According to leakster Evan Blass, the upcoming Huawei Mate 9 and Mate 9 Pro will feature 4x optical zoom. While that does sound very promising, but it does raise a lot of questions as well. From the leaked press render of the Mate 9 Pro, it doesn’t look like the phablet will be very thick. The Asus ZenFone Zoom, which offers 3x optical zoom, happens to be very thick with a 12mm profile.
Of course, it is very much possible that Huawei might be using a different approach to achieve 4x optical zoom, which would allow the Mate 9 and Mate 9 Pro to be quite thin. One of the ways is to go with Apple’s approach that we have seen on the iPhone 7 Plus, with one lens being wider and the other being a longer zoom lens.
Blass also revealed that the top end Mate 9 Pro variant is going to be priced at a whopping $1,300. That’s significantly higher than any current Android flagship device on the market right now. Even the new iPhone 7 Plus with 256GB of storage costs under $1,000 unlocked. Will the Mate 9 Pro really be able to justify the huge premium? We will need to wait until early next month to be sure, as the Mate 9 and the Mate 9 Pro will be officially announced on November 3 at an event in Munich, Germany. The two smartphones are expected to sport a 5.9-inch display, Kirin 960 octa-core chipset, 4GB of RAM, dual rear cameras with Leica branding, and a premium metal build. The more expensive Mate 9 Pro will come with a dual-curved Quad HD resolution display, while the standard Mate 9 will feature a flat display with 1080p resolution.
Source: @evleaks
