A hands-on with Huawei’s Mate 9 Pro: Leica goodness dialled to 11

The upgunned sibling of the Mate 9, the Mate 9 Pro comes with a 5.5-inch 2K curved touchscreen up front and runs Huawei’s own latest-gen Kirin 960 processor that’s built on a 16nm FinFet architecture paired with an impressive 6GB RAM and 128GB of non-expandable storage.

The Mate 9 Pro does not support microSD cards though the provided storage is plenty to begin with. Instead, it comes witha dedicated dual SIM card slot. It’s more affordable sibling the Mate 9 does however sport a hybrid SIM card slot if you need more storage.

In terms of build and design, the Mate 9 Pro has a premium look and feel with a reassuring heft to it that befits a flagship phone. Both the top and bottom come with speakers for a stereo effect and the base sports a USB Type-C port for charging duties sealed with pentalobe screws. The base of the 2K AMOLED display comes with a lozenge-shaped home button that also doubles as the fingerprint sensor. Unlike Apple’s courageous decision, the Mate 9 Pro fortunately retains a 3.5mm audio jack.

Up to of the phone is an IR blaster in case you have a need to control your telly or air conditioner.

Running on the phone is Huawei’s latest EMUI 5.0 on Android Nougat  that comes with quite a few interesting enhancements. Of note is that EMUI 5.0 is smart enough to intuitively monitor app usage and optimise processor cycles so that the most commonly used apps get higher priority and performance.

The Mate 9 Pro continues the imaging legacy of its predecessor the P9 and P9 Plus by sporting a Leica-engineered dual camera system on its rear. One camera has a 20-MP mono while the other is a 12-MP colour sensor with an F/2.2 aperture. Other additional bonuses include optical image stabilisation as well as a dual-LED flash. Combined, both offer crisper, more detailed images as well as 2160p video capture.

The 4000mAh battery on the Mate 9 Pro is, according to Huawei, exceptionally safe as it come with 15-layers of protection to prevent it from cooking off through mishap or misadventure. It also has fast 4.5V/5A charging with 20 minutes offering about a day’s worth of use and half an hour of charging will get you to 58% capacity. The only pickle is that you need to use the bundled charger and cable to get this effect: any other cables or tackle will yield a slower charge.

It looks like a very promising flagship phone indeed though its price tag puts it on the high end of flagship phone territory. We’ll put it through its paces once we get our hands on a test unit to see if it’s everything that it is meant to be. The Mate 9 Pro is now available starting from today for RM3,399. To snag it, you can swing by Huawei’s official online store at www.vmall.my