Huawei Mate 8 could be overpowered, coming November 26
Chinese OEM Huawei is definitely stepping up its role in the smartphone market. It helps that it has been chosen by Google to make one of the new Nexus smartphones. It helps even more when the Nexus 6P turns out to be quite the masterpiece. So now the mobile industry has its eyes on Huawei, ready to watch its every move. Like its upcoming Huawei Mate 8 flagship, which it is teasing for a 26th November unveiling. And according to leaked specs, this could yet be another winner for the OEM.
It won't be a Nexus 6P, that's for sure. Huawei is unlikely to try and trump the Nexus smartphone for a while, especially while it's still a very hot item. Besides, it is selling the Nexus 6P directly as well, so there's very little reason to compete with itself. It is going to look as premium though, which isn't exactly new for Huawei since it went metal a while back. It won't have that odd bump on top, however, which is probably good.
In terms of innards, the Mate 8 might be up to par. The phablet will be powered by the latest HiSilicon Kirin 950, an octa-core processor of Huawei's own making, running at 2.2 GHz. There's plenty of RAM at 4 GB, and even plenty of space with 64 GB of storage. The leaked GFXBench info describes a 15 or perhaps 16 megapixel rear camera and a 7, maybe 8, megapixel front shooter. It will be interesting to see if that main camera will perform just as well as the Nexus 6P's 13 megapixel sensor, which is already one of the top in the mobile charts.
Perhaps the one wart in its specs sheet is the display, a large 6.0-inch screen that only tops out at 1920x1080 pixels. No 2K QHD resolution here. That does, however, imply that the processor won't need to devote as much resources to pushing pixels compared to a higher res display.
The Huawei Mate 8 is slated to debut before the month ends, but the question we usually ask is whether the OEM will bring the device to the US. If asked a year ago or so, we might have answered "maybe not". But considering the company's strong efforts to make its presence felt in the US, there might be a chance the Mate 8 will land here.
