Gadgetory

yo guys johnathan here when you think of a great smartphone camera most people might think of Samsung and the galaxy s7 Apple in the iPhone 7 or 7 plus LG's v20 was great but what you might not think of or maybe even heard of for that matter is the huawei mate 9 now with it being 2017 the mate 9 was announced late last year but it officially launches here in the US this week at CES so huge shout out to why away from not only sponsoring this video and kicking off my CES coverage early but also sending this my way so I could get a hands on pretty early in the game I would immediately set out to me with the mate 9 is the build quality is phenomenal it's solid aluminum super premium and absolutely nothing about this phone set is cheap it's got a wicked fast fingerprint reader which is located on the back it's packing great specs with four gigs of RAM 64 gigabytes of storage and microSD card expansion now on top of that the mate 9 is priced pretty competitively at $5.99 and because it's gear to compete with the iPhone 7 plus in Google pixel XL if you were considering one of those this could potentially save you almost 200 bucks so next one I want to do is break it down into the top three most compelling features of this phone and first is hands down the camera just like we saw in hallways p9 once again they've teamed up with Leica for the glass on the smartphone and the end result is a really good freaking camera now within the camera are two sensors a 12 megapixel RGB sensor that's going to capture the color and the bulk of the photo and then a 20 megapixel monochrome sensor that's going to work together to capture the finer details now this thing is jam-packed full of features and software including a pro mode which is going to give you not only tons of control but also flexibility what surprised me most and what maybe my favorite feature about this camera or software rather is actually how you control exposure when you're not in pro mode instead of dragon exposure up or down what you can do is tap select your focus point and then from there actually drag an exposure tracking point we can use a specific part of the image to balance exposure so in this case instead of using the wood to balance exposure I was able to drag the point over to a brighter area and with that I was able to find a pretty solid middle ground and the end result was surprisingly good and taking a deeper look some of the photos I took this one in particular really impressed me it's sharp there's great dynamic range and surprisingly this shallow depth of field is real and not simulated this one here is also a really great example of natural shallow depth-of-field no simulation here either then hopping over to some indoor shots this one in particular is also one of my favorites because of how it handles the highlights the shadows the color is also really well-balanced not too saturated it's just a nice mix of everything now with that monochrome sensor comes the fun of taking true black-and-white pictures yes you could take a normal photo and desaturate it or apply a black and white filter but there's something special about taking a true black-and-white picture now this is by no means a game-changer I understand completely that the majority of you out there want most of your photos in color what it does do though is give you a creative spin on the pictures you do want in black and white it almost forces you to think of the picture of the composition the framing differently in the end result is really nice there's tons of detail and the flexibility being able to take really great black and white photos and really great color photos is awesome now everything we've seen up until this point in terms of depth of field has been completely natural but because there are two sensors there is also a simulated depth mode and again like most simulated depth software out there it's not going to be perfect every time but when you get it right it looks really good the advantage that you might have with this over something like the iPhone 7 plus is that really only truly works well with people and portraits like the name implies but with this you're able to utilize it with objects as well instead of just people on top of that it's also rocking an 8 megapixel camera on the front that is equally impressive and overall I could talked about it is a really fantastic camera that competes with the best of the best now next the second most compelling feature of the Mait 9 it's got to be battery life because inside this guy is packing a 4000 milliamp hour battery most Android phones these days Teeter between 2500 and 3500 milliamp hour range so the fact this jumps in the 4000 is awesome now as far as the display goes this thing is packin a 5.9 inch 1080p display so you are sacrificing some pixels in terms of battery life myself personally as much as I do love pixels 1080p still looks really good on a smart phone if you're used to 1440p you're probably going to notice difference but really it comes down to what you prefer a lower resolution screen and better battery life or the maximum amount of pixels rounding out the battery and battery life is thing charges and connects via USB C which in my opinion is the better route there's an ever growing list of USB C devices peripherals chargers so the fact that the mate 9 includes USB C is a now last up the third most compelling feature of the mate nine is the fact that it ships with Android 7.0 new get as far as software and updates go sometimes Android can be the Wild West so the fact that you get this out of the box is reassuring for the most part the phone feels extremely lightweight and responsive all using it it's fast its zippy and overall the performance of Android 7.0 pair with the battery life the camera the micro SD card expansion make this a really well rounded smartphone at a fantastic price besides for that hopefully enjoy the video if you did and you are feeling like being awesome make sure to smash that like button I am currently at CES 2017 so go and drop a comment down below on what you want to see cover this is Jonathan and I will catch you guys later