Huawei Mate 9 in South Africa

Huawei has launched its Mate 9 smartphone, which the company said sees the arrival of the “new smartphone era”.

The Mate 9 comes in a standard version and a Porsche Design version, with the latter featuring higher specs and a higher price.

The devices feature a Kirin 960 chipset – which Huawei said delivers “the fastest computing performance” – and SuperCharge technology.

The Mate 9 also features EMUI 5.0 and a Leica dual-lens camera with 12MP RGB sensor and 20MP monochrome sensor.

“The Mate 9 series debuts the premium Kirin 960 chipset with Huawei’s Machine Learning Algorithm to deliver a fast and smooth experience,” said the company.

The Kirin 960 is the world’s first chipset to feature an ARM Cortex-A73/A53 Octa-core CPU and Mali G71 Octa-core GPU, added Huawei.

“The Kirin 960 also takes advantage of the Vulkan graphics standard on Android 7.0, increasing graphics performance by up to 400%.”

Battery life and display

Another standout feature of the Mate 9 is its 4,000mAh high-density battery.

Combined with the SuperCharge technology, the device provides “over two days of uninterrupted performance”.

“10 minutes of charge provides enough power to watch two full movies,” added Huawei.

The display on the Mate 9 is a 5.9″ FHD (1,920 x 1,080) unit, while the limited edition Porsche Mate 9 gets a 5.5″ curved AMOLED display.

Price and availability

The Mate 9 is available in Black, Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Champagne Gold, Mocha Brown, and Ceramic White.

The Porsche version is only available in Graphite Black.

• Huawei Mate 9 (4GB + 64GB) – €699
• Porsche Design Mate 9 – (6GB + 256GB) – €1,395

South Africa was not listed among the first wave of launch countries.

The company also launched the Huawei Fit fitness watch alongside the Mate 9, which will sell for €149.