After chancing upon a post saying that they have been spotted, we immediately contacted Huawei Philippines’ Al Dimapilis and the concept store at Market Market. Both confirmed that the two devices are already in stores.
Huawei Mate 9 product launch highlights
The Mate 9, of course, is the tech giant’s current flagship phone. It was announced in November 2016 and released in December, so we’re glad that it did not take long for it to arrive in the country. What’s better, it costs only P31,990 (roughly $646) here even though its price in Europe is €699 (about P36,500 or $736).
The 5.9-inch handset is powered by Huawei’s own Kirin 960 chipset, said to be the company’s fastest chip yet. The battery is ample enough at 4,000mAh to last you at least one day, and with its fast-charging technology, it should be able to go from 0 to 58 percent in 30 minutes, Huawei claims.
As with the P9 series, the Huawei Mate 9 also features a dual-camera setup — the RGB sensor is 12 megapixels, and the monochrome one is 20. It has 4GB of RAM; 64GB of internal storage; a USB Type-C connector; a fingerprint sensor; and a more streamlined version of EMUI on top of Android Nougat. It likewise boasts a machine-learning algorithm that studies how you use the smartphone, so it can predict what you’ll do and can therefore allot processing power to where you need it most.
Honor 6x (or Huawei GR5 2017) product video
The Huawei GR5 2017, on the other hand, is fresh off the international boat, so to speak; it was launched as the Honor 6x just three days ago at CES 2017. We had pegged it at P12,400 based on its U.S. price of $250. Turns out that we were not far off, as the 3GB RAM/32GB variant of the handset is retailing in the Philippines at P13,990 (approximately $282).
The GR5 2017 also has two cameras, but this time, the dual-cam system works like the Apple iPhone 7 Plus‘ setup. The 12-megapixel RGB sensor captures the image, and the 2-megapixel monochrome one detects the depth of field.
It features Huawei’s own Kirin 655 octa-core chip, a 5.5-inch full-HD screen, an 8-megapixel front camera, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, and a non-removable 3,340mAh battery. On the software side, unfortunately, is an older EMUI 4.1 overlay over Android 6.0 Marshmallow. But don’t worry, there’s already a planned update to Android Nougat and the new EMUI 5.0 early this year.
Image on the left taken by Kristian Dowling
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