Hands-on of Mate 8, Mediapad M2 10.0, and more

Introduction

At its CES 2016 press conference, Huawei went on to showcase three devices - a phone, a tablet, and a smartwatch. The Mate 8 phone sees its international launch, the Mediapad M2 10 is a new device entirely, while the Huawei Watch Elegant and Jewel are two new editions of the Huawei Watch this time with the ladies in mind specifically.
Huawei spoke at length how much its brand awareness has gone up around the world and that it has become the #3 smartphone maker worldwide. With ambitions to jump over Apple and take #2, of course. Flagships like the Huawei Mate 8 and the Nexus 6P will help raise awareness and push sales even further.
The Huawei Mate 8 was the first device that was shown off on stage. Not technically new, but we haven’t had a chance to handle it yet so check out the hands-on on the next page.
The Mate 8 features an all-metal body with razor-thin bezels around the large 6" screen. Huawei compared its size to the 5.5" iPhone 6s Plus. It also focused on the new Kirin 950 chipset – the first with Cortex-A72 and Mali-T880, promising double the performance over the Kirin 925 in the Mate 7. Then there's the 16MP camera with f/2.0 aperture, OIS and phase detection – just the right recipe for low-light shots.
The Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 is a brand new product. A 10" tablet with stylus support and strong focus on audio – the partnership with Harman/Kardon brought a 4-speaker, 4-watt setup promises sound like you've never heard before from a tablet.
Then there's the Huawei Watch, one of the prettiest Android Wear devices is coming in two new designs aimed at the fairer sex. The Jewel and Elegant versions are adorned with Swarovski-made zirconia and feature a premium Rose Gold case.
Oh, and there's a new color version of the Huawei Nexus 6P, the Matte Gold. But we start with the Mate 8, which has a unique color too – Mocha Brown. Head to the next page for our hands-on impressions.

Huawei Mate 8 hands-on

"More! More!" seems to be the right answer to the question "How big is too big?" as far as Huawei is concerned. That's why the Huawei Mate 8 is loaded with a massive 6" display, but you know what? It's about the same size as a 5.7" Nexus 6P or even a 5.5" iPhone 6s Plus.
It's a bit wider than them, but this is as narrow as a phone with a 6" 16:9 screen can be – there's basically no bezel to the side of the screen. The top/bottom bezels are very slim too, the Nexus and iPhone are lacking in this regard, which makes them actually taller than the Mate 8.
In the hand, the Mate 8 felt a lot like the Nexus 6P, in fact, just with a larger screen (that's no coincidence, both phones are made by Huawei).

The Mate 8 feels smaller than you expect a 6" phone to be

Besides the screen, the rest of the exterior is wrapped in metal that comes in several hues, including the unique Mocha Brown. The metal has different textures – the sides are micrometer-grade brushed metal while the back is bead-blasted smooth.

Huawei Mate 8

We didn’t have a chance to put it through its paces, but Huawei tells us three things about the Kirin 950 chipset – it's fast, power efficient and cool.
With the first Cortex-A72 cores in a chipset (four of them, plus 4x Cortex-A53) and Mali-T880, the Mate 8 should double the performance of the Mate 7 (neither Snapdragon nor Exynos chipsets have those yet). The chipset is wrapped in 6 layers of highly conductive DX19 material to distribute the heat away from the chipset.

Huawei Mate 8

The new 16nm FinFET manufacturing process allows for 70% better power-efficiency so Huawei is promising over two days of use. The 9V @ 2A charger will give you a full day's worth of battery life in just 30 minutes. Charging is done via regular microUSB 2.0 by the way, no USB Type-C here.
The camera takes a Sony sensor (IMX298) and puts it behind a f/2.0 aperture and arms it with OIS. It can correct up to 1.5° of shakes with its 3-axis motor (with help from famous stabilization gurus at LDS). It also features phase-detection autofocus.

The 16MP camera with OIS and phase-detection AF

Strangely, the camera tops out at 1080p @ 60fps, there's no 4K UHD video capture here.
The Huawei Mate 8 is targeted at business users with some features that will give them peace of mind. The fingerprint reader (which works 100% faster than the previous iteration, by the way) can lock applications away as well as photos, videos and documents.

The fingerprint reader

Additional security is provided by the special Huawei Secure keyboard, which always shows up when typing your passwords. You can install third-party keyboards as usual, but they won't get to see your password.
The Mate 8 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Emotion UI 4.0. The Kirin 950 chipset can be paired with a choice of 3GB RAM / 32GB storage or 4GB RAM with 64GB or 128GB storage. And there's a microSD slot, unlike the Galaxy Note5, Nexus 6P and iPhone 6s Plus.
The screen can detect knocks with your knuckles, the default gesture is to capture a screenshot. You can do "long page" screenshots too, basically scrolling down to capture more than fits on the screen. A new feature is the detection of two-knuckle knocks, which capture a short video instead.
The Huawei Mate 8 is a dual-SIM phone and supports more bands than any other – 9 3G bands and 18 4G bands, covering a total of 217 countries and 1,334 carriers. The software also makes it easy for globetrotters to call home by smartly inserting country codes in phone numbers that don't have them. By the way, the microSD card takes up one of the SIM slots.
We're quite impressed by the Mate 8 and we can't wait to put one through its paces. Oh well, perhaps once CES 2016 is behind our backs.
Join us on the next page for our impressions from the just-announced Huawei Media Pad M2.

Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 hands-on

On to the tablet, it's been a while since we've seen a 10-incher with a pen, and some of us are missing the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014). The 10-inch Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 (not to be confused with the 8-inch MediaPad M2) is somewhat of a different beast, though.
For one, it has a lower-res display than Samsung's already aging tablet, now more than two years old. The resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels stretched over a 10.1-inch diagonal makes for 226ppi, which is rather uninspiring by today's standards. And spoiled as we are by looking at displays all day long (actually, most nights too), the MediaPad M2 10.0 gives a somewhat coarse first impression. That's not to say the display is bad, no, it just feels a little dated.
Build quality is quite nice, with a solid feel and a premium vibe. The polished metal back is pretty smooth though and you should make sure to hold the tablet in such a way as to not rely on friction. It's not the lightest of tablets, obviously, but going for a 10.1-inch device, you've already decided where your priorities stand.

The Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 has a solid feel

Crowded venue floors are hardly the best place to test sound quality or even volume, but the MediaPad M2 10.0 does make for a properly nice first impression. The Harman/Kardon 4-speaker setup differs in concept from the iPad Pro, where the output gets adjusted depending on orientation.
Here you get two dedicated bass speakers with 4.6 cubic centimeter resonation chambers and two treble speakers, and they sure sound great. Total output power is 4W, which is pretty impressive for a mobile device. The speakers are positioned in such a way that the top ones are almost guaranteed to not get muffled while you'd need to be a little more careful not to block the bass one on the bottom. That's when holding the device in landscape orientation, of course.

Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 has a set of four speakers

And landscape's the way to hold it, Huawei assumes if you judge by the fingerprint sensor placement midway on the bottom bezel. It's not quite the same experience as the rear-mounted unit on the Mates, simply because fingerprint recognition on such a large device is inevitably going to be a bit more awkward, but it's just as fast, nonetheless.

Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 fingerprint sensor

And then there's the stylus. Dubbed the M-Pen, the pressure sensitive stylus is an active solution like the Apple Pencil.
The M-Pen supports 2048 pressure levels and Huawei promises it will deliver the real pen-like experience. It will be available on the higher-spec'd versions of the tablet, and we suppose it has something to do with processing the data from the sensors inside it, that needs the 3GB of RAM to work smoothly.

The M-Pen stylus comes bundled with the two top tiers of the Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0

Well, that's all we managed to gather in terms of first impressions from the Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0. Hopefully, we'll get a review unit and we'll try out what exactly it's capable of.

Huawei Watch Jewel and Elegant hands-on

The all-new female-centric editions of the Huawei Watch made a debut at CES 2016 and definitely caught a lot of attention. The Chinese giant is perhaps right about the fact that the female audience is somewhat left out in the cold when it comes to wearable tech. Most current wearables tend to look a little out of place on a finer, thinner wrist.
The Huawei Watch Jewel and Elegant Editions try to break the mould. The Jewel is all about Swarovski crystals (68 of them, 1.5mm each) lined around the watch' bezel. The case itself is the rose gold plated stainless steel affair. Unfortunately, the Swarovski edition is, obviously, way too expensive to be handled freely by the crowd of journos at Huawei's event so at first we only got to admire it behind glass.

The Huawei Watch Jewel was only available behind glass at first

Update, Jan 7: A bit later, though, we were given the chance to get up close and personal with the most expensive version of the Huawei Watch.

The Huawei Watch Jewel watch face is studded with Zirconia Swarovski crystals

On the other hand, if the Jewel is too much "bling" for your taste, then the Elegant model, which substitutes the stones for a dotted pattern, might be a better match. Other than the fancy new finish and straps, underneath is the same familiar Huawei Watch, we have come to respect as one of the more stylish offers on the wearable scene.

The Huawei Watch Elegant

While that is undoubtedly a plus in many respects, sadly, it might also turn out to be the Huawei Watch's biggest undoing from a female perspective, as it does still come in a 42mm size. Now, we have no quick way of testing our theory on the spot, but that sounds like "a lot of watch" for the thinner wrists out there. Regardless whether that's true, the fact of the matter is, you would be hard-pressed to find a more elegant classical looking smartwatch out there.
We have already praised the Huawei Watch on its exquisite style and superb quality in our in-depth review and no attention to detail has been spared in the Jewel and Elegant editions either. The aforementioned Swarovski crystals are actually Zirconia, which is taken from the company's higher-end tier of products and is more than merely a nicely polished glass, so Huawei definitely had exclusivity in mind.

The Huawei Watch Jewel watch face is studded with Zirconia Swarovski crystals

This is also clearly reflected in the price tag - $499 for the Elegant and $599 for the Jewel one. The classic Huawei Watch currently goes for about $350, so it is definitely a formidable markup, but then again, that is for the basic one with a black leather strap. The rose gold plated one with a matching strap goes for a whopping $799, which makes the female models sound quite reasonable, at least in comparison.

The Huawei Watch offers a variety of customization options

As for the software side of things, nothing has really changed, besides a few considerably more feminine watch faces preloaded into the Android Wear OS. Huawei did go out of it way to stress that the new editions are the first Android Wear watches to come with a speaker and offer On-Watch calling and while that is technically true, there is one important note to be made. Said speaker is actually present on the basic Huawei Watch as well. Huawei was apparently aware of Android Wear's roadmap that included the addition of APIs for speakers and voice calls and slipped the tech in, without initially using it. Now that Android Wear officially supports said features, all it takes to start using the speaker on any Huawei Watch out there, whether old or new is upgrading the OS.

Huawei Honor 5X hands-on

Huawei wants to shake up the US mid-range market with the Honor 5X - an all-metal phone with a $200 price tag. Instead of relying on its family connection to the well-loved Nexus 6P, the 5X wants to push the Honor brand and build a name for it.
This is the first Honor to reach the US and it is marketed to millennials who want to express their individuality at an affordable price point. Huawei stressed the "no nonsense" philosophy of the 5X.

Unpacking the Huawei Honor 5X and booting it up

"Cool, stylish, and iconic" is how the company describes the Honor 5X. And it does look a lot like the Mate 8 flagship (which isn't coming to the US yet).
It doesn't quite have the fingers-cutting thin bezels around the screen like the Mate, but the Honor 5X houses its 5.5" display with surprisingly small borders for the price class. It's about as wide as an iPhone 6s Plus, noticeably shorter and 1mm thicker. And 34g lighter.

The Honor 5X is roughly the size of an iPhone 6s Plus or a One M9+

Building the metal chassis is a complex process, but the end result can rival HTC's metal unibodies. It's a stark contrast with the usual plastic bodies of $200 commitment-free phones. And most of those don't have a fingerprint reader.
The one on the Honor 5X can unlock the phone in half a second. Some self-learning tech allows the sensor to get more accurate over time. It can be used to trigger gestures including taking a photo, canceling an alarm and checking the notifications.

The fingerprint reader on the back • brushed metal finish

This reader is on the back, below the 13MP camera, which offers 1080p video and a F/2.0 28mm wide-angle lens. Huawei added some anti-reflective and infrared-absorbing coatings on the camera's front glass. The selfie camera on the front is wider, 22mm lens, giving you 88° of view.

A look around the Honor 5X

The 1080p screen is plenty sharp, but the viewing angles are not great. The phone is powered by Snapdragon 615, which is often used in premium mid-rangers. You get 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, no options here, but you can add extra room with a microSD card.
It goes on the same tray as the nanoSIM card, while a second tray can hold a microSIM card. The Huawei Honor 5X is a dual-SIM phone with LTE, but strangely, it misses 5GHz Wi-Fi support (no NFC either).

Pulling out both card trays

The phone will run Android 5.1 Lollipop when it launches later this month. Note that it is styled with EMUI 3.1, which may be unfamiliar to US customers - it has bright and colorful icons and no app tray, to name a few differences from stock Android.