Up close with Huawei's massive, meaty Mate 9

The Mate 9 is the latest big-screened phablet from Huawei. As well as the 5.9-inch display, the phone comes with an octa-core processor, 64GB of storage, an all-metal body and a nifty dual-lens camera on the back.

It's due to to go on sale globally later this year, although Huawei has yet to announce prices.

With such a big screen stuffed inside, the Mate 9 is quite a chunky thing to hold. It's all-metal casing at least makes it feel like a reassuringly solid piece of kit.

It has the same dual-lens camera that we've seen already on Huawei's P9. One lens takes photos in colour, the other only takes photos in black and white.

I loved the richness of the black-and-white shots on the P9, so I'm hoping for similar results here.

Huawei has put its Emotion interface over the top of the Android Nougat software. On previous Huawei phones this meant losing the app drawer -- which I didn't appreciate -- but on the Mate 9 you have the option to keep the drawer if you prefer.

There's a fingerprint scanner on the back, just below the dual-camera lens.

It charged with USB-C.

There are a load of camera modes and settings to play with.

There's an 8-megapixel camera on the front for selfies.

The 4,000 mAh battery should keep the phone going for the better part of a day.

You can change the theme of the phone to make it more to your taste.

Android Nougat is the latest version of Google's mobile operating system.