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.

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.

NotebookCheck | Daniel Schmidt

Huawei offers a superb smartphone with its Mate S; however, its greatest drawback is its unusually high price.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Stuff | Andrew Williams

An interesting look at the future of Android, but one with limited appeal out in the real world.

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.

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.

Expert Reviews | Katharine Byrne

A beautifully made but ultimately average handset, the Mate S is once again dragged down by Huawei's fussy interface.

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.

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.