Huawei’s newest and shiniest Android smartphone has now unleashed it’s prowess on unsuspecting Kiwi’s.

The Mate S is the new flagship device in Huawei’s Mate series, with cutting-edge design and innovative technology which delivers a premium Android experience.

“Our goal in designing the Huawei Mate S was to develop a smartphone that offers a personalized experience, rather than a commoditized one,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei ConsumerBG. “The Huawei Mate S is based on insights we gathered about human interaction – most notably that touch is a natural action we take to understand and interact with our world. The Huawei Mate S redefines how we incorporate touch technology into our smartphones, taking a revolutionary approach to touch screen control and ushering in a new era for human-machine interaction.”

With the Huawei Mate S, Huawei has re-imagined how people interact with their devices, adding innovative touch features that enhance ease of use, functionality and creativity. On the Mate S, every touch provides an opportunity to do more. The Fingerprint Sensor 2.0 is an upgraded version of the Huawei Mate 7’s advanced chip level security and single-tap unlock technology. Fingerprint Sense 2.0 is faster, more sensitive andhas more accurate self-learning functions to improve recognition speeds by 100 percent.

However, in the Mate S, the fingerprint sensor does much more than unlock the phone or secure payment applications. Users can now control notifications, scroll through photos, take selfies, answer phone calls and even dismiss an alarm quickly by simply using the fingerprint sensor.

Advances the Knuckle Sense technology first introduced in the Huawei P8, providing a host of new features and functionality at the tap of a knuckle.

Not forgetting the similarly P8 introduced quick switching between apps by drawing a shortcut letter on the screen – pre- programmed shortcuts include drawing a “c” to activate the camera, “m” to listen to music or “e” to surf the Internet. Mate S owners can also create and store their own personalized knuckle shortcuts for anything from Android Wear to WhatsApp aswell as freehand crop and copy an image out of any photo by outlining it with a knuckle and double tap on a video with a knuckle to capture snippets of film to easily share or save.

The Huawei Mate S offers an unconventional design that strikes a balance between the phone’s brilliant capabilities and its stunning visual appearance.

Building on the revolutionary Huawei Mate 7 smartphone, the Huawei Mate S features a full metal shell, a 5.5 inch AMOLED FHD screen with 2.5D Gorilla Glass, and side edges that are just 2.65 millimeters. The phone’s arched back fits perfectly into the palm of a hand, while its curved surface features solid pressure and weight, making the phone easier and morecomfortable to hold.

The curved back of the Huawei Mate S features nanometer injection modeling to seamlessly connect the phone’s matching-colored antenna and metal shell, resulting in a smooth feel. Additional cutting-edge technology, including diamond cutting, CNC carving, nanotechnology and a sapphire lens are part of the phone’s seamless metal body.

The Huawei Mate S is equipped with a professional-grade camera that is great for all levels of user, providing everyone with high specs, including contrast, texture and distinctive tonality settings. The 13 megapixel rear camera features a four-color RGBW imaging sensor, optical image stabilizer, dual color- temp LED flash lights, and independent image signal processorcamera units, which combine to capture higher quality pictures.

The Mate S takes camera capabilities one step further by offering an 8 megapixel front camera with soft front lights to improve selfies. This ensures that users capture the clearest, most beautifying images possible. The Mate S also comes with fingerprint sense technology, allowing users to take a “natural selfie” by touching the sensor on the back of the phone, an easier and more natural way to hold the device.

The professional camera mode allows manual adjustment for ISO, exposure compensation, exposure time, white balance and focusing, and functions such as the grid, and flash-assisted focusing. The black and white filter mode was designed for artistic expression and automatically takes classic photos that provide multiple levels of density and real-time intensity adjustment.

The Mate S is available now exclusively through Noel Leeming only with colour for NZ being Luxurious Gold. The phone avaialble in New Zealand has 64GB storage and a RRP of $1349. There will also be a pressure sensitive model will available in selected markets.

The post New Zealand Has a New Mate appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Previously when I was given a loan unit of a Huawei P8 for Review, on face value, I will admit that I did not hold it in very high regards. I was instead fixated on the Huawei Ascend Mate 7.

The P8 was square edged to the likes of an Xperia and alot smaller than I was used to. But the P8 proved to me that size and first appearances do not matter when you want to make an impression – and the same can be said for it’s slightly watered down little brother, the P8 Lite.

Having now spent some time with both handsets, I am well aware that this review is going to end up being a comparison between the two.

Functionally the P8 Lite works just like its more gruntier version, the User Interface (UI) is spot on and signature to Huawei android smartphones. Intuitive and easy to use, minus the bloatware and nonsense built-in Apps that no one cares to use. Ever.

Design wise is identical to the with the P8, but it’s when you get a little bit techie that you notice the differences. The P8 Lite is a teensy bit smaller at 5.0” and while still remaining gleaming to one’s eye, it is infact not full HD with a maximum resolution of 1280 x 720.

The rear camera is a pleasing at 13 MP, however it is the Front Camera where a few points are lost. The P8 Lite is fixed with a 5MP lens (P8 has 8MP). This seemed like a bit of a step neither forward or back for a smartphone that is embracing innovation. Still, to be fair is on par with any other mid range device.

Interestingly the camera functions between the two are almost identical, however image stabilisation being chopped from the Lite and voice activation being added. Both are capable for Full HD Recording (1920 x 1080), but the Lite will only record at 30 fps.

1GB of RAM has been shaved off (2GB onboard RAM) and the processor is a tad less mightier. Of course Huawei realise that this midrange device needs to be cost reflectant and there is around a couple of hundred dollars difference between the P8 and the P8 Lite.

Now, the P8 Lite will suit most normal users, and the Lite is more than capable of holding it’s own with slightly heavier tasks and games. We ran Oddworlds: Stranger’s Wrath on the P8 Lite, and while we did experience a bit of a battery drain after around 1 hour of play, we did not have any processing, rendering or lag issues to speak of.

As with it’s bigger brother, the P8 Lite comes in 16GB, which is pretty dismal, lets agree. While stock standard for handsets now appears to be 32GB.

Thankfully though Huawei have still kept the microSD slot in the P8 Lite – but there’s a catch. Sort of.

The mighty Huawei P8 can boast up to 128GB in additional micro storage, the P8 Lite (apparently) only up to 32GB. We saw this as a challenge – and sure enough, we were rocking a 64GB in the P8 Lite instantly. Wait, what about a 128GB? Yep that worked too.

The P8 Lite is the power-house of midrange. Being a bit cheaper than the traditional P8 it’s alot of bang for your buck, infact it is more than I expected. Huawei are managing to dominate the market with their selection of flagship phones and by producing something as cost effective to the consumer as the P8 Lite, I can absolutely see why they are forging ahead in the marketplace.

The P8 Lite is most definitely the handset for you if you are not specifically after super power, but still like to run with the bigger players. The P8 Lite can handle pretty much anything you task it to do and it does it exceedingly well.

*For further info on the Huawei P8 and P8 Lite go HERE

The post Huawei P8 Lite Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

With a name that I struggle to pronounce. Huawei (Who Are We) may appear to be the new kids on the busy smartphone block, but in actual fact, as a company they have been in both the Telco and I.T. realm for eons.

Huawei shipped 75 million smartphones during 2014 and in the first half of 2015 has shipped 48.2 million with the intention of capping at 100 million at this years end.

In the last 12 months they have shown that they have got what it takes to run with the more known brands and to be fair they offer up one hell of a serving at a much lower price point.

No longer do you have to sell off a family member or mortgage the house to have the latest and greatest personal device. And such a device is their just released P8 flagship android based phone.

From the moment that you open the box you know you have acquired something truly remarkable. The phone is slotted in neatly and precisely on it’s side so you can marvel at the 6.4 millimeter thinness of it’s full metal unibody.

The P8 has under the hood a Kirin 930 Octa-Core 64BIT chipset and 3GB RAM to keep you multitasking, social posting and gaming like a legend.

The Huawei P8 is loaded with Android Lollipop v5.0.2 without the bloatware we have been used to with other brands, and perfectly reskinned with what I have learned to be familiar Huawei icons.

For me personally, having a personal device, tablet or smartphone, the music player has always been the owning factor. I am a self confessed audiophile.

Android as an OS has never really done the personal audio on their OS quite right. I’m very pleased to say that Huawei took this into consideration with a software mod; DTS, which amplifies your greatest playlists to ear heaven.

The 5.2″ gloss screen has the slimmest bevel in history, infact the face of the phone is basically all full HD screen at 1920 x 1080.

Being super gloss the screen is a finger print magnet though, so if you are a clean freak, you will be constantly cleaning the screen of the P8.

Other areas that the P8 astound are not only with the 13 MP back camera (front 8MP – also FHD) but with the lens filters, including one that is designed for capturing moving lights and so forth at night. You can infact even ‘paint’ pictures on your, well pictures, with any light source using the ‘Light Painting’ feature.

I can see this being a huge appeal to the more astute and arty snappers out there.

And of course (quiet sigh) there is Selfie enhancements. The most amusing would be ‘Beauty’ where the mode places a subtle warmth to the pic, goodbye wrinkles and tired lines, helloooo sexy face.

But it doesn’t stop there, of course. For those that like to make some seriously cinematic masterpieces worthy of an Emmy Award, Huawei have just the thing for you; Director Mode. What this allows you to do is to film a single event at multiple angles and then, like the Stephen Spielberg that you are, you can cut and paste the entire footage into your finest epic feature film. Yup. Nothing quite like it.

Combine that with slow mo mode and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible will have nothing on your action sequences.

The P8 comes in two storage flavours, 16GB (which we trialed) and a 64GB, this is of course upgradeable with a microSD, up to 128GBs.

If you do the colour thing, then your options with the P8 are Titanium Grey, Mystic Champagne (16 GB model) and Carbon Black, Prestige Gold (64 GB model).

In New Zealand Huawei has a strong market share (around 15 percent as at June 2015) placing the company third in sales.

With models; Mate 7 and P8 reinforce Huawei’s focus to us mere mortals and show the company’s design and performance level is world class.

With the P8 having a price point beginning at $799.00 NZD Huawei have released a Ferrari affordable to everyone.

Try as we might (and we sure did) we actually could not fault the phone. It’s top shelf all the way.

The Huawei P8, where we think the ‘P’ deservedly stands for perfection.

The post Huawei P8 Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.