Within just a couple of hours of the launch of the Mate 9, I thought there was no point wasting time and got cracking with a photo test between the Mate 9 and the Google Pixel XL.

I’ll have more photos in the coming days, but I figured many of you wouldn’t be able to wait so here are my first efforts.

Please post your thoughts in the comments below, but bear in mind that I haven’t even begun to learn how to get the most from the Mate 9 yet!

Updated: one feature on the Mate 9 is a hybrid 2x zoom, which Huawei has obviously included as a way to compete more directly with the iPhone 7 plus. On the plane journey home, I tried out the zoom facility quickly, as well as checking out how good the camera is in really low-light (as in most cabin lighting turned off and the ceiling lights turned down to the lowest night flight setting).

You can see these photos at the bottom.

Huawei Mate 9 vs Google Pixel XL

Mate 9 left, Pixel XL right

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New: Hybrid zoom & Low-light pictures

With the Mate 9 featuring a 20 megapixel monochrome sensor and 12 megapixel RGB sensor, the phone can do some clever manipulation to improve the quality of images that are zoomed to a 2x level.

On the flight back, I thought I’d give the feature a quick try.