MUNICH — With Samsung’s Note7 now being permanently discontinued for battery fire issues, many users are looking into alternatives with similar specs, and Huawei has just delivered in style — but deep pockets are a requirement.The company’s new flagship, launched alongside the standard Huawei Mate 9, has been designed in collaboration with Porsche Design. Its full name is the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 9, but it’s not just a slightly redesigned Mate 9; it is in fact quite a different device. It has a slightly smaller, 5.5-inch AMOLED screen with curved edges and some seriously beefed-up specs, including 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage memory. Although it’s smaller than the Mate 9’s 5.9-inch screen, it has a higher resolution: 2,560x1,440 pixels.
Design-wise, the phone is a matte, graphite black with a Porsche Design logo accompanying the standard Huawei signature on the back. Judging by Huawei’s promo video at the event, the phone’s curvy edges should somehow mimic the design of Porsche cars, but you’ll have to use some imagination to see that. Unlike on most Huawei phones, the PD Mate 9 has a fingerprint sensor on the front, built into the home button which also takes over the function of all three standard Android buttons, depending on how you interact with it.About those curved edges: Don’t expect any additional functionality, as seen on Samsung Note7 or S7 Edge phones; the curvature is subtle and purely aesthetic.