At a glamorous, star-studded event in Johannesburg, Huawei unveiled its latest offerings to the South African market –  the flagship of the Mate series.

The 4G LTE-compatible Huawei Mate S has a 5.5-inch AMOLED screen, 13MP main camera, fingerprint sensor, and a Hi-silicon Kirin 935 chip running off a 64-bit octa-core processor.

The phone’s key feature is the incredible Force Touch Technology, which allows you to easily facilitate different actions like zooming in when taking a photo or launching an app simply by applying a different level of pressure to the screen.

You can also use Knuckle Sense to create your own original short codes on the screen, or draw a letter and it correlates to a corresponding action – drawing a c will open the camera while an e will open your Internet browser.

The Mate S has a 13MP rear camera with a four colour RGBW image sensor, optical image stabilisers, dual colour temperature LED flashlights and independent image signal processor camera units.

The 8MP front camera has soft front lights and is easily controlled by the fingerprint sense technology.

It also boasts 2 hours of talk time after a 10-minute charge, and is available in Dual SIM or Dual 4G LTE.

“The Mate S is designed for the stylish and for the invincible. It is the ideal companion that will touch your life in such a way that you’ll never know how you got through a day without it,” says Charlene Munilall, General Manager, Huawei Consumer Business Group, South Africa.

MTN is currently stocking the 64GB version of the device, available on My MTNChoice 100 for R499 per month and on PayAsYouGo for a retail price of R10,799.

The following infographic sums up its key features.

Huawei Mate S infographic

Huawei Mate S infographic

The specifications of the Huawei Mate S are also detailed in the table below.

Specifications Huawei Mate S
Dimensions 149.8 x 75.3 x 7.2 mm
Weight 156g
Operating system Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, EMUI 3.1
Display 5.5-inch AMOLED 1080p (1080 x 1920)
Rear camera 13MP
Front camera 8MP
Storage, internal 64GB
RAM 3GB
Processor 2.2GHz quad + 1.5GHz quad Hisilicon Kirin 935 octa-core
Battery 2,700mAh