This is the Huawei Mate S. it’s essentially an updated and more powerful version of the Ascend Mate 7. But it’s not only a power bump. It’s a materials bump as well. Let’s dive into our full unboxing and impressions of the new Huawei flagship, the Mate S.
More and more manufacturers are stepping up their game when it comes to packaging. And Huawei is no exception. The Mate S comes in a beautiful black box that is simple and elegant as ever. Once you tear off the perforated edge, pull out the box inside and lift open the lid, you are presented with the Mate S sitting right on top. We’ll go ahead and put this aside just for now and dive further inside what you get inside the box.
On the left side, we will find an AC adaptor and micro USB cord. Above that, a nice looking pair of earphones that match the color of the device picked, like the Mystic Champagne we have in this case. On the right side, a box containing a flip cover case for your brand new Mate S and that’s all you get inside the box with the Mate S.
Now back to the Huawei Mate S. this is one of the most premium feeling smartphones I’ve felt this year. It has beautiful chamfered edges all around and it’s built with glass on the front and aluminum on the back and the phone tapers to a razor thin 2.85mm on the edges. Up front, we have a beautiful 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display and inside, an octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage.
Camera-wise on the back, we have a 13MP back side illuminated sensor with a dual color LED flash and the battery, which is a rather small 2700mAh. The Mate S also has some other neat hardware features like a microSD card slot built into the Nano SIM card tray. and the first announced, Force Touch system on the display but unfortunately, the model we have doesn’t come with it. Force Touch only comes with the 128GB model.
The last thing to mention is the new fingerprint sensor on the Mate S, which has been titled the Tap and Go fingerprint reader. Apparently, it’s fast and accurate enough where you simply tap your finger on the sensor and it should be good. Software-wise, the Mate S is running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop but it has Huawei’s skin, which I was never fond of. There are claims of increased performance but I’m not a huge fan of skins that go without app drawers. We can always fix that with things like Google Now Launcher and Nova. But again, the built-in software may not be the best experience.
This has been my brief look at the Huawei Mate S. we are definitely going to be putting this phone up through our test and I’ll definitely come back with my full review very soon. If you have any questions about the Mate S, make sure to leave them below.
