Huawei is currently enjoying its flagship success with the P9, with its dual-cam setup co-engineered by Leica. But speculations suggest that the China-based tech company has another flagship project in the pipeline. It is said that the upcoming Mate 9 flagship will dominate the current P9 as Huawei's premium flagship lineup by the end of the year.
Speculations suggest that Huawei will be following the same timetable in terms of the release schedule for its Mate lineup. Should this be proven true, fans are looking at a late 2016 introduction for the Mate 9, and it is expected that the new flagship will appear before the holidays.
In addition, rumors of the supposed specs of the Mate 9 is painting it to be a monster of a phablet, and may even eclipse the current P9 lineup in terms of specs. According to Phone Arena, the Mate 9 will carry the same dual-cam setup that made the P9 successful. However, the assembly will be tweaked for improvements, as the upcoming flagship will supposedly feature a 20MP dual-cam setup (the P9's camera is at 13MP). It is unclear if the Mate 9's lenses will also be co-engineered by Leica.
Being a new release, the Mate 9 will also have the advantage of improving its specs sheet. Rumor has it that Huawei is looking to the new Mate as a launching vehicle for its new Kirin 960 chipset. Meanwhile, to make the Mate 9 more top-tier, it is also said that the new Kirin SoC will be paired with 6 GB of RAM.
While still an unannounced chipset, KnowYourMobile says the Kirin 960 processor carries next-gen architecture, making the device a powerhouse. The industry follower added that since the Mate flagship is Huawei's answer to phablet flagships from competitors like Samsung's Galaxy Note series, it is expected that it will carry some similarities with and added improvements over the P9 lineup.
