The Huawei Mate S is a sleek and well-made phone that had us falling in love with it at first sight. Does the inside match up? Let’s take a gander.
Huawei’s latest attempt at cracking the European and American market. Announced at IFA in Berlin, Huawei is looking to improve on what made the Honor 7 an excellent device. The main feature that caught our eye at IFA was the inclusion of ‘Force Touch’. Strangely the Force Touch 128GB, model of the Mate S is not slotted for release in the UK. Strange as Huawei would have capitalised on its Android rivals. So we have the 32GB version to play with but not Force Touch. Cue sad face.
DESIGN
The Mate S sets a high bar for 2016. Its allmetal unibody screams top end and had us taken aback as this is meant to be a mid-range device. It feels great in your hands and won’t look out of place next to high-end flagship devices. You can tell Huawei paid attention to the small details with the way the Mate S just surprises you with a shiny chrome border and, best of all, a fingerprint sensor on the back of the device.
In the same vein as the iPhone 6s and HTC M9, the Mate S has flush antenna lines. More so HTC, as the back of the Mate S has a striking resemblance to the One series. If Huawei didn’t stick to the rectangular-shaped body, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a device from the Taiwanese tech giant.
The power buttons run along the right side below the volume keys for a more ergonomic reach. The buttons themselves are tactile and responsive, exactly what you’d expect. Headphone jacks and built-in mic are on top with the mic symmetrically lined up in the middle. Flip the phone over and you can see it is in perfect symmetry with the camera and fingerprint sensor. The symmetry is seen on the bottom of the device with two speaker grills staring you down. Remember it’s a mid-range device so only one of them works.
CAMERA
The 13 megapixel camera is comparable to the Axon Mini and other mid-rangers offering optical image stabilisation. Video is shot in HD up to 30 frames per second, aiding the smooth video capturing.
Photos are full of clarity. We captured some amazing shots in central London after fiddling with the manual settings a bit but the auto settings do a fine enough job already in setting up the perfect shot for you. In decent lighting the Mate S is a mesmerising shooter, capturing some really detailed pictures at the best of times. To see any blurring of pictures you’ll have to zoom in pretty close. Low lighting isn’t as impressive as noise appears in the background, not exactly ideal.
As expected with any phone from a Chinese manufacturer, there is a beauty mode included. The obsession of having an unblemished selfie with a Casper hue is alive and thriving. If that is what you’re looking for, the beauty mode does the job. To avoid looking like some sort of demented anime character, you can set the beauty level mode in 10 levels. The beauty mode really goes hand in hand with the 8-megapixel selfie camera. That’s right, 8-megapixels in a mid-range device, but that is what we have come to expect with devices from China. The Axon Mini also sees similar selfie capabilities, albeit the Mini does it slightly better. That doesn’t mean the Mate S is slacking. Selfies are produced with clarity in excellent lighting situations and obviously full of noise in low light. We found it surprising to see the Mate S and Axon Mini have a superior selfie game than the S6 and Xperia Z5.
SCREEN
We see quite a bit of high-range in the Mate S and there’s one right in front of your face with the screen. Covered in Gorilla Glass 4, the device can take quite a bit of a beating. Using the device as our main driver for a week did nothing to the screen, not even a scratch from everyday jean rubbage.
How it looks is what really matters and with an AMOLED Full HD display it is splendid on the eyes. Viewing angles are excellent, with a 5.5-inch panel you can easily share a video with two others with no problems. Outdoor visibility is clear. If the outdoors proves to be too much, putting the device up to full brightness will do the job. With an AMOLED display colour contrasts are excellent with deep blacks.
PERFORMANCE
Optimisation is the way Apple operates and by doing so it keeps its specs low but maximises performance. No one does it better and probably will never be able to replicate it (unless something truly revolutionary arises). Huawei is trying to optimise by doing what it always does and use its own in-house processors. The HiSilicon Kirin 935 performs excellent with day-to-day use. Launching apps is quick and easy. It is starting to become apparent that mid-range devices are becoming a league of their own. Scrolling through the Mate S is no different from scrolling through the S6 or Motorola X Force.
But when we really pushed the Kirin 935 we started to see some cracks. Playing Asphalt 8 intensively for 30 minutes is a painful experience. The frame rate jumps all over the place like a kangaroo on a pogo stick. It becomes almost unplayable. For the sake of the battery test we powered through and like any game with low frame rates, you get used to it. Well, after crashing into several cars and losing many races you do. Huawei still has work to do with its processors.
On Geekbench it scored on average 856 in the single-core test and 3588 in multicore. Quite low for a chip that is supposed to match up to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810. Snapdragon 810 devices usually surpass the 1,000 mark in the single-core test and 4,000 in the multi-score. Despite it’s low-ish score the phone performs smoothly with no hint of lag even when multi-tasking.
SOFTWARE
The Mate S runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with Huawei’s Emotion UI skin on top, making the layout very iOS-esque with the curved edge square icons. Similarities don’t stop there as Huawei continues to not include an app tray with Emotion. So for organisation you’ll have to make folders just like an iPhone. It takes some getting used to but it is not as bad as everyone says it is. Yes, it feels a bit limited but it does not degrade the experience with Emotion. If you like a big screen but don’t have the hands to wield one, Emotion has you covered with a one-hand layout mode that is easy to activate and deactivate with a simple slide of the on-screen buttons.
Force Touch is only available on the 64GB ‘Luxury’ variant. Sadly we will not see it on this side of the world. It is baffling why Huawei wouldn’t include a new and innovative feature to help it stand out from the competition. We can only guess that by adding Force Touch the price would go up a “touch”.
Emotion 2.0 makes its debut on the Mate S, offering an improved experience from the Mate 7. By drawing a letter, you can quickly launch an app, drawing a ‘C’ will launch the camera and you can do this even when the screen is locked. Knuckle can also wake up your display and take screenshots in a timely manner (something for you Snapchatters to consider). What also got an upgrade is the fingerprint sensor – it is two times faster and twice as responsive. The Mate S wakes up immediately upon touching with no stutter or delay. You can also use it to scroll through the UI if you just want to use one hand.
BATTERY
Battery capacity weighs in at a standard 2,700 mAh, lasting us throughout the day and more some the next day, which was surprising to say the least. If you are really frugal with the Mate S you can make it last until lunchtime the next day, which of course as professionals we tried and did. Half an hour of intense gaming with Asphalt 8 only depleted the battery by 13%. Making it excellent to use as your daily driver, you will not be bored on the tube again. The battery is non-removable and does not have fast charging like the A9. It won’t be too much of a hinderance as charging it for 30 minutes will give you 35% of charge. With 2,700 mAh you get roughly around 5-6 hours of onscreen time.
CONCLUSION
While the Mate S is a truly beautiful device with plenty to offer, we feel a bit mugged off not getting the ‘Luxury’ Force Touch edition. Other reviews show how the ‘Luxury’ edition handles gaming quite well, dispelling that crap reputation Kirin processors have. Apart from the stuttering slow gaming experience the Mate S performs excellent in all the important areas. It is a premium feeling device with a selfie shooter that will please selfie enthusiasts. Emotion may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it does have some cool features like Knuckle and a simple to use UI. Still, for the price it should come with Force Touch, for around the price you can get the S6.
VERDICT
A mid-range device that will do well as your new day-today device. It has a simple UI that iOS users can easily get acclimatised to, the best aspects of Android Lollipop are in for an even beter experience. Processor lets gaming enthusiasts down as dropped frame rates are so bad it actually affect gameplay. But the Kirin 935 performs excellent in multi-tasking and running everything you would use day-to-day.
SPEC
OS Android 5.1.1 (upgradeable to Marshmallow 6.0)
Processor HiSilicon Kirin 935
Screen 5.5 inches
Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels (401 ppi)
Memory 3GB RAM
Storage 32GB
Micro SD compatible? Yes, up to 128GB
Rear camera 13MP
Front camera 8MP
Video HD connectivity 3G, 4G, LTE
Dimensions 149.8 x 75.3 x 7.2 mm
Weight 156g
Battery 2,700mAh