Huawei Mate 9 could come in three variations

Huawei Mate 9 features

We've caught wind of some more Huawei Mate 9 rumoring. In yet another leak on Weibo, the latest news is that the Mate 9 will have what is probably the best camera Huawei has ever made. The Huawei P9 shipped earlier this year with a great dual camera setup, similar to what we've seen in other phones like the Honor 8 and expecting to see in the iPhone 7 Plus when it launches.

This rumor suggests the Mate 9 will come with a dual rear camera setup under the same Leica branding of the P9, but it's expected to come with optical image stabilization as well. The source of the information said that this camera setup will differ from Apple's in that it will maintain the one color lens, one monochrome lens configuration Huawei has worked with already, while the iPhone will have two color lenses. It will also have OIS.

Renders of the Huawei Mate 9 have appeared online and show us, compared to the typically low standard of leaks, some flattering angles of the upcoming device. So what are we dealing with? The images are quite basic for the level of detail they illustrate, but essentially the front of the device looks clean and minimal. On the front, there's a bezeless display, call speaker, front camera and proximity sensor. The edges are also machined similarly to the Huawei P9.

The previous two Mate generations (Mate 8 in foreground). / © ANDROIDPIT

The image of the rear is well put together. The blue-gray, black and off-white color combination is a good one. The rear edges are also machined like the front, at a roughly 45-degree angle, and on the left side are the on/off and volume control buttons. These are positioned in typical Huawei fashion. It gets interesting in the center of the Mate 9's rear. There is a dual-camera module in vertical orientation, inheriting the big selling point of the Huawei P9. This could also be a Leica-designed pair of cameras. There are also what appear to be infrared sensors for focusing and also a fingerprint scanner beneath the camera module. See the images below:

You would love it if #Huawei Mate9 was so?

A lovely render (HD not Weibo-compressed) by 断翼残殇 - Huawei forum pic.twitter.com/OpdqFnVcSJ

— The Malignant (@the_malignant) 16. August 2016

Photos recently posted to Weibo give us a close look at what the Huawei Mate 9 will probably look like. What we can see is an all-metal shell with a horizontally aligned dual camera setup. The orientation of the lenses is different to Huawei's 2016 flagship, the Huawei P9, which features a horizontal alignment in the top-left of the rear panel.

Other features of the metal shell point to some interesting design characteristics. On the bottom side is what looks like a USB Type-C port flanked by two speaker grilles. Does this mean the Mate 9 will have stereo sound? It could, but this might be another mono setup as the Mate 8 had. It's not clear what are on the sides of the camera lenses, but they are probably a combination of fingerprint sensor and laser focusing modules.

Images of what the Huawei Mate 9 will probably look like. / © Weibo

Huawei Mate 9 specs

We were impressed with the Huawei Mate 8 when we reviewed it last year. Its killer feature was the 4,000 mAh battery that gave it epic endurance. With the Mate 7 having a 4,100 mAh unit as well, we're expecting the Mate 9 to follow the tradition of big battery life.

The Weibo leak also provided some interesting specs rumors. It claims that the Mate 9 will come with a 5.9-inch 1080p display, a big-hitter quad-core Kirin 960 processor running at 2.6 GHz, 4 GB and 6 GB variants and all of this running on Android 7.0 Nougat. Other specs we've come across include 64 GB of internal memory and a 16 MP rear camera. If these specs materialize, this would make the Mate 9 one of 2016's most powerful smartphones.

The Huawei Mate 8 was an impressive phablet in 2015. / © ANDROIDPIT

Huawei Mate 9 release date

We haven't been able to ascertain a specific release date for the Huawei Mate 9. But if the schedule follows the previous year, the upcoming smartphone should make its appearance at the end of 2016. PhoneArena is reporting that the Huawei Mate 9 could be released in three powerful versions with different storage capacities.

• 4GB RAM + 64GB storage: $480-510 (depending on the color)
• 4GB RAM + 128GB of storage: $585
• 6GB of RAM + 256GB of storage: $705

OH

Omar Hamwi

Spending the extra money for more storage on a smartphone is well worth it.

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