For a change, one of the most leaked phones in the recent past has been the Huawei Mate S. Why? One, it was going to be powerful; and two, it was to have a force touch display. The phone is now official.
The Mate S comes with a ‘diamond cut’ design which according to Huawei CEO Richard Yu makes the phone a lot more comfortable to hold. Gestures on the Mate S are its unique selling point as we speculated multiple times in the past.
It isn’t just the Force Touch screen that allows for the new gestures; Knuckle Sense 2.0, along with a gesture-sensitive fingerprint sensor (Fingerprint 2.0) aim to make the new Huawei a lot more intuitive to use. Speaking of the fingerprint sensor, it is now claimed to be double as fast as previous-gen sensors.
At the forefront of the Mate S is a 5.5-inch 1080p display coated with 2.5D 4th generation Gorilla Glass, which Huawei mention measures a mere 2.65mm thick. Last year’s Mate 7 was a fairly well received phone, but with a 6-inch screen, the phone was a tad too big for many. That’s something Huawei have addressed with the Mate S, bringing the size down to 5.5 inches.
Coming to the meat of the matter, the Mate S will have the Kirin 935 processor with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The octa-core Kirin 935 has two sets of CPU clusters in a quad 2.2GHz one and another in a quad 1.5GHz cluster.
It has a 13 mega-pixel camera on the rear with dual tone dual LED flash which features optical image stabilization, along with an 8 mega-pixel front-facing shooter which now has a ‘soft light’. The traditional buttons of Android now hide under what Huawei calls the ‘magic bottom’. The battery is a mediocre (in capacity) 2700mAh which charges up to 2x as fast as the iPhone 6 battery, and the company CEO also mentions that the Mate S lasts more than just one day with one full charge.
The phone will be made available in a variety of different colors, differentiated by the market.
Gesture focus
Clearly, Huawei has emphasized on adding as many gestures as possible to the Mate S. The fingerprint sensor (as Fingerprint 2.0 on the Mate S), as mentioned, will have capabilities to recognize swipe gestures, which means you’ll be able to perform actions such as scrolling through notifications, photos in the gallery right from the rear of the phone (think OPPO O-touch).
Knuckle sense, in Huawei’s words “The feature offers users a new way to interact with their phone: drawing a “C” with their knuckle activates a camera, while double-clicking the screen with a knuckle records the screen in the form of a video”. Basically on-screen gestures.
Pre-orders for the Mate S start 15th September, with the phone being available in multiple versions: €649 for the 3GB RAM/32GB ROM version available in either mystique champagne or titanium grey; €699 for the 3GB RAM/64GB ROM version in prestige gold or coral pink, and finally, a 128GB force touch version, pricing for which is yet to be announced.
Blah what a let down. Wish chinese companies would include USA lte bands.
Letv max would be perfect upgrade to my nexus 6.
F the small hands of the world.
Why would I use my knuckle? Can’t I just use my finger? — or they somehow calibrated it to only sense knuckles?
I absolutely hate it when companies do something stupid just to be different.
Trying drawing over your home screen with your finger and see what happens.
The phone differentiates between a finger and a knuckle.
Check this out for more info: http://www.qeexo.com/
Ah ha this helps.
But I still don’t see people actually actively gyrating their wrists to use their knuckles to do stuff on their phones. Watch a week from now Apple will introduce the iPhone6S with force touch which will be the right way of executing something like this.
True, but it will bring in more functionality. I believe it will be a great step towards making your smartphone independent of a laptop. The knuckle could work as a right click.
It’s actually pretty useful on my P8.
At that price you would expect it to have a Kirin 940/950, 4GB RAM and 3300+mAh.
Metal body, fingerprint scanner, an octacore Cortex-A53 clocked to 2.2GHz, 32GB storage, 3GB RAM, 5.5″ FHD AMOLED display…
These are exactly like MX5’s specs with twice as expensive price tag.
Also probably a few weeks later when 6s Plus released people can buy an iPhone 6 Plus at same price.
Same reason why some would buy an iphone 6plus rather than Meizu MX5.
zombies … zombies EVERYWHERE !
Why I should pick this instead of Honor 7 or Meizu MX5 ?
Cause force touch and 2700 mAh…. No?
MX5 have 3150mAh, so just because of force touch? No 😉
Wow no person on this forum will buy this device – except mayber for andi or me 😛
EDIT – nah bit overpriced for bud huawei
Knuckle.. Just wait for the first one that on a drunk Saturday night wants to show off their new phone for some friends and either wakes up to a shattered screen or no phone at all because it’s laying on someones roof 😉
And for some reason it reminded me of Five finger death punch song White knuckles. I believe a part of the lyric goes something like, taking back control with my knuckles
Over priced, NEXT!!!!