For Google fans, Hauwei’s press conference this morning is likely to be one of the most interesting of CES 2016. The company has boldly entered the United States market this year with the launch of the Huawei Watch and the Nexus 6P, and just about everyone — myself included — is excited to find out what the company has in store for 2017. From what we’ve heard, the company is planning to launch the Mate 8 for the United States, as well as introduce a new smartwatch (and some other things)…
The Mate 8 was announced in Shanghai a couple months ago, and sports an awesome screen-to-body ratio, an IPS full HD 6-inch display, and “2.5D” curved glass. The phone, or at least its overseas model, features Huawei’s new Kirin 950 processor (which is apparently pretty great). There’s also a fingerprint sensor on this phone (what phone in 2016 won’t have one?), dual tone flash for its 16-megapixel main sensor, and comes in Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Mocha Brown and Champagne Gold.
There’s no telling what else Huawei has prepared for today’s event, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company also plans a smartwatch announcement of some kind and that Huawei’s sub-brand Honor is planning to introduce the Honor 5X for the United States later today. I’m here on the ground in Las Vegas to keep you in the loop, so be sure to follow along below for our liveblog of the event as it pans out…
Refresh for updates.
9:07 AM — Just about an hour to go! Headed over to Mandalay Bay.
9:45 — 15 minutes to go! Getting seated. Tons of people here.
9:50 — 10 minutes! Dom is here with me!
10:07 — Some really loud music playing.
10:08 — There’s a lady talking about Huawei and how great it is.
10:09 — Richard Yu on the stage to talk numbers a la Apple.
10:09 — Total revenue growing close to 70%. Over 20 billion in sales revenue achieved this year.
10:10 — Smartphone shipments increased 44%. Over 100 million shipped. The company took the number 3 spot in the world.
10:12 — Looks like the embargoes are already rolling out for new women’s smartwatch…
10:13 — Yu is still on stage talking about Huawei’s numbers. Brand aware is growing. Some countries are showing 8 times growth.
10:19 — Today we’re going to see a smartphone, a tablet, a wearable device, and “something more”. The “something more” has the hazardous materials icon on it…
10:21 — Alright, so the Mate 8 is official for the international market. They’re calling this device part of the “Mategory”…
10:23 — Google has confirmed our previous report that the Huawei Nexus 6P is coming to the US in gold.
10:25 — Huawei is just bragging about the Mate 8 specifications. Good screen. Good battery life. Good performance. Processor that stays cool. Fingerprint reader is good. Nothing groundbreaking. But you can take selfies using the fingerprint reader if you want.
10:33 —Showing off a bunch of knuckle features for the Mate 8. Knuckle knuckle knuckle. Creative.
10:34 — Lots of band support.
10:35 — Talking a lot about the phone’s camera, but this isn’t really anything we didn’t already know from the Mate 8 for the Chinese market.
10:39 — Mate 8 is coming in Mocha Brown, and Huawei is showing the Mate 8 product video now.
10:40 — Up next, I’m assuming tablet.
10:41 — Huawei MediaPad M2. Great. “A New Style of Sound”. 10.1-inch tablet. Not many details on this. The company talked a long time about the Mate 8, but this thing is definitely getting pushed aside. As it will by consumers as well.
10:44 — And it’s already watch time. We already know what’s happening with this. New watch faces that look great, launching in 26 countries. Two models. $499 and $599. It’s nice.
10:49 — Women’s watches product video. Now it’s time for “something else.” I think it’s gold Nexus 6P. Yep. That’s all folks!
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