CES 2016: Huawei Mate 8 smartphone, Smart Watch revealed
Huawei has announced a line of watches and a flagship phone that runs for two days after just 30 minutes charging.
China technology manufacturer Huawei has announced a line of “ladies” watches and a new flagship phone that runs for 2 days after just 30 minutes charging.
That’s the claim of the China manufacturer which says it has come from nowhere to being a dominant force in smartphones in its own country in five years.
At a CES launch event today, Huawei revealed Australia would be among the first wave of countries to get the new phone called Mate 8, a new tablet called MediaPad 2, and “ladies” versions of its Android Wear Huawei Smart Watch called “Jewel” and “Elegant”.
We’d probably prefer to call it a watch for smaller wrists, however one of the models, Jewel, includes Swarovski Zirconia gemstones. Both have scratch-resistant faces and a stainless steel construction.
In the US they will cost $US499 and $US599 respectively. Australian pricing is not available for the watches or any of the other Huawei devices launched today.
If last year is any guide, Huawei will price its smart phone devices a few hundred dollars below premium Samsung and Apple smartphones but well above the cheaper device market.
That makes Huawei an increasingly attractive proposition as a substitute for an upmarket phone in Australia, as the dollar deteriorates in value.
The Mate 8 smartphone has a 6.0-inch full HD screen with 368 pixels per inch resolution, and a fast 8-core Arm Cortex processor with 2.3GHz and 1.8GHz cores with a choice of 32GB and 64GB storage.
There’s fingerprint authentication, and a three-metre microphone range to help users record audio at conferences. It has a large 4000 milliampere hour battery and a 16 megapixel back facing camera.
Perhaps the quirkiest features are the Mate 8’s gestures. You’d punch the screen with your knuckle to take a screen shot. Now a double knock on the screen will copy a web page that’s much longer than the screen’s length. And you can crop a video by using two knuckles. Your
phone effectively becomes a punching bag. The 16 megapixel camera can snap a chart or a painting at an angle on a wall and reproduce it as a full screen, front-on image.
The phone will have Huawei’s implementation of Android 6.0 which is a pity as it’s quirky adaptation of the Google’s operating system can be off-putting. Huawei would be better to use standard Android as it has with the Nexus 6P, which is proving a massive success launching in
more than 50 countries.
Huawei’s today said it wanted to collaborate with Google again on producing a Nexus smartphone.
The new 10.1-inch tablet has 4 speakers, Harman Kardon sound, and a digital pen with 2048 pressure points.
Chris Griffith travelled to CES in Las Vegas courtesy of Sony and Acer.
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