Huawei Mate 9 release date, specs news: Porsche Mate 9 drops in December; designer addresses comparisons to Samsung 'Edge' phones
The next smartphones in Huawei's flagship series are coming in December.
Earlier this month, the Chinese tech multinational launched the Huawei Mate 9, and while the specs of that new variant were mostly unsurprising given the various leaks in the past few months, Huawei managed to drop a big surprise: the Porsche Mate 9.
Compared to the regular Mate 9, which closely resembles its predecessor, the limited edition Porsche model took a detour from the traditional "phablet" style of the Mate phones and, instead, looks very much like the "Edge" phones in Samsung's Galaxy lineup.
The more affordable Mate 9 sports the usual flat-screen design with an all-metal rear, plastic top and bottom panels, and a slightly curved shape. On the back of this model, the dual-camera setup has two lenses sitting on top of each other, with a dual LED flash on one side and a laser sensor on the other. The fingerprint scanner rests at the bottom.
Meanwhile, the pricier Porsche variant, which Huawei says is one of the "thinnest smartphones in the world," has curved edges on both sides of the display similar to the Galaxy S7 edge and the controversial Galaxy Note 7. It has a pitch-black anodized aluminum rear, with the LED flash and laser sensor sitting above and below the dual camera system. The fingerprint scanner is on the front of the phone, beneath the screen, which makes space for the prominent Porsche branding on its rear.
The regular Mate 9 and the Porsche Mate 9 are the first to carry Huawei's new Kirin 960 processor, which is expected to be much more powerful than the 950 and the 955. While the Mate 9 offers 4 GB RAM and 64 GB of storage, the Porsche variant offers a whopping 6 GB RAM and 256 GB of storage.
The Huawei Mate 9 will be made available in silver, gold and grey, while the limited edition Porsche version will come in black.
Joon-Suh Kim, Chief Design Officer of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, recently spoke to Android Central about the inevitable comparisons between the Mate 9 and Samsung's "Edge" phones, which were the first smartphones to have curved screens.
"It's not about function," Kim said. "It's all about design, and usability. This is the importance of the beauty of symmetry," he added.
"To the normal consumer's eye, it looks similar," he continued. "But what I can say [is] that our starting point for this technology and design is fundamentally different. [Previous curved-screen phones] wanted to have functionality on the left and right, even though [the] smartphone design becomes very, very thin. So you can imagine having certain functions on the left and right is not really that meaningful anymore," Kim said.
The Porsche variant of the Huawei Mate 9 hits store shelves in Europe in December. It will be available worldwide in January 2017. According to Huawei, there are currently no plans of launching the new phone in the U.S.
