Gadgetory

it's big beautifully built and packs a burly battery but it's software and price tag mean this is a smart phone for a narrow class of us buyers I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is our video review of the Huawei mate 8 brought to you by JD calm the may date is probably the best-looking smartphone who always built and that doesn't mean it's terribly distinctive it's made of aluminium with narrow radius corners and chamfered edges which to put it mildly is something we've seen before the camera lens an excellent fingerprint scanner are almost the only round things on the device they don't really fit with the boxy aesthetic but they don't look bad either in the hand the phone feels wide and weighty even in an age of phablets the may date is a very large device of course it has to be to accommodate its display this is a 6 inch IPS LCD with 1080p resolution and if you think that's too low for 2016 we're going to go ahead and disagree colors pop as they should we're hard-pressed to see the pixels without a microscope and the lack of quad HD means this is an easier panel to power more on that in a second as with most LCD screens blacks could be deeper and we'd like to have seen a bit more brightness for outdoor use but on the whole this is a fine display elsewhere the hardware bears Huawei hallmarks we've seen before on the right edge a combination dual sim and microSD card slot gives them a date some versatility and carriers and storage well on the bottom lip and older USB port is flanked by twin speaker grills don't let them fool you only one of them actually contains a speaker which is fairly average in its output the may dates software is probably the phone's most polarizing aspect Huawei's custom Android skin is called emui and it combines the look and feel of iOS with the overburdened feature load of Samsung phones circa 2013 Huawei seems to think that using knuckles on a touchscreen is not only convenient but also intuitive well it's not knocking on your phone to get it to do something looks and feels almost as ridiculous as it sounds the may date is also a notification nanny it tells you every single time it thinks an app might be using too much power in the background even if you're actively using that app when you update the software and then try dismissing that update notification it'll warn you that that's not a good idea for some reason some windows like the volume settings pop-up scroll even though they don't need to and that makes for a frustrating one-handed experience and unless you're a fan of swipe you'll probably want to change the laggy stock keyboard whose sound effects sounds straight off a smith-corona from 1988 fortunately this is still Android marshmallow to boot and that means you can change pretty much anything you want by installing a different launcher and if you decide to keep emui you might actually like it we like the recurring use of the circle as a progress indicator and while the smoked translucent overlays aren't always great for readability they sure do look nice emui also provides plenty of ways to use that big display intelligently there's a multi window function for running two apps side by side and you can change the displays dpi value right in the settings menu to fit more on the screen the new multitasking view lets you prevent apps from automatically closing by dragging down on their card and new features like this scrolling screenshot function are also nice to see here even if it's not the first time we've seen them the may dates camera is a new 16 megapixel Sony sensor with an F 2.0 aperture and optical image stabilization good for one and a half degrees of motion the software behind it is feature packed you can launch the camera with a quick DoubleTap of the volume button and the viewfinder gives you everything from full manual controls to automatic object tracking it's really cool it means you can tap a subject and the camera will hold focus on that subject even as you Pan the shot when you do take a picture the gallery application gives you much more information than most phones there's even a histogram the photos themselves are usually pretty nice like many phone cameras this one sometimes has trouble obtaining and maintaining focus particularly with the moving subject but even shooting alongside a galaxy s6 edge+ the may date keeps up with the Samsung phone more often than not the super night mode is basically a shortcut to a long exposure setting and it allows up to 32 second exposures if you don't have a tripod you can balance the phone on its side it'll stand up by itself with enough coaxing the rest of the camera settings do what they're supposed to whether you're brightening the shadows with HDR trying out the skin smoothing Beauty mode on the front firing 8 megapixel camera or just snapping sunset shots on a winter afternoon the made 8 keeps up the camera is at its lowest when it comes to video because of the CPU limitations you can find a 1080p resolution and while the autofocus and stabilization are fine there's plenty of digital noise as I said you do have the option for 60fps if you want the made eight runs on huawei zone Kirin 950 silicon backed up by either three or four gigs of ram and internal storage ranging from 32 to 128 gigs we've used the lower end model on t-mobile us for about a week in Greater Boston and the may date has proved itself a beast in more ways than one we already mentioned the zippy interface responsiveness and that translates to games - the phone made short work of our usual suite of asphalt 8 sky gamblers air supremacy killshot Bravo and extreme landings and it ran dead trigger - with no problem as well graphics settings on these were all maxed out by the way on the more mundane side it's so nice to see a manufacturer thinking about things like audio and phone calls being able to steer the mic input when taking a speaker phone call is something you'll appreciate if you've ever tried to take a call in a loud Airport more impressive than anything else though is the may dates endurance with a four thousand milliamp hour power pack the phone lasts so long on a charge that we wrote an entire editorial about it earlier this week even with heavy use you'll absolutely get through a full day on the may date and if you're more careful and use some of the many power saving features that Huawei has baked in it's even possible to get through a whole weekend on one charge our personal record is over 7 hours of screen on time over two days for a phone with this kind of feature set that's pretty remarkable we're not sure what price the mate eight will carry if and when it comes to the US but right now it's steep to import between 600 and 700 euro depending on trim you can get a lot of other Android phones for much less good ones too like Huawei's own Nexus 6p or Motorola's Moto X for most folks we think smartphones like those will be the wiser cheaper choice but that's not saying the Mayday doesn't have a place in the world for those who value big screens and big processors behind them this phone is bound to impress and those are the kind of people who can easily get around the software shortcomings of emui when you factor in the staggering battery life the mate aid becomes the new import alternative for a new kind of customer the road warrior power user combo power warrior yeah that's a little much but then so is the made 8 + 4 power warriors a little much is often just right JD comm is China's largest online direct sales company it offers a seamless online shopping experience to provide consumers around the globe with quality authentic Chinese products JD comm offers competitive prices from trusted manufacturers and designers always in a timely fashion JD comm has big sales weekly on everything from phones to wearables and accessories slashing prices by up to 40% be sure to visit the link in the description to get the best deals from JD comm the may date was announced at CES 2016 folks and so were a lot of other fun gadgets check out our related videos for more coverage from Las Vegas and stop by to see our full written made 8 review at pocketnow.com till next time this has been michael fisher captain 2 phones on twitter reminding you that there's a power warrior within all of us even you thanks for watching everyone we'll see you next time