Those who are subscribed to our growing Telegram channel will remember an update we made while attending the Huawei Mate 9’s launch in Germany early this month. That the device would be hitting the Kenyan market this December.
Now that we have received official confirmation and additional details from the company, we can break it to the rest of the world that indeed, December is the month to have a date with the Mate if you’ve wanted to lay your hands on Huawei’s latest high-end device.
The Mate 9 is a 5.5-inch smartphone that builds on what previous members of the Mate series started. It brings over to the Mate series the dual-camera setup that Huawei introduced to the P series with the P9 earlier in the year, a new charging tech (SuperCharge) that makes sure the device does not overheat (or, God forbid, explode) while still charging it rapidly as well as a remake of Huawei’s custom software (EMUI) that now relies on machine learning to better improve usability.
It will go for Kshs 70,000 at Huawei’s retail outlets countrywide. Pre-orders are already underway ahead of the planned December launch and availability in the Kenyan market.
“Online activities with details of how to make pre-orders will be done on the company’s Twitter and Facebook page whereas offline will be done in over 10 stores across the country as follows; Dixons, Mobile world, Huawei brand shop at Garden City, Office Mart, Royal King, Gadget world, Wataalamu, Keromatt, Sparks, Skyline, Decent One, Dhaval among others,” reads a statement from the company.
The pre-order sales target is 100 units.
The first 100 buyers of the device will get a free accessory, the TalkBand B3, worth Kshs 20,000.
The TalkBand B3 is the fitness tracker cum Bluetooth earpiece that is copied mimicked by Infinix’s X-Band in both functionality and design.
It is unlikely that the pricier Porsche Design Mate 9 will ever find its way to the Kenyan market at least on an official basis. However, chances are that the newly unveiled Mate 9 Lite, which should be much cheaper than the standard Mate 9, will one day make its way. Our fingers are crossed.
