While still a relatively new release, the Huawei Mate 8 is currently getting a huge discount. Speculations suggest that this may signal that its follow-up, the Huawei Mate 9, is ready for unveiling.
Up on eBay, the current listing for the Huawei Mate 8 places its price tag at only $420 for the NXT-L09 version. This means that fans will get the chance to get a discounted price (the original price for the flagship is in the $600 range). While the model is only the base version of the Mate 8, it still comes with decent specs.
The Mate 8 on sale offers 32GB of onboard storage and 3GB of RAM. In addition, being a Huawei flagship, it carries the top-tier Kirin 950 chipset, which is one of the current flagship SoCs for the China-based company. The model also comes as an unlocked version and is expected to work with most major carriers.
Meanwhile, since the Mate 8 was released just late last year, it is a surprise that its price has been lowered this soon. This leads to speculations that a follow-up may already be in the way, and Huawei is preparing for a Mate 9 launch happening later this year. While unconfirmed, a Mate 9 release is certainly possible, given that a number of other flagships from competitors have already been released in the market, and Huawei has only the P9 as their 2016 flagship release.
While the Mate 9 is still in development, its rumored specs are already up online. According to speculations, the Mate 9 will be the launching flagship for Huawei's next-gen SoC, the Kirin 960 processor. In addition, it is said that following the P9's success, the Mate 9 is also expected to carry a dual-cam setup, although it remains unconfirmed if it will also be co-engineered by Leica. Meanwhile, the main camera will also have an upgrade, going to as high as 20MP against the 16MP of the Mate 8.
