While I have no experience with the Mate, I have been using a OP6 for abouta month now and have put the camera through its paces as I too was worried about its speculated performance. From what I found, if you shoot in pro mode, you should be able to adjust for most situations. Standard mode with adjusting only focus and exposure, you can still do a lot. Pictures with good light are pretty amazing. The quality, detail and color representation is beutiful and 100% on a flagship level. It’s when you get to low light you start to have a couple problems. Either you don’t have enough light or there is too much noise behind you and the blacks and natural colors get washed out. Over all, I would rate this camera a 7/10. The slow motion is pretty awesome, videos are stable and vibrant, portrait mode works well ( not the very best, but well) and the front facing camera is good but has a little bit of a hard time in lowlight. It gets washed outif a light source is behind you or above you. I will say this, if the Camera is the only thing keeping you from getting the OP, I would go wtih the OP. The camera is actually pretty good except for in low light. You have to do a lot of adjusting and manual work in low light to get a good picture. If you are someone who is VERY VERY picky about photos and every detail about how they come out and want every picture to be absolutely stunning.the OP may not be the phone ( bare in mind, it certainly isn’t a pixel. It can compete, but it isn’t a pixel) .But if you are looking for solid, good looking photos with good color depth and stunning detail MOST of the time, the OP is your phone. After having it for a month, I would say the camera is not a deal breaker unless you are SUPER passionate about getting THE PERFECTshot every time you pull the phone out. It does struggle a little compared to other high end phones, but I don’t consider it a deal breaker. In good lighting, it is an amazing camera