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Huawei Mate 9 Pro Review: Probably The Best Android Phone Right Now

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It is a testament (or perhaps indictment?) to the Wild Wild West nature of the mobile industry that, on December 14, thinking it was close enough to the end of the year, I wrote a piece ranking my favorite smartphones of 2016 -- only for the list to be thrown out of wack a week later when I got my hands on the Huawei Mate 9 Pro.

The Mate 9 Pro is now my favorite go-to phone to use, and since it was technically released in 2016, that means it is indeed my new favorite phone of 2016.

To be honest, this came as a complete surprise. I knew of the existence of this phone when I wrote that original list -- heck, I had even already got my hands on the "normal" Mate 9, which while excellent didn't blow me away -- and I assumed the Pro wouldn't differ enough from other Huawei phones to affect the list. And in many ways the differences between the Mate 9 Pro and Mate 9 aren't drastic, but these little bits add up and the whole package is the most pleasant phone experience I've had so far.

I wrote about how the Mate 9, despite its 5.9-inch screen, still felt comfortable in the hand. Well the Pro with a smaller 5.5-inch display, feels even better. I want my phone to be very usable one-hand, but still come with a bigger screen north of 5.2-inches (yes, I know it's me having my cake and eat it too -- such is the nature of tech geeks), and the Mate 9 Pro comes the closest of any phone since the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (still the greatest balance of "screen size"+"small body" ever) to giving me that.

The Mate 9 Pro also ups its screen resolution to quad HD instead of the normal Mate's 1080p. Now if you've read my stuff you know I don't think there's a huge difference between the two resolutions on mobile screens, and that's still true here. But the Mate 9 Pro's screen is noticeably superior to the normal Mate 9's screen because it's AMOLED instead of LCD. I've placed the two phones side by side, and the true blacks on the Mate 9 Pro is much more aesthetically pleasing.

And then there are the curves. The Mate 9 Pro features a dual-curved display (started by Samsung back in 2015, but almost every Chinese phonemaker have since followed suit in 2016, and Apple will too in 2017) but the curves here are very, very subtle, to the point that it doesn't feel or look like a curved-screen phone unless you examine it closely. Such shallow curves mean the phone doesn't have the same cool effect of visuals "spilling off the screen" like on the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Vivo XPlay 6 (I'm reviewing this next), or the Xiaomi Mi Note 2, but it also means the phone has almost none of the erroneous palm touch issues that plague the S7 Edge very badly and to a lesser extent, the Mi Note 2.

So the combination of these little things: superior AMOLED display, subtle curves and even more comfortable in-hand feel pushes the Mate 9 Pro above the normal Mate 9. As for what makes it better than other phones I've used? Well here goes:

  • The phone is insanely fast. Huawei's own Kirin 960 chip is in my opinion the fastest Android chip on the market, better than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 or 821 (and the benchmarks back this up) or Samsung's Exynos 8890.
  • Huawei's dual-camera tech with Leica branding takes very fun photos that are no possible on any other phone. I've gone in-depth about this in the Mate 9 and P9 review, but I'll explain more later. In terms of pure photo quality, it's not the best camera of the bunch, but it's the most fun.
  • The EMUI software has cleaned up significantly, and the all-black notification/toggle shade is probably the best looking and most intuitive notification shade of any phone I've tried. Little software touches like one-hand mode that's easier to activate than on other phones make using the Mate 9 Pro a joy.
  • Huawei builds the fastest fingerprint sensor on the market bar none. That, along with the fact that Huawei doesn't require you to press a button to activate sensor (instead, it goes to work as soon as your finger touches the sensor) means the phone unlocks at an instantaneous rate. Use a Huawei phone for a few days, then go back to a Samsung or iPhone and the unlocking process feels noticeably slower.
  • The Mate 9 Pro is a very strong media creating and consuming machine. The phone has dual stereo loud speakers -- which is increasingly rare in today's phones -- and has multi-directional mics for enhanced recording.

Next page: battery, camera, final thoughts...

That Huawei managed to cram a 4,000 mAh battery in a phone of this size -- it's a bit bigger than the S7 Edge, and much smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus -- is another craftsmanship marvel. And as expected with Chinese phones, the battery life is great. In two weeks of use the phone never once died on me before I finished the day back home. Screen on time averages between five to six hours per day.

Now, that dual-camera. This is the same set-up as the one on the Mate 9, so I suggest reading that review to learn more, but here's a gist: the phone has two rear cameras, a normal 12-megapixel shooter and a 20-megapixel monochrome lens. When you snap a pic, the phone uses both lens at once, and Huawei's software then stitches the two images together. Using data from two images together means more light, and Huawei believes, more details.

The real-life results are very good, but as mentioned, not the best in terms of pure photo details (the LG V20 produces images with more details when blown up to 100%) or low light (the Vivo XPlay 6 and S7 Edge both take better low light photos). If taking into the account the myriad of Leica filters and trick shot modes, however, one can say the Mate 9 Pro is one of the very best shooters around. I'll show some Mate 9 Pro samples here.

There are things that may be of concern to the average consumer, however. One, the phone doesn't have water-proofing, which is a feature I can excuse a $400 Xiaomi phone not having, but not a phone that sits firmly in the same tier as iPhones and Galaxies. (And for that matter, the Mate 9 Pro is quite expensive compared to other, say, the Meizu Pro 6 Plus or Xiaomi Mi Note 2, and both phones are great). It's not that big a deal to me since I'm not a beach person and I'm very careful with the phone in the restroom, but to some, this is a problem. EMUI is still a bit too aggressive in killing background processes, to the point that push notifications may not come through. This is fixable -- I wrote about how to do that here -- but these things should just work out of the box.

In fact, let me take the time here to say this: Chinese phonemakers, if you're reading this, please, please consider fixing the broken notification problem. Nobody likes missing Whatsapp or Gmail or Facebook Messenger messages because the phone has been asleep. We don't need some insane battery optimization feature that kills everything in the background. You guys all make good to great phones, but the software is scaring off western customers.

Okay, back to the review.

Huawei made a very curious choice of moving its fingerprint sensor to the front of the phone here, which is a break from its traditional rear placement. That means the Mate 9 Pro also eschews the company's usual software buttons for hard capacitive buttons, and they all work very well. Huawei's also cooked up this unique control scheme that combines all three traditional Android buttons (home, back, overview) into that central fingerprint sensor. Here's how it works: you tap the sensor to go "back," longpress it to go "home," and swipe sideways to activate "overview." It's a different take on how to get around Android, and I applaud Huawei for taking a chance. But sadly, this set-up is quite buggy and doesn't work nearly as well as Meizu's "mBack" system, which also combines the home and back button into one.

I do wonder if Google will eventually consider doing something similar to what Meizu and Huawei have done, because the traditional three-button set-up is quite dated. A single button that can do different things depending on short/long taps and swipes seem to be the future. Or maybe the future is no hard buttons at all...

Whatever the case, Huawei's phones are going to be among the first to experiment with these features. Until then, the Mate 9 Pro is the best the company -- and almost everyone else -- has to offer.