Huawei has only just begun with its invasion of the American smartphone market, with its Nexus 6P proving to be a darling with stock Android enthusiasts. But leaked benchmark test results show the Chinese smartphone maker could be planning on unveiling its own flagship smartphone to bear the banner for the Huawei brand.
The Chinese smartphone maker has been mum about the Huawei Mate 8, which is expected to be the successor to its solidly built big-screen Ascend Mate7. However, a teaser for a Huawei event scheduled for Nov. 26 surfaced online earlier via Weibo, showing a huge, stark number 8 and the phrase "Mate 8" right below it, erasing all doubts that the Mate 8 is indeed ready for unveiling.
Now, just a few weeks before the phone's first official appearance, leaked GFXBench test results, also making their way to the Internet via Weibo, reveal the Mate 8's partial specs, showing a smartphone that could be just as powerful or even more than the very popular Nexus 6P.
The benchmark results confirm rumors that the Mate 8 will indeed run on Huawei's homegrown Kirin 950 chipset, built on advanced 16 nm FinFET technology and a big.LITTLE architecture. The octa-core processor has four 2.2 GHz Cortex A-72 cores and another four 2.0 GHz Cortex A-53 cores. The chip has an ARM Mali-T880, with an i7 coprocessor and a Tensilica Hi-Fi audio chip. In contrast, the Nexus 6P runs on a Snapdragon 810 from Qualcomm, with four 1.55 GHz Cortex A-53 cores and another four 2.0 GHz Cortex A-57 cores. The Snapdragon 810 has an Adreno 430 GPU.
The benchmark results also point to 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage, as well as a smaller 3 GB RAM version with 32 GB of storage. Meanwhile, the Nexus 6P has 3 GB of RAM for all three versions with 32 GB, 62 GB and 128 GB storage options.
In the camera department, the Mate 8 also appears to be upping its ante, at least in terms of megapixels. That said, the number of megapixels doesn't tell the entire story, and with the Nexus 6P ranking high in DxOMark's list of best smartphone cameras, the Mate 8 has a lot to live up to. Nonetheless, the 16-megapixel camera rumored to be on the Mate 8 should give us a clue about Huawei's plans for its flagship phone's camera. It will also reportedly come with autofocus, face detection, flash, HDR and touch focus. The front camera will sport 7 megapixels, and both the primary and secondary shooters will have the ability to shoot videos in Full HD.
The only thing unexciting about the Mate 8 so far is its rumored display resolution. At a full six inches, the display will have 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, which is far less than 1,440 x 2,560 pixels on the Nexus 6P and most other flagship smartphones. That said, many doubts have been raised about the practicality of a Quad HD and an Ultra HD display, and the Mate 8 may yet live to be a solid flagship even with its Full HD display. At the very least, it won't eat up a lot of resources simply to power up all those pixels.
The Huawei Mate 8 32 GB is expected to be available for around $510, while the 64 GB model will cost $610. With the Nexus 6P proving to be an early success, it's likely Huawei will bring the Mate 8 to U.S. shores as well.
