Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Throughout my time with the Huawei Mate 8, I've never gone to bed without battery still left in the tank. Even when using the phone quite heavily, the battery life on the Mate 8 has stayed strong.
That 6-inch screen demands a lot of power, so Huawei has packed in a big 4,000mAh battery to keep it going. That's slightly down on the 4,100mAh battery included in the Huawei Ascend Mate 7, but it's offering the same kind of life, if not better.
While doing everyday tasks, the phone would get down to about 20% at the end of the day. I had one day of really putting the phone through its paces by watching a lot of video and using Google Maps heavily, but it still made it to the end of the day with 10% or so left over.
One of the reasons for the extended life is the smart apps feature within Emotion UI 4.0 that tells you what apps are using up the most of your battery.
It reminds you to shut down apps you're not using, and acting on its advice immediately leads to extended battery life. Sometimes though it will tell you to shut down an app you're using, which is quite irritating.
The battery manager feature also came in useful. If you head into Settings and select battery, you'll find a big button called optimise that will look over everything the phone can do to prolong life.
There are lots of different options here to fiddle with: you can exclude certain apps from being shut down to save battery, or choose a specific power plan. If you choose the Ultra power plan it limits the phone to just calling and messaging features but saves you on lots of life. On a full charge, Ultra will give you two full days of use with a little bit of change leftover.
Huawei has also included a fast-charging feature on the Mate 8, but our sample didn't come with a charger so it wasn't possible to test. Huawei claims it will charge from zero to 37% in 30 minutes with the fast charger but we can't confirm that just yet. It seems Huawei isn't including the fast charger as standard, which is disappointing.
I put the Mate 8 through our normal battery test which involves a 90-minute video played with the screen at full brightness and all connectivity options on.
The Mate 8 got to the end of the test with 80% of its battery leftover, a respectable score. The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 beat that score with only a 14% drop while the Galaxy S6 Edge+ dropped further than the Mate 8 with only 76% left at the end.
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 scored really well in this test though only dropping down to 91% in the test.
Overall, the Huawei Mate 8 offers outstanding battery life for consistent daily use. If you're looking for a phablet with a strong battery life, this fits the bill.
