battery inside.
Huawei also has a fingerprint scanner on the back, which, according to reviewers, is one of the fastest ever. Which could be why the Nexus 6P’s fingerprint scanner is so wickedly fast. All around it’s a really good device, and it’s just gone up for pre-order in the UK at Carphone Warehouse. The British retailer is selling the Huawei Mate S SIM-Free for just £419. While the subsidized plans start at £31 per month. Currently, the expected delivery date is set for October 27th. Which is less than a week away.
At the time of writing this, none of the other retailers or carriers in the UK have opened pre-orders, now have they mentioned that they will be carrying the device. It’s also likely that the Mate S won’t continue to make the trip east and into North America. If the Mate S does come to North America, it’ll likely be a different variant and available a bit further down the road. Like we saw with the P8 Lite earlier this year. The Huawei Mate S is a great phone with Android 5.1.1 and the EMUI overlay on top.