Huawei Mate S deals and reviews

What the critics say (scores are out of 100)

90	Mobile Choice | Sunetra Chakravarti I cannot fault the Mate S on anything other than its UI and hopefully Huawei will take a cue from Samsung and trim it down. Huawei have finally produced a winner. Read full review
88	Android Authority | Gary Sims With a great design, a top class display and an excellent fingerprint reader, Huawei proves it has what it takes to build a true flagship device. Read full review
88	NotebookCheck | Daniel Schmidt Huawei offers a superb smartphone with its Mate S; however, its greatest drawback is its unusually high price. Read full review
85	Mashable | Stan Schroeder Huawei Mate S is a great Android smartphone - it's beautiful and has every feature you could want - but it doesn't take advantage of its novel pressure-sensing tech, and it's not as cheap as many competitors. Read full review
80	AndroidPit | Shu On Kwok I don't think the Huawei Mate S can be topped for aesthetics and design: the construction is near perfection. In terms of performance, there is nothing to complain about either. Read full review
80	S21 The Huawei Mate S is an ultra-slim, attractive phone with an aluminium body and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. It packs a fast 8-core processor with plenty of memory, an excellent camera and a large AMOLED screen. Battery life isn't so impressive however, and the much-hyped pressure-sensitive touch is noticeable by its absence. Read full review
79	ZDNet | Sandra Vogel Huawei has done a good job with the Mate S in terms of its physical design, and the extra functions added to the fingerprint sensor are also welcome. We like a lot of what's been done with the EMUI skin too, although it might not suit all tastes. However, the knuckle gestures seem unnecessary, and Force Touch isn't present in the version that's currently available to buy. Read full review
79	Coolsmartphone | Garry Clark If you are looking for a high-end phone for a fairly reasonable price then this is worth a look. It does however have some very stiff competition, with the main competitor coming from within in the form of the Honor 7 Read full review
79	Gizmodo UK | James O Malley The Note 5 beats the Mate S on pretty much every measure of raw power (processor benchmarking, megapixels and so on), but if you want a phone with a bit more character, some interesting features (and perhaps some more useful UI innovations like KnuckleSense, and of course ForceTouch) it could well be worth going for the Mate S instead. Read full review
75	Android Central | Phil Nickinson You've got hardware that is pretty much able to compete with the best other manufacturers can roll out - if only because Huawei tends to borrow from a number of them. And the software, while impressive in some spots, is still painfully broken in others... The hardware impresses, as does the fingerprint scanner. But that only goes so far. Read full review
70	The Journal | Quinton O'Reilly The Mate S is one of the better performing devices out there and has the hardware to back it up, placing it on a middle ground between flagship and mid-range. Read full review
70	Recombu | Alex Todd In a nutshell the Huawei Mate S plays itself off as a serious contender in the big-phone space and as such it doesn't come cheap, with prices starting for the base 32GB model. However aspects like camera quality and battery longevity fall short of the mark. Read full review
70	CNET UK | Andrew Hoyle Though Huawei's flagship Mate S has classy looks and a great camera, you can find better-performing top-end phones for less money elsewhere. Read full review
70	Trusted Reviews | Max Parker For a phone with so many features, the Huawei Mate S struggles to stand out. It's slim, light and powerful and has a big, accurate display. But it doesn't really do anything better than the competition. Read full review
70	PC Advisor | Lewis Painter Based on our month with the Huawei Mate S, it's a very promising phone. Its design is beautiful, it's lightweight and it fits perfectly in our hands despite the 5.5in display. Read full review
70	Pocket-lint | Chris Hall The Huawei Mate S is a commendable smartphone and a welcome addition to the company's range, worthy of consideration for those looking for top-notch quality without the cost. We just wish that Huawei had a slightly lighter touch with Android. Read full review
65	phoneArena | Chris P. It's impossible for us to recommend the Mate S, and that's actually kind of frustrating - it has the bearing of a competent top-shelfer, but falters in way too many categories to pull off the needed performance. Read full review
60	Stuff | Andrew Williams An interesting look at the future of Android, but one with limited appeal out in the real world. Read full review
60	Alphr | Jonathan Bray The Huawei Mate S looks like a real contender in the flagship smartphone stakes. It's a fabulous phone to handle and use from a physical perspective, and it's packed with all the features you could possibly want, plus a few extras to boot. Read full review
60	AnandTech | Andrei Frumusanu I can't help but think that this would have been a great device if Huawei had opted for a higher efficiency screen and also waited until the Kirin 950 was ready. Unfortunately that's not how it played out and thus I would rather recommend for users to wait for the Mate 8, or if that form factor is too big, to look at other competing devices. Read full review
60	Expert Reviews | Katharine Byrne A beautifully made but ultimately average handset, the Mate S is once again dragged down by Huawei's fussy interface. Read full review
60	V3 | James Archer Good security tools and an up-to-date OS clash with middling performance and a stifling custom skin, resulting in a passable handset that's just a bit too pricey for what it does. Read full review
50	Android Headlines | Nick Sutrich ...there are simply too many areas where the Mate S falters or just doesn't do as well as other phones in this price range, and ultimately make it impossible to recommend for any one feature at this price range. Read full review

Compare Huawei Mate S specs side-by-side with other phones COMPARE SPECS

Dimensions & Form	Form factor: Touchscreen bar Dimensions 149.8 x 75.3 x 7.2 mm (5.9 x 2.96 x 0.28 in) Weight: 156 g (5.5 oz)
Screen	Size: 5.5 inches diagonal Resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels Screen Density: 401 ppi Screen-to-Body Ratio: 73.9 % Display Type: AMOLED
Runs
Performance	Chipset: HiSilicon Kirin 935 CPU: Quad-core 2.2 GHz & quad-core 1.5 GHz GPU: Mali-T628 MP4 RAM: 3GB
Camera	Main Camera: 13 megapixels with dual-tone flash, optical image stablization (OIS) Secondary Camera: 8 megapixels
Storage	Built-in Storage: 32GB Expandable Storage: Micro SD
Battery & Charging	Capacity: 2700 mAh Removable Battery: No Wireless Charging: No Quick Charge: None
SIM standard	Nano SIM Compare SIM Only deals
Water & Dust Resistance	Not Available
Fingerprint Reader	Rear
References & More info	Official website GSMArena specs page