For lovers of gigantic phones, the Huawei Mate 9 is compelling choice. It's a sleek and sexy unit that feels well constructed. It's got some weight to it, but it's not too heavy considering the size. And it has a camera to die for.
Last year, Huawei's P9 got my still camera of the year. Like the iPhone 7 Plus, the P9 used a dual lens camera system to analyse the depth of an image and create a "bokeh" or blurred background you'd see in DSLRs. The Mate 9 features an upgrade to this already awesome system.
Technical specs of the camera have been improved, but all you need to know is it is much faster to launch, and the bokeh effect can now work with subjects much closer to the phone. This makes it so much easier to snap those portrait shots, even with a fast moving toddler as the subject.
And because you can "pull focus" on the image after you've shot, you can salvage photos that applied the effect a little too forcefully, or that blurred the subject rather than the background. This was a common complaint using portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus, and I wish Apple would introduce make this post-processing feature accessible on their phones.
Some of the excess of EMUI — Huawei's interpretation of Android — has been toned down. It's now a good enough experience that you won't need to immediately replace everything with Google's stuff, although you still can, of course.
I've seen a lot of reviews saying this is the Note 7 replacement for those looking for a giant flagship phone but were burnt (hopefully not literally) by the recall. I'm not sure about that. While it definitely fills the void for now, all rumours suggest this year's Galaxy S8+ and even the next iPhone will be close to six inches as well.
At $999, it's not cheap, but still less than most mega-phones. It's a flagship phone at a not-so-flagship price.
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