First, it was Leica. Now, it’s Porsche Design. In a global press event at Munich, Germany today, Chinese mobile phone maker Huawei has announced its new partnership with the German lifestyle brand Porsche Design. The highly anticipated new Huawei flagship Mate 9 was unveiled at the event, along with the limited edition PORSCHE DESIGN HUAWEI Mate 9.
Both the standard Mate 9 and the Porsche Design edition are powered by the Huawei-built Kirin 960 chipset, the world’s first chipset to feature an ARM Cortex-A73/A53 Octa-core CPU and Mali G71 Octa-core GPU, also the world’s highest performing smartphone processor.
The standard Mate 9 features a 5.9-inch screen, 1080p screen and a unibody metal frame. The Porsche Design edition has a 2K curved display that measures 5.5 inches.
Specs at a Glance: Mate 9
| Band | 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
3G: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA:850/900/AWS/1900/2100(Band5/8/4/2/1/6/19) TD-SCDMA: Band34/39; CDMA2000/1X:BC0(800MHz) 4G: FDD-LTE: B1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/12/17/18/19/20/26 TDD-LTE: B38/B39/B40/B41 |
| Sim Card | Dual card dual standby dual active |
| Colour | Space Grey, Champagne Gold, Moonlight Silver, Ceramic White, Mocha Brown |
| (Only Space Grey and Champagne Gold will be available for Singapore.) | |
| OS | EMUI 4.2(Android 7.0) |
| CPU | HUAWEI Hisilicon Kirin 960 octa core |
| GPU | Mali-T900 |
| ROM | 64GB |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Display Size | 5.9 inch |
| Type | IPS |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Color | 16000K colors |
| Card Extend | Support TF card up to 128GB extended |
| Camera | Dual Cameras, front camera 8.0MP; back camera 2*12MP with AF, F/2.0 |
Safe and Fast Charging
With its new SuperCharge technology and a 4000 mAH high-density battery, Huawei Mate 9 increased battery life to over two days of uninterrupted performance, including a 40% increase in CDMA call time and a 20% increase in gaming time.
There is also the Super Safe 5-gate protection, which will offer real-time voltage, current and temperature monitoring to eliminate safety hazards and safeguard battery life.
A Phone for Photography Enthusiasts
Huawei and Leica continue their partnership in the new Mate 9, which features the second-gen dual-lens camera co-engineered with the German company. The optical performance of the camera module gets some improvements — a 12-megapixel/F2.2 RGB sensor, a 20-megapixel/F2.2 monochrome sensor and enhanced image fusion algorithms.
Pricing and Availability
The standard Mate 9 will go on sale at the price of €699 in Europe. It is expected to be available in Singapore in November 2016, though prices are not firm at this point.
The Porsche Design Huawei Mate 9 will retail for €1,395 in Porsche Design stores in Europe from late December. It will roll out Porsche Design stores worldwide (excluding the USA) in January 2017 and select retail stores in Europe, Middle East and Asia. There is no confirmation yet on the launch date for Singapore.
