News & Reviews:   Huawei Mate 8

Huawei’s latest flagship smartphones which include the Huawei Mate 8, P9 and P9 Plus are all powered by Huawei’s home-brewed HiSilicon Kirin 95X series chipsets based on the 16nm FinFET Plus fabrication process. It turns out, this is the main reason for these three flagships better performance and impressive battery life.

So, Chinese telecommunication authority, TENAA has listed a new Huawei device on their website, known as the Huawei eH880, the website has revealed the front and back of the smartphone along with some tech-specs given. Here are the tech-specs shown below:

Following the launch of the Huawei P9 series in Malaysia and also in conjunction with Hari Raya, Huawei Malaysia will be hosting P9 Roadshows to allow users to experience its flagship devices. There will be exclusive promotions for on a range of Huawei devices, such as the P9 Plus, P9, Mate 8 (Standard/Premium) and the G8 at the roadshow, customers will be given the opportunity to participate in the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and stand a chance to win grand prizes like a Huawei Mate 8 Premium Edition worth RM2399 or a Harmon Kardon Earphone! Other prizes include a Starbucks gift card worth RM50, an AEON voucher worth RM20 and other exciting prizes. Below are the locations, devices and promotions offered:

By now, you should have heard about Huawei P9's special dual rear cameras module and it's been almost two weeks now since its sale launch in Malaysia. Although it's not the first smartphone to install dual rear cameras, it's certainly the first to be co-engineered by Leica, one of the iconic camera brands in the world. It's only RM2099, but how well does it fare? And is it the new king of phoneography? Read below to find out.

In case you haven't heard, a Digi 4G LTE Carnival by Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd (Digi) will commence tomorrow (19 May) at all its 150 Digi Stores and Digi Stores Express nationwide until 30 June. The carnival is aimed to give customers the opportunity to take advantage of offers designed for those with all types of consumption and usage needs.

We might be able to see a new Huawei Mate 9 at the end of this year, according to analyst Pan Jiutang. According to him, the Huawei Mate 9 will be using a newly designed chipset by Huawei, the Kirin 960. The chipset is produced using the 16nm process, and the CPU will include the next generation Artemis cores along with an octa-core GPU. It will also support 4G LTE Cat.12 connectivity and CDMA networks.

The Huawei Mate 8 is currently going live at KLCC Concourse for their Huawei Mate 8 Carnival. Available until 2 May 2016, the roadshow offers the recent Huawei Mate 8 trade-up program (so you can get it for less than RM300!), telco deals with Celcom, Digi and Maxis and plenty of prizes. These include a free Huawei G780 for the first 50 buyers and a Huawei ANC Earpiece for the next 50. 

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's Consumer Business Group was recently quoted that the next Huawei phone will have a 2K or QHD display with at least 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution. Previously, he held onto an adamant stance that no Huawei device would have a display larger than FHD or 1920 x 1080 or a camera sensor bigger than 13MP because there was no difference in quality and that it would use battery life inefficiently.

“last year I would certainly not buy a 2K device as the power consumption was high and the difference to my eyes non-existent. But now I have changed my mind and my next phone will be 2K as I like VR!” Richard Yu, CEO, Huawei Consumer Business Group

This week, Malaysia's telcos continued to battle it out. Celcom officially announced their FIRST Platinum plan with a number of extras like their first Home Broadband offering. Maxis also went official with their updated MaxisONE plans and shared Data Pool. Not much news from the other telcos except perhaps U Mobile offering free mobile Internet for Waze users and Digi's postpaid plan for students. Tune Talk also did their Indonesian-centric Bisa Pak, signalling perhaps more "innovative features" from other telcos coming soon.

The Huawei Mate 8 is the company's latest flagship and surprisingly, the official price tag for the device is only RM2099. Even if you go for the premium version (Mate 8 Premium); the price only increases up by RM300. Featuring beautiful design (we got the Moonlight Silver version), very "beast-like" hardware performance according to our videographer and the aforementioned affordable pricing, just how good is the Mate 8? Read below to find out.