Huawei Mate SE Factory Unlocked 5.93” – 4GB/64GB Octa-core Processor| 16MP + 2MP Dual Camera| Grey (US Warranty)

*This is an update, I previously reviewed the 3gb Honor 7x (Bits of the review below) but upgraded to this 4gb version and notice an INSTANT difference in performance. The extra memory seems to be making a big difference in performance and speed compared to my 3GB Honor 7x.*

I have been seeking the perfect combination between looks, battery life, price and CAMERA QUALITY and this phone is the winner by far at $229! Lets get to the details YOU all care about before purchasing it, I will keep it short and sweet

Common Answers to Popular Questions:
– This phone ONLY works on GSM carriers, Sprint and Verizon are a no go
– On Tmobile, it has band 12 & VOLTE working perfectly
– I have owned my older 7x for a month (Had weird lag and freezing issues but I am starting to think I had a defective unit) but I ordered this Huawei Mate SE (Basically the USA version of the 7x with more memory) and have not had lagging issues yet.

Screen:
The screen looks nice and CRISP, graphics look great, colors really pop on colorful screens and I have no complaints.

Battery Life:
Still great battery life, I can easily make it two days on one full charge. By day 2 the battery would be down to around 25% when I get off work at 4pm.

User Interface:
I must admit, EMUI does have SOME great elements to it but I am not a fan of the launcher and it’s default Iphone-ish layout. Once again, anything that even remotely gives me an Iphone kind of feeling makes me want to vomit. Luckily they have an option where you can restore the app drawer but I opted to use a 3rd party launcher instead. Action Launcher is my favorite for it’s speed and customization. The phone, contacts , notification bar and settings are pretty great and well organized. 1 or 2 steps ahead in beauty over the stock android experience IMO.

Camera:
The camera is the TRUE STAR of this device in my opinion.The camera on this Mate SE blows away anything in this price range, it even blows most of the cameras away in the $200-$499 phone range. The photos are nice and crisp and it is easy to focus on objects even if moving. They have several different camera modes, HDR, portrait, bokeh, depth, food filter, etc. I typically switch to HDR mode for my standard photos but I love the Portrait/Depth effect pictures because this does a great job at blurring the background without having to do much manipulation. Pictures in low light settings come out surprisingly well especially for a budget phone. Low light pictures still look nice though it has slight noise in the picture. Front camera and video quality is a 7/10 I am really impressed!

Performance and Gaming
The former lag and stuttering glitch I had on my 3gb Honor 7x are completely GONE. I am not sure if my old device was defective or I had too many apps that were not playing nice with the Kirin processor. Snapchat loads instantly and there is no lag to load anymore. Also the camera app loads much faster than my 3GB 7x.

Overall, should you buy this phone? It’s a no brainer, ESPECIALLY at this price! Great camera, excellent battery life, fast performance, sleek form factor, decent sound and lightning fast fingerprint sensor. Here is a valuable tip (Needed for my 7x but I have not needed to do this on this MATE SE): IF you ever experience the freezing apps or weird lag (EMUI bug but an update will be coming soon) all you have to do is enable the developer options (to do this, go to settings, about phone, tap on the BUILD NUMBER 5-6 times and you’ll unlock the developer options. In developer options, scroll allllll the way down to the APPS section and set the background process limit to AT MOST 4 PROCESSES then restart the phone. Your device will be noticeably faster at all times.

Okay first of all let me get this out of the way. Do not worry about the chinese government spying on you lol Huawei is there to make money by selling phones, period. If you ask me I believe Samsung and apple had something to do with that spying rumor because they want to keep the competition down in America and Chinese phones pose a threat. After all why buy a phone for 1000 dollars when you can get one almost just as good for less than 300. So with that being said, this phone is amazing. Super fast fingerprint scanner, camera quality is amazing, if you handed this phone to someone who didn’t know huawei, they would think you paid three times the amount that you actually did. I asked Huawei about a update to Android 8.0 and they said it is confirmed and should be released in April or May at the latest. The software is well optimized and I can get about 6 hours of screen on time with casual use such as calling, texting, and social media. You can zoom in the screen on apps to take advantage of the 5.9 inch screen. The speakers are not the loudest but the quality is good and clear. The audio through the headphones is really good and it also has a mode to improve it even further giving it a bit more bass. The only downside to me is it isn’t USB type c, but with how great this phone is all the pros definitely make up for it having micro USB. With phones like this, from Huawei and xaomi, the days of paying 600 to 1200 for a good for are over.

There is no other way to put it, this is an excellent device at excellent value. The only complaint I have is the confusion with how many devices there are from Huawei for different markets. I purchased 2 phones BEFORE this one. First a Nexus 6P (more for Google, but because Huawei built this phone I was more comfortable trying a pure Huawei phone afterwards) then an Honor 7X. This is where I had some trouble, because I purchased the international version, which was not made clear as to what networks it supports in the U.S, and many different websites have conflicting information based on whether you pull up the 3GB RAM model VS the 4GB RAM model. It’s difficult to have confidence in your purchase when buying elsewhere, but buying the Mate SE from Amazon definitely gave me security and confidence in the choice I was making.

As for the device. WOW… I knew I wanted to get it for the extra gig of ram and the Octa-core processor, but this phone continues to impress. I haven’t had a single hick-up or issue with anything so far, if it weren’t for the network issue I would have never gotten rid of the 4GB RAM 7X, the Mate SE makes you very happy that Huawei is working with American distributors because this is a very underrated device. Shipped and arrived next-day, effortless sync, Android experience is smooth, and I do like the skins though I haven’t changed any themes myself. Camera is ultra-responsive, finger-print is incredibly accurate and unlocks quicker than half-a second, which is hard to comprehend for the price and something I noticed was also equally responsive on the 7X. Just overall incredibly impressed. Oh and there’s a free case which ships with the phone as well, which is just an unexpected plus that makes you happy you chose to support this company.

In all honesty, I feel like if OnePlus weren’t trying to compete on upper-tier financial markets they would be cranking out phones like this no problem, but they’re missing a chance to compete with yet another market that is making unparalleled devices for an unbelievable cost. For the first time my phone has as much RAM as my laptop and I didn’t pay too much…