In IFA 2015, Huawei has officially unveiled the Mate S, its latest flagship phablet. Interestingly, the new device boasts a very familiar feature dubbed Force Touch. That’s right, it seems like Huawei has beat Apple in implementing Force Touch on a smartphone. Surprisingly, Huawei’s latest offering will arrive in Malaysia as early as this month.
Oddly enough, Huawei has decided to call the pressure-sensitive technology Force Touch as well; the same name Apple is using. In any case, the Mate S features an all-metal construction with a slightly curved rear panel, a 5.5-inch 1920 x 1080 resolution AMOLED display protected by a 2.5D curved Gorilla Glass 4, a HiSilicon Kirin 935 octa-core processor (the very same one found in the Honor 7) paired with 3GB of RAM, a 13MP rear camera with optical image stabilisation, and an 8MP front-facing shooter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7pLyruHJDQ
Rounding out the hardware of the Mate S are a 2,700mAh battery with a step platform design that promises over one day of battery life, support for fast charging, dual-SIM support with dual 4G, a microSD card slot, and a new and improved fingerprint sensor that is said to be quicker.
Knuckle Sense, which was introduced with the Huawei P8, has been improved as well with the Mate S. Users can now launch apps by using their knuckle. As for the familiar sounding Touch Display, users can take advantage of applying different pressure to the screen to zoom in on an image, open an application, or even use the phone as a scale – though we wouldn’t put measure anything too heavy with the device.
The Huawei Mate S is priced at 649 euro (about RM3,075) for the 32GB model and 699 euro (around RM3,315) for the 64GB variant. Interestingly enough, the Force Touch version will have a different price tag along with a generous 128GB of storage, but it will only be available in select markets.
As for the regular version of the Huawei Mate S, it will first be available in September 2015 in more than 30 countries, including UK, China, Singapore, and of course, Malaysia. No word yet on the local pricing of Huawei’s latest offering.
(Source: Twitter (Huawei Device), The Verge, Engadget)
