Huawei has been striving this year. The company has managed to become the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world this year, and their profits increased exponentially. The company has released a number of really compelling devices, including their Android Wear-powered Huawei Watch, which is regarded to be one of the best-designed smartwatch offerings out there, and a number of smartphones. The Mate S smartphone was announced during IFA in Berlin this September, and the company’s new flagship phablet, the Mate 8, was unveiled at the end of last month.
That being said, the Mate 8 was expected to be released at the beginning of next year but it seems like the device might become available sooner than we thought. Huawei smartphone chief, He Gang, has basically confirmed that the handset will roll out on December 9th. He has also added that the company will produce one million Mate 8 devices a month, which suggests Huawei expects this phablet to be in high demand. The Mate 8 is Huawei’s most powerful handset to date, and it is to be expected it will be in high demand. As a side note, Huawei has managed to sell 7 million units of the Mate 7 in one year, so they expect Mate 8 to outsell its predecessor. The Mate 8 isn’t exactly the most affordable handset out there, but it’s more affordable than we thought it will be before it was announced. The 3GB of RAM (+32GB of internal storage) model will be priced at the equivalent of $470, while the 4GB RAM (+64GB of native storage) variant will cost $579. There is a special edition variant which will ship with 128GB of internal storage (+4GB of RAM), which will set you back the equivalent of $1,078 should you choose to buy it.
The Huawei Mate 8 features a 6-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080) display, 3/4GB of RAM and 32/64/128GB of expandable internal storage. The handset is fueled by Huawei’s all-new Kirin 950 64-bit octa-core SoC, and a 4,000mAh battery is available on the inside. The phablet is made out of metal, and it sports a fingerprint scanner on its back. The 16-megapixel OIS camera is also available on the back of this handset, and an 8-megapixel snapper can be found up front. This is a dual-SIM handset (2 x Nano SIM), and you also get 4G LTE connectivity (Cat. 6) here. Android 6.0 Marshmallow will come pre-installed on the Mate 8 with the company’s Emotion UI (EMUI) 4.0 available on top of Google’s OS. The Mate 8 will be available in Moonlight Silver, Space Gray, Mocha Brown and the Champagne Gold color options. The Champagne Gold color variant might be exclusive to the 128GB variant of this phablet, but we’re still not 100% sure.