The Huawei Mate 9 is great big phone in every sense of that term. It delivers the strong performance and epic battery life we've come to expect from the Mate series, in a slightly more compact form factor, with trailblazing internals.

Top-notch build quality; Big; attractive screen; Fast performance throughout; Great battery life and super-fast charging

Lower screen resolution than rivals (regular Mate 9; Camera not quite effortless as GS7/Pixel; Finicky capacitive buttons (PD Mate 9

The Huawei Mate 9 is currently available for $600. That is a reasonable price considering all you get. The design is understated, but has a very polished look and feel. I just wish it was water-resistant as well. The rear-facing fingerprint sensor might be the best one I've ever used.

Design Clean, understated aluminum unibody shell with some nice accents; Extremely small bezels, Battery Fantastic battery life; Almost three full days of usage for me, Cameras The Leica-branded dual cameras are better than previous versions and produce overall excellent shots.

Software again There's a bit of bloatware pre-installed; and Huawei still needs to fix the EMUI lock screen; Charging The Mate 9 uses a Huawei-specific fast-charging tech called SuperCharge.

For the last three weeks I have been using the Huawei Mate 9 full time. The verdict is easy: a great smartphone.

When news began circulating a few months ago that Huawei would be unveiling a new phablet in Munich, there was a greater air of anticipation for the debut of the Mate 9 . Part of this interest stemmed from the Chinese manufacturer making inroads into the smartphone market, with the P9 and P9 Plus...

Superb all-round camera performance; Solid processor performance; Generous two day battery life

No significant design changes; Feels less premium than it should

The common knock on Huawei smartphones: great hardware, poor software. Huawei took big steps to correcting that with the Huawei Mate 9. It's EMUI is still heavy enough to retain distinction from stock Android, though much closer to the real thing than previous versions.

Great build; sharp look; Top-of-the-line performance; One of the best smartphone cameras; Ships with adapters and smartphone bumper

Not dust-proof; not waterproof; Limited US carrier support

For the last several weeks I've put my Samsung Galaxy S7 aside while using the Huawei Mate 9 smart phone, one of the company's premium models. Much to my surprise, and rather unusually for me, I haven't felt the hankering to get back to Sammie in the way I usually do after a week or so.

Sometimes bigger is better. When it comes to phones, that's more true than ever - a bigger screen is easier to read, and a bigger body hides larger batteries and means more battery life. And that means Huawei's massive Mate 9 is one of the best new Android phones you can buy in 2017.

Huawei continues its rise in the smartphone maker ranks, and the Mate 9 is its latest flagship phablet. As such, it shows everything the company is capable of, both regarding design and hardware.

Huawei's line-up is starting to look more unified with the launch of the Mate 9 and the GR5 (2017) and a lot of the features are consistent across product lines. The Huawei Mate 9 , however, still retains some of its original key strengths - large display, better processing power and longer battery...

* Impressive performance; * Great camera; * Very long battery life; * Fast charging; * Nougat right out of the box

* Average display

Huawei's smartphones only started arriving in the United States recently, but that's no reason to discount them. While the company still won't give us a price or a solid release date, its new Mate 9 will be a contender for any Android fan who wants a big smartphone as soon as it gets here.

Good overall performance; Fast fingerprint sensor; Long battery life; Huawei's native software provides a lot of ways to manually optimize the handset's performance

Lots of crapware that you can't delete; Camera could produce better low-light photos; Uncertain price in the US; Emotion UI is still a hodgepodge; and it meshes poorly with Google's Material Design apps and any third-party apps that follow Google's guidelines