Since I started using Android some couple of years ago I’ve grown attached to the Android OS. When Android was in its infancy it was a little buggy, even slow sometimes but I think the Android of today has matured. I find it stable and very intuitive.
The problem with Androids though are picking the right phones. Some phones with bad hardware can give you a really bad experience but some good ones give you a good experience.
About a month ago my friend Danny who works in Huawei contacted me and asked if I would like to be sponsored by them. They had a new phone coming out soon.
Without him telling me exactly what phone it was, judging from the month of release (September) I knew it was going to be the successor to the Huawei Mate 7 (Huawei’s largest flagship phone from last year). I thought it was going to be called the Mate 8 but instead it was called Mate S.
Before accepting an engagement with a brand and a product I normally do a lot of research. The last thing I wanted was to be caught promoting a product that I didn’t believe in. So Danny lent me the older Mate 7.
There were things I liked about it like the fingerprint sensor and the long battery life but there were things I didn’t too. Like the camera. And the camera is really really important to me. These things however were significantly improved in the new Huawei Mate S.
So I took the engagement with Huawei and in came the Mate S. I’ve been using it for almost a month now.
Here’s what I think.
- How it looks
I often don’t really think much about the looks of smartphones these days because they generally look the same to me However for the past few weeks that I’ve been carrying this phone I’ve had at least two people who have come up to me to ask me what phone it was that I was carrying.
Because they thought it looked nice. I’m not sure if it’s because you don’t see that many Huawei Mate S around in KL yet or if it’s because of its design. What I do like a lot is this is the revolving wallpaper.
Let me explain that. Basically the phone comes with some very nice professionally taken photos. Whenever you turn it on, these photos rotate so every time you look at your phone it has a different wallpaper. This is how it looks like.
And then I turn off the phone to standby and on again and it changes to this.
And this.
Nice right!!
2. How it runs
I’m not going into the details of the specs because if you want that you can find them all here. What I will focus on however is how it runs. Does it lag? Is it choppy? The answer is no. It feels pretty smooth and I know some phones feel smooth for a while but I’ve used it for some weeks now and I have no issues on it. How it feels This is my favorite favorite part of the phone.
3. How it feels
You see a lot of smartphones these days are experimenting with fingerprint sensors in all different parts of the phone. Some of the front, some on the side. Huawei’s approach is to put one on the back here. Why on the back? Because when you pick up the phone you naturally slip your finger on to the back.
It feels really natural and it’s very very fast too. Even faster than the Mate 7’s finger print sensor. The phone unlocks itself the very second your finger touches the sensor at the back. Now at first I thought this really was a gimmick and well no big deal but the more I used it and got used to it the bigger difference it made to my lifestyle.
I eventually got an iPhone 6S Plus to test Dayre on but suddenly using the fingerprint sensor on the front felt somewhat unnatural.
How it takes photos
I take a lot of photos of Penny and Fighter so photos is a really important thing for me. Here I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Here is a photo I took of Fighter while he was sleeping in a dark room. Taken with my iPhone 6S Plus.
Here is a photo I took with the same lighting but with my Huawei Mate S.
What I do really like about the Huawei Mate S though is the selfie camera. It really smoothens out the skin and almost makes it look like you photoshopped yourself. Here are some of the photos I took with it.
I also really like the selfie camera flash. If I’m not mistaken the flash has a little diffuser on it so the flash becomes less harsh on your face. That’s something a lot of other selfie cameras don’t seem to have and it makes a huge difference.
How long it lasts
Battery life is really important to me and here’s where I gotta be honest, I wish I had more. The Mate S has a battery 2,700 mAh battery which is much smaller than the huge battery the Mate 7 had at (4,100 mAh). To be fair the Mate 7 had one of the largest batteries I’ve seen on smartphones but 2,700 is still smaller than many phablet size phones.
That’s understandable though because of the smaller size of the Mate S and to be fair, the battery is still bigger than other phones its size. Like the iPhone 6S.
All in all I really love the Huawei Mate S. If you’re looking for a good android phone with a good Android experience, I think the Mate S is one that won’t disappoint you. There are many good Android phones on the market, but the Mate S is one of the best I’ve tried at the moment.
Did I also mention that you can get it for just RM2,698?
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space