The Huawei Mate S debuted at the IFA 2015 as the new high end smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer. This page contains a review, news and information for this device so, here is everything you need to know about Huawei’s new smartphone, The Mate S in one article. Reminder: Be sure to use the Table of contents (provided for your convenience) to navigate to the sections that interest you.
Huawei Mate S Design
The Huawei Mate S sticks to the general design of its predecessor, with a 7.2mm full metal frame that gives a premium look and feel. The slightly curved rear allows it to fit comfortably in your hand, and though it has the same screen size as the iPhone 6 Plus, Huawei keeps bezels to a minimum making it shorter and narrower. The Mate S weighs 156g making it very lightweight given the size of the device.
Huawei Mate S Hardware, Materials, Pictures and Design
The Mate S comes in a variety of colors that are visible in the slideshow below:
Huawei Mate S Buttons
The volume and power/lock buttons sit on the right side of the device towards the top. This placement allows for easy access.
Huawei Mate S Camera and Fingerprint Scanner
The Mate S relies on a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 8MP front camera. The overall quality is decent but it does not have the same performance of LG G4 or Galaxy S6 cameras which are certainly better. The videos are decent, with good audio quality, but again it cannot compete with those already on the market. Perhaps with future upgrades they will improve the quality.
Luckily, the standard features including HDR, time-lapse, beauty mode and light painting are included, giving you a full range of shooting options.
Below the 13MP camera sensor there’s a fingerprint scanner. Huawei updated the software for the Mate S, with Fingerprint Sense 2.0 allowing for greater sensitivity and improved recognition. You can also use it to take a photo, scroll through images in the gallery, answer calls, pull down the notification panel and silence an alarm.
Mate S Display and Force Touch
Huawei sticks to the custom quality display panel. The full HD resolution adopted by the company allows you to maintain a high number of ppi and at the same time ease the burden on the CPU and GPU during daily use. Bright, beautiful colors, excellent calibration general and perfect touch screen.
The big talking point here though is Force Touch. The 3D Force Touch Technology allows the display on the Huawei Mate S to gauge the amount of pressure you’re applying, and then provide different functions depending on the level of force.
When looking at a photo you can hold down on an area to see it magnified in a bubble. The harder you press, the more zoomed in your magnification is. Come out to the gallery overview and hard pressing on the images provides you with a larger thumbnail preview.
Audio/Sound
The audio quality on the Mate S satisfies both from the point of view of the calls and speakerphone. The speaker is indeed very powerful, placed on the lower end of the device and with very good quality in the reproduction of multimedia content.
Connectivity
It also has good network management in terms of connectivity. It offers dual SIM LTE, NFC, Bluetooth and all the latest connectivity standard. The one thing that is missing is the 5GHz band for Wi-Fi, a minor detail not expected from this product.
Mate S Battery Life
The Mate S features a 3000mAh battery, allowing it to fit in more productivity. However, that’s smaller than the 3300mAh battery found in the similarly sized OnePlus 2. The full HD display eases the strain on the Mate S battery, and Huawei promises more than a day of usage from a single charge. The good news is that the Mate S is fast charging enabled, with a ten minute charge allowing for up to two hours of talk time.
Software/UI
The Mate S runs on the latest distribution of Android Lollipop and features a completely customized design which offers many features and above all customization. The EMUI is more or less the same that you find on P8 or other smartphones.
Also, in addition to interaction through touch and biometric sensor, we find a number of options to make the experience smart. There is the possibility to modify the navbar in addition to a convenient gesture to reduce the size of the UI.
Huawei Mate S Specs
Huawei Mate S specifications review:
| NETWORK | Technology | GSM / HSPA / LTE |
|---|---|---|
| 2G bands | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 – SIM 1 & SIM 2 (optional) | |
| 3G bands | HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100 / TD-SCDMA – CRR-UL00 | |
| HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100 – CRR-L09 | ||
| 4G bands | LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 17(700), 20(800), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500) – CRR-UL00 | |
| LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 17(700), 18(800), 19(800), 20(800), 2526, 28(700), 40(2300) – CRR-L09 | ||
| Speed | HSPA, LTE | |
| GPRS | Yes | |
| EDGE | Yes |
| LAUNCH | Announced | 2015, September |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Available. Released 2015, October |
| BODY | Dimensions | 149.8 x 75.3 x 7.2 mm (5.90 x 2.96 x 0.28 in) |
|---|---|---|
| Weight | 156 g (5.50 oz) | |
| SIM | Optional Dual SIM |
| DISPLAY | Type | AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 5.5 inches (~73.9% screen-to-body ratio) | |
| Resolution | 1080 x 1920 pixels (~401 ppi pixel density) | |
| Multitouch | Yes | |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 4 | |
| – Force Touch display (optional) – Emotion UI 3.1 |
| PLATFORM | OS | Android OS, v5.1.1 (Lollipop), planned upgrade to v6.0 (Marshmallow) |
|---|---|---|
| Chipset | HiSilicon Kirin 935 | |
| CPU | Quad-core 2.2 GHz & quad-core 1.5 GHz | |
| GPU | Mali-T628 MP4 |
| MEMORY | Card slot | microSD, up to 128 GB (uses SIM 2 slot) |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | 32/64/128 GB, 3 GB RAM |
| CAMERA | Primary | 13 MP, 4128 x 3096 pixels, optical image stabilization, autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash |
|---|---|---|
| Features | Yes | |
| Video | Yes | |
| Secondary | 8 MP, LED flash |
| SOUND | Alert types | Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones |
|---|---|---|
| Loudspeaker | Yes | |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes |
| COMMS | WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, hotspot |
|---|---|---|
| Bluetooth | v4.0, A2DP | |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS/ Beidou (market dependant) | |
| NFC | Yes | |
| Radio | FM radio | |
| USB | microUSB v2.0 |
| FEATURES | Sensors | Fingerprint, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass |
|---|---|---|
| Messaging | SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email | |
| Browser | HTML5 | |
| Java | No | |
| – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic – Xvid/MP4/H.265/WMV player – MP3/eAAC+/WAV/Flac player – Photo/video editor – Document editor |
| BATTERY | Non-removable 2700 mAh battery | |
|---|---|---|
| Stand-by | ||
| Talk time |
| MISC | Colors | Luxurious Gold, Mystic Champagne, Titanium Grey |
|---|
Huawei Mate S Price
The Mate S goes on sale for €649, a bit on the high end of the price spectrum when it comes to smartphones.
Review
The Huawei Mate S is perhaps one of the most beautiful products on the market and undoubtedly the star of the recently concluded IFA 2015. The hardware and software have the “usual” Huawei feel and look and will be very familiar to those who already owned devices from this brand. Ultimately there are few real defects, battery and camera are overall decent.
Huawei News/Updates
This section is dedicated to providing important and up to date news/information on the Huawei Mate S.
Huawei Reveals Feature to Find Mate S When Lost
The feature allows you to call out to your Mate S device using a customizable keyword and the “Where are you?” command. The phone then vibrates, alarms, flashes and shouts “I’m here” to alert the owner of its location. You can see the feature in action below in the source video from instagram.
Images/Sourced Via: source 1 source 2, Huawei Mate S GSM Arena