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Huawei Mate 8 flagship phone unveiled

Huawei has unveiled a new flagship phablet, the Huawei Mate 8.

Chinese manufacturer Huawei is on roll at present. Last month, it overtook Xiaomi to become the biggest smartphone manufacturer in China.

It also produced arguably the finest Android smartphone around in the Nexus 6P, which is why the announcement of the Huawei Mate 8 is of particular interest.

The Huawei Mate 8 is the new flagship phone from arguably the hottest Android manufacturer of the moment. However, aside from an all-aluminium design and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, it takes a different route to the Nexus 6P on the spec front.

Huawei is still in the business of making high value smartphones for its local markets. To that end, the Mate 8’s 6-inch display is ‘only’ a 1080p LCD rather than a QHD AMOLED affair.

The phone also runs on Huawei’s own latest octa-core Kirin 950 CPU rather than the more mainstream Snapdragon 810 of the Nexus 6P. This will be backed by either 3GB or 4GB of RAM, depending on the model.

Related: Huawei P9 release date

Around back there’s a 16-megapixel camera with a Sony IMX298 sensor with OIS.

The Mate 8 will come with a choice of 32GB, 64GB and 128GB of storage, and there’ll also be a microSD card for expansion purposes. It’ll have a hefty 4,000mAh battery, and it’ll run Android 6.0 out of the box – though of course you’ll get Huawei’s fussy EMUI 4.0 layered on top.

This is an advance peek (via Android Authority) at the Huawei Mate 8 ahead of its full CES 2016 showing. It’s getting an initial limited launch in China, but we should learn more about a wider rollout in January.

Next, take a look at our smartphone buyers guide video:

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