Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design

The Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is like a concept car, intended to illustrate one possible idealized path for the world’s third biggest smartphone maker, as it strives to close the cachet gap with Samsung and Apple. Unfortunately, it seems to be a bit of an evolutionary dead end.

Huawei sells a ridiculous number of phones in China - the world’s largest smartphone market, and 2015’s Nexus 6P showed that it could stand up to the very best premium smartphone makers in the world for pure hardware quality.

While the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is a beautiful phone that shares several the Nexus 6P’s core attributes, however, it’s an impossible phone to recommend to all but a very select group.

 Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design price

At €1,395 (around £1,200, $1,500, AU$2,000), it’s an astonishingly overpriced indulgence that’s only really suitable for brand addicts and those who revel in exclusivity.

Of course, with availability restricted to the Porsche Design website and stores around the world, and with no official launch in sight for the US, it’s pretty clear that this is precisely the rarified market the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is being targeted at.

The question, then, isn’t simply whether the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is a good phone (spoiler alert: it is). It’s whether the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design offers something better than premium phones at half the price.

My other phone’s a Porsche

• Very different to the standard Mate 9
• Flagship specs - but you're largely paying for the branding

The key selling point for the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design, and the thing that’s being used to justify that huge price, is right there in the name. This is a joint venture between manufacturer Huawei and Porsche Design.

You might wonder why someone would slap a car brand on a smartphone, but Porsche Design doesn’t just deal in Porsche-branded tat, but rather dabbles with industrial design in the fields of fashion, kitchenware, timepieces, and yes - electronics.

This isn’t even the first Porsche-branded handset - phone fanatics will doubtless recall the work done with BlackBerry, such as the BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9982.

As a result of this, the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is actually a very different beast to the regular Huawei Mate 9. We’d argue that it’s a completely different phone, with surprisingly few shared components.

Everything from the size, resolution, and design of the display to the positioning of the phone’s fingerprint scanner is different. Internally, while the processor is the same as the vanilla Mate 9’s, it’s bolstered by 50% more RAM and packed out with four times the storage.

We’ll go into the specifics of each point in due course, but the point is this: you really are paying for a unique phone here rather than a lazily rebadged Huawei Mate 9.

Of course, when you look at the price differential, you’d jolly well hope there’d be some major differences. The normal Huawei Mate 9 costs €699 (around £620, $775, AU$1,000), which is half the price of its swanky brother.

Included in the Porsche Design’s price you get a snazzy box and a bundled-in folio case, that has a long plastic window running up the right-hand third of the front flap.

The phone’s AMOLED display readjusts to show the time, date and weather widget and the number of steps you’ve taken that day - but it’s not always-on, and it’s a little dim for outdoor use.

The case itself is a curious thing - simultaneously premium (with a leathery finish) and cheap-feeling (it’s a little flimsy). But it’s a welcome addition nonetheless. It occurred to us on more than one occasion that we were carrying something enormously expensive around in our jacket pocket, so having the option of a case straight out of the box is a good thing.

One of the more distinctive elements of the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is the Leica-branded camera it shares with the plain Mate 9 and the Huawei P9 before it.

This uses a rather unique dual-lens setup that takes a very different approach to, say, Apple’s. Rather than playing on the difference in focal length like the iPhone 7 Plus, here the point is that there’s one color sensor and one monochrome sensor, which combine to create more detailed images.

We’ll discuss whether this yields results in the camera section, but it’s certainly a distinctive element - and arguably a more meaningful brand partnership than the one with Porsche Design.

Design and display

• Beautiful curved-glass and metal design
• Punchy 5.5-inch QHD AMOLED display
• Fingerprint scanner is not always responsive as a home button

We don’t know the full extent of Porsche Design’s influence on the look and feel of the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design. The recently announced Huawei Mate 9 Pro seems to be a debadged Mate 9 Porsche Design with a slightly different finish, so it may not be that pronounced. Either way, this is undoubtedly a handsome phone.

The old joke about Porsche cars is that they tend to look exactly like the previous model, but the same accusation can’t be levelled here. Huawei has never built a device quite like this before.

From the front it’s an inky black monolith of a thing, with the stand-out feature being the way the left and right edges curve away into the all-metal body. That metal rear section has a matt, brushed effect that combines with the Graphite Black color to give of a sort of diffused reflection. It also seems to show off dirt and grubby fingerprints to a chronic degree. 

There isn’t an inch of plastic on display here, with just a couple of subtle antenna lines towards the top and bottom of the phone’s rear side.

It sits nicely in the hand, and there’s a reassuring heft to its 169g weight - despite being a relatively slim 7.5mm.

We wouldn’t say that the Mate 9 Porsche Design is wholly original. We’ve seen those curved edges on the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and the BlackBerry Priv, while the rear of the phone calls to mind any number of well-built Android devices from the OnePlus 3 to the HTC 10.

The matt metal rim with its bevelled edges and drilled-hole speaker (alongside a USB-C charging port) is another Samsung-like touch, as is the lozenge-like home key.

Not that the latter is actually a physical button here. Rather, this is a combined fingerprint sensor and capacitive home button. The Huawei Mate 9 had this positioned on the back of the phone.

This represents a major difference between the two Mate 9 devices, and we prefer the approach here, as the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design’s fingerprint sensor is more accessible in more situations.

In general use you’ll use either the thumb of your holding hand or the forefinger of your other hand to unlock your phone, while you can also gain access when it’s lying flat on a table. Just try any of that with a rear-mounted equivalent.

In use, the Mate 9 Porsche Design’s home button has mixed benefits. It’s an extremely fast and reliable fingerprint sensor, but we found it to be a less-than-satisfactory home button.

A few times when we were in an app and wanted to jump back to the home screen we would touch the home key and nothing would happen. So we’d press again, and this time hold a little longer - at which point the Google Now on Tap function would activate.

We don’t know if this is a hardware issue or a problem with Huawei’s Emotion UI - we suspect the latter. You learn to live with it and work around it, but this is a lot less acceptable in a phone that costs approaching twice as much as an entry-level iPhone 7 Plus or a Google Pixel XL with their flawless inputs.

The Mate 9 Porsche Design’s curved 5.5-inch QHD display is an absolute treat to look at regardless of comparisons. But stack it next to the Huawei Mate 9’s 5.9-inch, 1080p LCD display, and you’ll see that it’s a completely different beast.

There's a massive improvement in sharpness here. You could argue that the larger Mate 9 display would have benefitted more from all those extra pixels, but the main strength of the Porsche Design model’s screen isn’t in its sharpness.

It’s the fact that it’s a very crisp AMOLED display with colors that are punchy without being unnatural or garish, and none of the yellowy-red whites that used to plague AMOLED displays.

Even if you do find the picture too warm (or too cold for that matter), you can fine-tune it using Huawei’s powerful built-in color temperature tool.

Of course, you can get a display that’s at least as good as this from the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge for half the price. But in terms of Huawei phones, this marks a welcome return to the QHD AMOLED technology of the Nexus 6P.

There’s also the fact that Huawei looks set to release its own Daydream VR headset in 2017, which should make full use of the Porsche Design’s pixel-dense display.

Interface and reliability

• Emotion 5 UI over Android 7.0 Nougat
• New UI is improved over previous versions, but still ugly

Huawei has made solid Android phones for a while now. What’s usually the problem is its software - and unfortunately that’s still the case with the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design.

The phone is running Android 7.0 Nougat, which is the latest major version of Google’s mobile operating system, but it’s covered with a thick layer of Huawei’s controversial Emotion UI.

Version 5.0 is a lot lighter than previous attempts, but it’s still a retrograde step from stock Android, and it’s arguably less cohesive and attractive than Samsung’s TouchWiz or HTC’s Sense.

There’s still no app drawer here, which some regular Android users may find weird. In practice, it’s no great loss, as you can drag apps into folders on the home screen, and search for them by dragging down from the middle of the screen.

Another plus over previous versions of Emotion UI is the notification menu, which has been cleaned up a fair amount. It now operates on a single plane, which makes your notifications and toggles feel a lot more accessible - and closer to stock Android.

In a similar way, the multitasking menu has switched to a familiar vertically stacked card system, which we found easier to navigate than before.

Huawei still goes heavy on customizing the appearance of your home screens in Emotion UI. There’s a sizeable range of custom themes, all accessible through a dedicated Themes app. Downloading and selecting one will change the whole palette and even the appearance of native app icons.

You can also tweak the basic look of the home screen, including the number of apps on display and the home screen transition animations. It’s possible to toggle whether you want the home screens to scroll around in an endless loop, or where you want apps to auto-align when you delete one of their number.

There are no screen-edge UI tricks here to capitalize on those curved edges, as there are with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and the BlackBerry Priv. The curves aren’t as pronounced, so such functionality makes a little less sense, but some may see it as a missed opportunity.

As well as being relatively customizable, the Emotion UI is quite fluid. We never experienced any real stutters or pauses when navigating through the phone’s menus. It’s very usable, in its own way.

But Emotion UI is just fundamentally less attractive, cohesive and appealing to use than stock Android or iOS. It feels every inch the busy UI it is, rather than a distinct and streamlined operating system, and that disconnect runs counter to the flow of the sophisticated hardware.

Again, we can’t help but think that the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design - crazy, limited edition one-off that it is - would have been better served with a stock version of Android 7.0 Nougat. It would have been like an unofficial follow-up to the Nexus 6P, and would have given the phone another crucial distinguishing feature over its rivals (aside from the Google Pixel XL and the Moto Z).

As it is, any incentive the phone’s hardware might possibly give to spend £1200/$1500/AU$2000 on it is at least partially negated by sub-par software.

Movies, music and gaming

• Display renders video and games brilliantly
• Games run flawlessly
• Ample storage for local content

One thing you would expect - demand, even - from such a luxury phone is that it be able to handle media perfectly. The Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design doesn’t disappoint in this regard.

Its 5.5-inch display is a brilliant canvas for video content. That QHD resolution means that a decent source (such as some of the UHD test footage on YouTube) will render with stunning detail, but it’s the AMOLED panel technology that really makes things pop.

We’re talking extremely deep colors and inky blacks, without everything appearing too false.

Huawei has included its usual dedicated Video app for downloaded video content. This is a fairly basic app, but it includes a few neat features such as a precise scrubbing bar for getting to the exact moment you want, and a screen-in-screen function if you want to continue watching while you do something else in the background.

The Mate 9 Porsche Design’s rich display also pays off when it comes to gaming, which benefits hugely from the size and quality of the screen. This also brings the phone’s processor and RAM into play.

We were able to bump the graphics settings right up to max in the likes of Dead Trigger 2 and Reckless Racing 3, and the phone handled it without a stutter. In the latter’s case, that meant an increase in demanding particle effects and a forced 60fps mode, but we couldn’t detect any hitches.

Both video and gaming benefit from the Mate 9 Porsche Design’s stereo speakers. There’s one on the bottom edge of the phone and one in the earpiece, much like the iPhone 7, and the sound seems slightly weighted towards the bottom unit. Still, it makes for a more rounded sound than most mono-speaker setups we’ve used.

In addition to the aforementioned Video app, Huawei has also included its own Music app for local audio content. It’s functional, and has a vaguely iOS-like feeling to it in its menus and assorted shortcut widgets.

The sound quality is rich here, with built-in DTS giving the sound a more pronounced, bassy feel. Some may object to such audio manipulation, but there’s no doubting that it gives certain music - such as deeply textured electronica - an extra fizz.

When you’re talking about all of this local content, the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design has one final trump card - 256GB of internal storage. There’s no microSD card slot, and quite frankly there doesn’t need to be. That’s a massive amount.

It also serves to further erode the impact of that steep price tag. After all, specifying the same amount of storage for the iPhone 7 Plus will bump the price up to $929/£919/AU$1569 - still a lot less than the price of the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design, but far closer.

Specs and benchmark performance

• Kirin 960 chipset is a capable performer
• Generous 6GB of RAM

Back when Huawei first launched the Huawei Mate 9, it announced it as “the most powerful smartphone in the world,” and while we didn’t find this to be strictly true according to our own test parameters, it was certainly a very capable performer. The Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is similarly strong.

That’s because it uses the exact same Kirin 960 chipset, which is the latest and fastest chip in Huawei’s own fleet of mobile processors. It’s an octa-core SoC that uses four of ARM’s speedy Cortex-A73 cores and four low-powered A53 cores, complete with a fast Mali G71 MP8 GPU.

The key difference between the Mate 9 and its high-class brother is that the Porsche Design comes with 6GB of RAM, which is 50% more.

Of course, the more expensive phone also has a lot more pixels to drive on that QHD display, so you’d expect that advantage to be nullified somewhat.

That seems to be the case based on our own benchmark tests. An average Geekbench 4 multi-core score of 5505 puts it a little below the plain Huawei Mate 9 on 5815. It’s also significantly behind the Samsung Galaxy S7 on 6542.

In real world terms, however, the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is a top-class performer. We didn’t detect any performance hitches when booting up apps, and as mentioned in the previous section it eats high-end games for breakfast.

We booted up Oz: Broken Kingdom and cranked the graphics settings right up to max, yet it performed admirably. This was the game used to show off the iPhone 7’s graphical prowess at launch, remember.

Battery life

• Big 4,000mAh battery
• Impressive stamina
• Super charging really is very quick

Another shared component the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design has with the plain Huawei Mate 9 is its battery, which comes in at a very healthy 4,000mAh.

This is good news, because we were very impressed with the Mate 9’s stamina, and we’re similarly impressed here. Even with intensive usage, you’ll be able to get through a full day with the phone without needing a top-up.

Here’s a real use case scenario to give an idea of how the phone performs in real life. One morning we took the phone off charge at 9:30, and embarked on a day of moderate usage.

That included a constant - but by no means heavy - stream of email and message notifications, a couple of calls, some web browsing and direction finding on Google Maps, and around 15 minutes of 3D gaming. When we checked the battery at around 23:50, it was at 53%.

Interestingly, in our regular battery test, the Mate 9 Porsche Design out-performed its plain brother. The test involves a 90 minute looped 720p video, with the brightness turned right up and all notifications on.

This test consistently consumed 12% of the Porsche Design’s battery, which comfortably beats the Mate 9 on 17%. We’re not sure what the reason for this was - perhaps it was an update to the Video app or Emotion UI, or perhaps the smaller (though sharper) AMOLED display was simply more efficient at displaying this video, but it’s impressive any way you stack it.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Mate 9 Porsche Design pips the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which lost 14% in the same test, and sports a similar 5.5-inch QHD AMOLED display.

Another impressive feat is the speed at which the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design recharges. It uses Huawei’s SuperCharge technology in conjunction with the USB-C standard to great effect.

Plugging it in with 43% charge on the clock - something you can reasonably expect to do after a long day of normal usage - it had climbed to 60% after ten minutes. In half an hour it was up to 80%, and after an hour of charging it reached 97%.

Huawei claims that you can reach a day’s worth of usage in just 20 minutes, and we can believe that to be true if you were charging from a lower starting point - this kind of quick-charging technology invariably slows as you reach full capacity.

Camera

• Dual-lens Leica-branded camera
• 20MP monochrome sensor, 12MP color one
• Wide aperture mode lets you change focus in post-production

Huawei clearly knew it was onto a pretty good thing with the dual-lens camera of the Huawei P9 and Huawei Mate 9, as it’s also used a dual-lens snapper for the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design.

It’s an innovative Leica-branded camera with one 12MP RGB sensor and one 20MP monochrome sensor. The primary intended function of this is to combine the images from both to produce sharper pictures than you could manage with a single sensor.

The idea is that the monochrome sensor is better able to capture fine detail. In practice we were impressed with the amount of detail packed into the pictures we took, but we wouldn’t say they were better than the likes of the single-sensor iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy S7.

Still, there are other benefits to this unusual dual-lens approach. The most notable is the ability to refocus shots after you’ve taken them - though you have to remember to select the ‘Wide aperture’ mode specifically in the camera UI.

In certain situations - chiefly in landscape shots with pronounced depth and layers - this can be quite a neat tool to have, as it almost guarantees you’ll be able to get the shot you want. It’s easy to control, too - just tap on the area of the picture you want to focus on, then save the results (the original will also be kept in the Gallery app). But its usefulness is otherwise quite limited.

The dual-lens setup also combines with optical image stabilization to make for some decent night time shots, though there was still plenty of noise in artificially lit indoor environments - which, let’s face it, is when most of us take our shots.

There’s also a Pro mode, which lets you micro-manage the usual range of settings such as ISO, shutter speed, and white balance.

Overall, the camera app itself is one of the better custom examples we’ve used, aping much of the style of the iOS equivalent but with a number of extra tricks.

The 8MP front camera doesn’t have any great tricks to boast of, but is perfectly fine at what it does - provided you give it plenty of light.

Camera samples

Verdict

At €1,395 (around £1,200, $1,500, AU$2,000), Huawei needed to pull out all the stops with the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design - and then some.

While it’s a stylish phone with a great screen, strong performance, a good camera and ample storage, it really needed to do more for the asking price.

As it is, you’re basically paying for the exclusivity and brand recognition of the Porsche Design label. If that kind of thing matters to you, go right ahead. 

This is a good phone, and it won’t let you down. But for the prudent majority, there are simply too many superior phones for a good deal less money.

Who's this for?

The Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design is for those to whom the cost of Apple’s and Samsung’s latest and greatest smartphones is a whole lot less problematic than the fact that they’re so darned common. It’s also for those who like to flaunt their designer labels.

Should you buy it?

It’s quite possible that some people will be thoroughly smitten with the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design’s aesthetics. It is a beautiful phone.

But is it prettier than the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge? Opinion may vary, but we don’t think so. Nor is it any more powerful, or its camera more capable, or its software more refined than any of the leading phablets out there, including the iPhone 7 Plus and the Google Pixel XL.

Which means that you’re left with a very good phone that falls just short of the very best in all the ways that matter - but costs a good deal more. As a result, it’s almost impossible to recommend a purchase to all but the biggest designer label fanatics - who are unlikely to be awaiting our critical approval.

While there isn’t much else to consider in the Mate 9 Porsche Design’s price range, you can get similarly accomplished phones for a whole lot less. These are three prime alternatives.

iPhone 7 Plus

The iPhone 7 Plus may lose out to the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design from a design perspective, and its screen isn’t as eye-poppingly sharp. Some will prefer the flexibility of Android, too.

But other than that, Apple’s flagship phone is the much better purchase. It’s more powerful, its software ecosystem is more appealing, and its dual-lens camera is capable of better results in more situations.

To top it all off, you’ll actually save lots of money, even if you opt for the top 256GB model. We never thought we’d write that of an iPhone.

• Read our iPhone 7 Plus review

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

Against the iPhone 7 Plus, the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design can at least fall back on its differences to mark it out. Placed against the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, that’s not so easy.

It’s a case of ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ - or at least as well - with Samsung’s current flagship. It’s arguably prettier, its curved display more pronounced and arguably even easier on the eye, and its camera is also superior.

And to top it all off, the Galaxy S7 Edge is a fair bit cheaper.

• Read our Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review

Google Pixel XL

The comparisons don’t get any more flattering with the Google Pixel XL, but then the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design put itself in this position with its outrageous price tag.

We will say that Huawei’s phone is better looking and more elegant than Google’s, with the latter’s utilitarian design failing to excite. But that’s about it for Huawei wins in this contest.

The Google Pixel XL represents the pinnacle of Android phones, with its own 5.5-inch QHD AMOLED display (and Daydream VR support out of the box), brilliant camera, sterling performance, and unparalleled synergy with the Android operating system.

• Read our Google Pixel XL review

First reviewed: December 2016