Huawei is set to unveil its flagship phone for the second half of the year — the Mate 9 — at an event in Munich, Germany on November 3. But according to two people familiar with the manufacturer’s plans, the company will actually show off two distinct body styles for the device that day, including one with a curved display.
Known internally by the New York-themed codenames Manhattan (pictured top row, above) and Long Island (pictured bottom row, above), the latter model features the dual-edge curved display, à la Samsung’s Edge-branded handsets (as well as its beleaguered Galaxy Note7 phablet).
Long Island will boast the most premium specifications, and while neither person delved into a full feature-by-feature comparison, the device was said to offer a QHD resolution (compared to Manhattan’s FHD) in order to support Android’s Daydream VR capabilities.
However, sales of Long Island may be restricted to Huawei’s native China. Manhattan will see a global release, including the United States.
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Furthermore, one of the people noted that the leaked renders of Manhattan currently circulating in various hues are slightly inaccurate in their depictions of the front of the device. That person claimed the render below more accurately represents its final appearance.
Component specs that have already leaked out for Mate 9 are accurate, according to one of the people. Those include a 64-bit, eight-core HiSilicon Kirin 960 system-on-a-chip at the heart of the device, a 5.9-inch screen, and various memory configurations, which top out at 6GB of RAM and 256GB storage capacity.
The main camera, meanwhile, has been tipped as a dual-lens, dual-sensor Leica design — similar to the company’s first-half flagship, the Huawei P9 — but with the lenses and sensors both set to see improvements at f/2.0 and 20 megapixels, respectively.
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