A super-sized smartphone
When the iPhone was launched in 2007, it changed mobiles forever. Previously, a phone was mostly buttons. Now it was mostly screen. In fact, so much of it was screen that there was no obvious reason for the other bits. Surely it might as well go right to the edge?
Manufacturers still haven’t quite figured out how to achieve that, but this extra-large smartphone from Huawei is as close as we’ve seen. There’s a sliver of space at the top for the speaker and selfie camera, and a slightly larger sliver at the bottom for... well, just to write ‘Huawei’ on. The 6in screen fills all the space in between, leaving only the slenderest of borders to the left and right.
This means that even though it has a noticeably bigger display than Apple’s iPhone 6s Plus, the Mate 8 is almost exactly the same size overall. Available in black or white, it’s half a millimetre thicker than Apple’s phone, but that’s still pretty slim. Chamfered edges provide sufficient grip so you won’t let go of it, and the simple metallic design makes it a very striking device.
Nor will you be disappointed when you turn it on. The fingerprint sensor on the back wakes it from sleep incredibly quickly, and when the huge display lights up it looks great. It’s bright with great contrast, and our tests found it covered 99.3 per cent of the sRGB colour range. With a standard Full HD resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, it’s not quite as sharp as most current high-end smartphones, but you’d be hard pushed to see the difference with the naked eye.
Things aren’t quite so impressive when you come to using the software. The Mate 8 comes with the latest version of Google’s Android (6, also known as Marshmallow), which is good. But Huawei has put its own ‘skin’ over the top, which is bad. App icons look basic, with rounded corners that imitate Apple’s but don’t suit Android, and the way some of the screens are laid out just wastes space, which looks ridiculous on such a large screen.
Still, that’s the sort of thing we’re likely to notice, because we test lots of different Android devices. You might not find it much different from any other phone. The touchscreen, as you’d expect, responds instantly to taps and swipes, and everything happens quickly and smoothly. The Mate 8’s Kirin 950 processor comfortably beat leaders like the iPhone 6s and Samsung’s Galaxy S6 in tests where all of its eight cores could be used, and even in single-core tasks it was up at the top table. Complicated web pages – a stumbling block for a lot of Android phones – didn’t challenge it at all.
The Kirin doesn’t handle graphics quite so well, meaning it could struggle with more demanding 3D games, especially as time goes on. You’ll rarely notice a problem if you stick to more prosaic games, even prettier ones such as Hearthstone. The Mate 8’s broad format gives it room for a large battery, which lasted us just short of 12 hours of video playback, so you can usually be sure of getting through the day.
The Mate 8 has one final flaw, though. Its 16-megapixel rear camera takes pictures that are acceptable at first glance, with good colour and contrast indoors and out. But look closer, and what should be detail is a smeary blur. We’ve seen plenty of worse cameras, but rarely on phones this pricey. Similar Android phones take much crisper photos.
That’s a shame, because Huawei had almost convinced us bigger was better. Web browsing, watching videos and typing emails feels less cramped on the Mate 8 than on a regular phone, even if it’s not always easy to use with one hand.
VERDICT
The camera and software leave a lot to be desired, but the Mate 8 gets our vote for squeezing such a large screen into a handy-sized device.
SPECIFICATIONS
6in 1920x1080-pixel screen • 16-megapixel rear camera • 8-megapixel front camera • 32GB flash storage • MicroSD card slot • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.2 • 3G/4G • 157x81x7.9mm (HxWxD) • 185g • One-year warranty