Hold on, maybe we better qualify this before we continue. Huawei are going to be showing off their new Mate 8 phablet from January 2016 at CES before launching it in China and then the rest of the world. So you’ll first see it in the silicon in January next year. Buying it… that might take a bit longer.

But the newly-revealed specs are going to make it an attractive buy when it launches. The 6-inch phablet will land with a 1080p display – sadly no 4K is on the cards – and a Kirin 950 octa-core chip. Huawei are plumping for a 4,000mAh battery and users are going to have 3GB RAM/32GB storage, 4GB RAM/64GB storage, or 4GB RAM/128GB storage options to choose from. Pricing for these dual-SIM handsets will, obviously, vary.

One of the two SIM slots (which both support LTE, look you) can be used as a microSD card slot, which is good news for storage hogs. Also included is a fingerprint reader, which will live near the camera.

Huawei’s Mate 8 will sport a 16MP sensor from Sony, with an f/2.0 aperture as its main snapper, while the front-facer will be a selfie-tastic 8MP cam. The body is made from aluminium and it looks, from available images, to have a textured back in a series of colours. Android Marshmallow is the operating system of choice, with Huawei’s EmotionUI 4.0 overlay.

The Huawei Mate 8 looks like another solid phablet from the company but we’re wondering whether it has what it takes to stand toe-to-toe with the competition in 2016. The specs sound okay now but will they stay that way compared to what else is coming?

Source: Huawei