Huawei Mate S in the flesh, first impressions

An unlikely successor to the Huawei Mate 7, the Huawei Mate S puts a lot of attention to finer details of the Huawei Mate series. While the Mate S has a smaller display size of just 5.5 inches compared to the 6-inch phablet size of the Mate 7, the former is re-positioned as a flagship device at a regular size.

Huawei carried out the same design of the series in the Mate S although there are some details that were derived from the Huawei P8 as well. It’s like they combined the best features of the P8 and the Mate 7 to create the Mate S (the front side looks like the P8 and the back side looks like the Mate 7).

The handset is made up of a single solid aluminum alloy with chamfered edges allowing it to be really slim (7.2mm) and sleek.

The fingerprint sensor is still positioned at the back just below the camera lens for easy access while the power and volume controls are on the right side.

The front panel is completely covered with the glass display that stretches from edge to edge and protected by Gorilla Glass 4. The corners are a bit rounded along the edges and the glass slightly curving towards the edges before it is cut by the metal frame. There is also a small slit on the glass along the upper corner for the speakerphone.

The SIM card cradle is found on the left side and pops up when you punch the pinhole. As usual, the Mate S supports 2 nano SIM cards with one tray able to support a microSD card reader as well.

The micro-USB port is found at the bottom end with speaker grills positioned on each side.

Since we won’t be seeing the Huawei P8 Max in the Philippines, the Mate S will be the first to run on the faster Kirin 935 chip (the latest in production from HiSilicon). It’s an octa-core processor that combines a lower-clocked quad-core Cortex A53 processor at 1.5GHz and another quad-core Cortex A53 running at a maximum of 2.2GHz. That’s a slightly better configuration than the Huawei P8 where the more powerful processors ran at a max of 2.0GHz.

Performance is pretty impressive and within the range of the Snapdragon 810 if we based it in benchmark scores of Antutu which is 51,495.

Huawei Mate S specs:
5.5-inch AMOLED full HD display @ 1920×1080 pixels, 401ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 4
HiSilicon Kirin 935 octa-core
ARM Cortex A53 1.5GHz quad-core, ARM Cortex A53 2.2GHz quad-core
Mali-T628 MP4 GPU
3GB LPDDR3 RAM
32GB, 63GB, 128GB internal storage
Up to 128GB via microSD card
Dual-SIM, Dual-LTE
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.1
NFC
Fingerprint Sensor
13MP rear AF camera f/2.0, OIS, BSI, dual-LED, dual-tone flash
8MP fixed focus, f/2.4
GPS with aGPS support
2700mAh Li-Ion battery
Android 5.1 Lollipop
149.8 x 75.3 x 7.2mm (dimensions)
156 grams (weight)

The Mate S also comes with a 13-megapixel camera that features a Pro Camera function that allows you to manually set the ISO and Shutter Speed.

The Huawei Mate S is pegged at a promotional price of Php31,990 which includes Harman Kardon designer earphones (worth about Php10k) and personalized engraving among others.