NZtechfreak: It's arrived! Flashing a firmware update but so far impressions are favourable, impeccable build and the fingerprint reader is very quick and essentially the same setup as the Nexus 6P (only quicker). Further thoughts to follow.

NZtechfreak: Mine is set to arrive Monday (64gb Champagne Gold, 4gb RAM). Will post thoughts here, anyone interested feel free to drop questions.

hairy1:

NZtechfreak: Mine is set to arrive Monday (64gb Champagne Gold, 4gb RAM). Will post thoughts here, anyone interested feel free to drop questions.

Where did you source it from?

sheepy: how is this different from the mate s? 

NZtechfreak: So, first full day with the phone yesterday, so far so good.

Battery: Epic. 19 hours on battery and reached 6hrs39mins screen-on with 11% remaining still at the end of the day, mostly on WiFi (mixed use, browsing, music, GPS, ~1hr gaming with titles like Dead Effect 2/Asphalt 8). Have installed a second firmware update today and Chinese users reporting increased battery drain on the new firmware, so we'll see.

Speakers are loud and the bassiest I have yet heard from a phone.

Build is awesome.

Screen - decent. Can change colour temp and on warmest setting white is pretty satisfying, black and contrast levels fairly good (not at iPhone 6/S levels, but nothing to complain about), colour accuracy sadly is missing though - colours are fairly garish. Brightness fairly good, unfortunately sunlight visibility suffers a bit regardless of brightness as the screen is fairly reflective. Viewing angles - can't really comment definitively just yet, they seem slightly poor, however that might be down to the cheap screen protector pre-applied - will comment further when I change out to a tempered glass protector when they arrive. No problems with 1080p resolution here (for reference I was perfectly happy with 1080p even over 6.8 inches on the P8Max).

Performance: In regular daily use absolutely excellent, I think even smoother than the Nexus 6P. For those that care about benchmarks this hits ~96-97k in Antutu, that's higher than what you might have seen on the net because previous testers were not in performance mode when they ran the benchmark. CPU performance great compared to earlier 2015 flagships. GPU performance a credible improvement over the gimped GPU the Kirin 935 was lumbered with, slightly less raw performance than the current-gen Exynos or S810, however with the lower resolution screen here it performs better for native-resolution workloads so I can live with that.

UI: Not a fan, Nova launcher on there immediately. In terms of the functionality Huawei have given absolute control over everything, way above and beyond the permissions controls available in Marshmallow - to the point where it is a little intrusive and needs a bit too much management (permissions for notifications and so forth are so granular that some apps will not work as intended until you've dived into a few menus to grant the needed permissions) and so forth. Once you get through those teething things and get an alternate launcher on there all is fine really.

Connectivity: Not tested a lot yet, USB audio works perfectly, which is just as well as the broken-beyond-troubleshooting USB audio in the P8Max ultimately became a deal-breaker for me.

Kopkiwi: Sounds like a great phone

How's the camera?

MikeB4:

I would like to see Huawei break with phone manufacturer tradition and do away with their EMUI and stick with vanilla Android. The Nexus 6P shows what they can do if they did that.

MikeB4:

NZtechfreak: So, first full day with the phone yesterday, so far so good.

Battery: Epic. 19 hours on battery and reached 6hrs39mins screen-on with 11% remaining still at the end of the day, mostly on WiFi (mixed use, browsing, music, GPS, ~1hr gaming with titles like Dead Effect 2/Asphalt 8). Have installed a second firmware update today and Chinese users reporting increased battery drain on the new firmware, so we'll see.

Speakers are loud and the bassiest I have yet heard from a phone.

Build is awesome.

Screen - decent. Can change colour temp and on warmest setting white is pretty satisfying, black and contrast levels fairly good (not at iPhone 6/S levels, but nothing to complain about), colour accuracy sadly is missing though - colours are fairly garish. Brightness fairly good, unfortunately sunlight visibility suffers a bit regardless of brightness as the screen is fairly reflective. Viewing angles - can't really comment definitively just yet, they seem slightly poor, however that might be down to the cheap screen protector pre-applied - will comment further when I change out to a tempered glass protector when they arrive. No problems with 1080p resolution here (for reference I was perfectly happy with 1080p even over 6.8 inches on the P8Max).

Performance: In regular daily use absolutely excellent, I think even smoother than the Nexus 6P. For those that care about benchmarks this hits ~96-97k in Antutu, that's higher than what you might have seen on the net because previous testers were not in performance mode when they ran the benchmark. CPU performance great compared to earlier 2015 flagships. GPU performance a credible improvement over the gimped GPU the Kirin 935 was lumbered with, slightly less raw performance than the current-gen Exynos or S810, however with the lower resolution screen here it performs better for native-resolution workloads so I can live with that.

UI: Not a fan, Nova launcher on there immediately. In terms of the functionality Huawei have given absolute control over everything, way above and beyond the permissions controls available in Marshmallow - to the point where it is a little intrusive and needs a bit too much management (permissions for notifications and so forth are so granular that some apps will not work as intended until you've dived into a few menus to grant the needed permissions) and so forth. Once you get through those teething things and get an alternate launcher on there all is fine really.

Connectivity: Not tested a lot yet, USB audio works perfectly, which is just as well as the broken-beyond-troubleshooting USB audio in the P8Max ultimately became a deal-breaker for me.

I would like to see Huawei break with phone manufacturer tradition and do away with their EMUI and stick with vanilla Android. The Nexus 6P shows what they can do if they did that.