Porsche Design badge boosts Huawei Mate 9’s prestige, power… and price

Home / News / Porsche Design badge boosts Huawei Mate 9’s prestige, power… and price

I just saw the brand new Huawei Mate 9… are you telling me they’ve already released a better version?

Yeah, but this Porsche Design-crafted edition isn’t supplanting the vanilla Mate 9, it’s just offering an alternative version for people who are a bit more demanding on the specs and styling front.

The German studio – which in the past has performed its Teutonic industrial design magic on BlackBerry handsets – has not only reworked the Mate 9’s physical form but given its innards and screen a significant bump.

Oh, do tell…

So the standard Mate 9 has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of built-in storage and a 5.9in 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD screen, right? The Porsche Design version ups that to 6GB of RAM, 256GB of storage (expandable via microSD) and a 5.5in 2560 x 1440 AMOLED screen. It also moves the fingerprint sensor from the back to the front, presumably to keep those sleek lines nice and clean.

Otherwise, the specs appear to be exactly the same: Android 7.0 Nougat with Huawei’s EMUI 5.0 skin on top, a Kirin 960 octa-core processor, a 20MP/12MP dual-lens Leica camera on the back, an 8MP camera on the front, a 4000mAh battery, USB-C port and dual SIM capacity.

It sounds like Huawei’s real flagship, then?

It’s certainly the company’s top-specced phone, and while it’s obviously a subjective matter, we reckon it’s their best-looking one too: Porsche has blessed it with a black graphite finish (you can’t go wrong with black, let’s be honest) and curved the glass on the screen seamlessly into the metal body for a look that screams, “I’m premium and I love it.”

And speaking of premiums, I bet we have to pay one for it…

Sadly, you’re right on the money (no pun intended). While you can pick up a regular Huawei Mate 9 for €699 (currently £620ish), the Porsche Design edition will set you back a whopping €1,395 (£1,240) when it launches in late December. If you’ve got that much burning a hole in your pocket, you’ll be able to pick the handset up at any Porsche Design store.

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Tech journalism's answer to The Littlest Hobo, I've written for a host of titles and lived in three different countries in my 15 years-plus as a freelancer. But I've always come back home to Stuff eventually, where I specialise in writing about cameras, streaming services and being tragically addicted to Destiny.