LAS VEGAS—Huawei is a conundrum. Globally, it's the third-biggest smartphone maker in the world, well ahead of LG. As we found with the Mate S and the Google Nexus 6P, Huawei makes compelling high-end phones and tablets.
Today at CES, Huawei showed off the Mate 8 phablet, GX8 phone, and MediaPad M2 10 tablet, all of which would look good in any carrier's lineup.
Hands On With the Huawei Mate 8
The Mate 8 was introduced this November in China, but this was our first chance at getting hold of Huawei's new flagship. Huawei gave us a week with the phablet, which was plenty of time to get a good feel for some of its idiosyncracies.
The Mate 8 starts at 599 Euros, which puts it within striking distance of the big dogs like Apple and Samsung. Its all-metal build quality is excellent, although it's squarer and a little more formal than the curves both Apple and Samsung have been crazy about recently. The fingerprint scanner on the back is easy to reach with your forefinger, and it's super fast and accurate.
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The phone's best feature is its super-bright 6-inch screen, which makes it terrific for reading books. It's only 1,920-by-1,080 resolution—Samsung's phablets are much higher-res—but I didn't notice until I was also holding a Samsung phone, at which point I was blown away by the Samsung's competing sharpness.
The Mate 8 has 16-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras. The main 16MP camera comes with a lot of fun filters, but it's noisier in indoors lighting conditions than I'd prefer. The selfie camera has a great little guide to make you look at the actual camera rather than down, though.
Performance on the 2.3GHz Kirin 930 processor is similar to what we saw on the Mate S: excellent productivity performance with so-so gaming frame rates. This is the first Huawei phone we've seen with Android Marshmallow 6.0, although you wouldn't know it because of Huawei's very thick EMUI skin. Most notably, EMUI gets rid of Android's app tray—all your icons are on the home screens. Huawei says that's simpler.
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I'm also concerned EMUI is a battery hog. I used the Mate 8 without a SIM card, in Wi-Fi-only mode, and yet it would frequently run its gigantic 4000mAh battery down after two days in standby. Samsung phones have the same problem; HTC's generally do not.
Hands On With the Huawei MediaPad M2
The MediaPad M2 10 is designed for watching movies and drawing pictures. So, unlike the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and Apple iPad Pro, it defaults to landscape mode, with the home button centered for landscape. It also has a 16:9, 1,920-by-1,200 10-inch screen, unlike the higher-resolution 4:3 screens on its major competitors. That's a 1080p movie resolution and a film aspect ratio, so you see where Huawei is going.
The M2 runs Android 5.1 on a 2GHz octa-core Kirin 930 processor and will come in 16GB and 64GB storage sizes, both with a MicroSD card slot. The tablet is only 0.28 inches thick, and weighs 17 ounces. There's a 13-megapixel camera on the back and a 5-megapixel camera on the front. Super-loud quad speakers (treble on the top, bass on the bottom) blast sound with Harmon/Kardon's Clari.fi enhancement technology. I demoed the tablet in a very loud room, but I can confirm that yes, the speakers are loud.
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I'm also intrigued by the M2's Wacom pressure-sensitive pen, which will be included with the 64GB model. The tablet comes with Wacom's Bamboo app, which suggests that the pressure-sensitivity will be compatible with any app in Wacom's ecosystem. That's encouraging.
Holding the Mediapad in my hand made it clear that it's a major competitor to Samsung. The tablet is thin, smooth, and light, and the screen is sharp, although the colors aren't as rich as Samsung's AMOLEDs. I played with the stylus a bit, and palm rejection and pressure sensitivity are both good. However, the stylus is a little bit slippery on the screen, and pressing hard creates a slight ripple effect in the screen plastic, similar to the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 but unlike the harder iPad Pro + Pencil combination.
The Mediapad M2 comes in four configurations. There's a silver, 16GB/2GB model ($349 for Wi-Fi, $399 LTE) and a gold, 3GB/64GB model ($419 Wi-Fi, $469 LTE). Only the 64GB model has the Wacom pressure-sensitive layer and pen. Both are coming to the U.S., but via direct sale, not necessarily through carriers.
Huawei Watch Elegant and Jewel
The company also showed off some new colors and styles for the Huawei Watch (the Jewel has 68 Swarovski crystals around the face for $599) and the Nexus 6P (gold). The new watches have a built-in speaker so you can make phone calls on them; when I tried it in the hall, the speaker was too quiet to hear, but it was a very, very noisy room. Check them out in the video below.
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