Huawei might not be a well-known brand in Europe and the US, but the truth is that it is one of the major smartphone manufacturers in China. While some people are still of the opinion that all Chinese manufacturers produce lower quality products, the truth is that nowadays, almost everything is being produced in China. Today one can still buy cheaper, lower quality phones and smartphones that are produced by some Chinese manufacturers, however Huawei is a company that is known to produce well-built and high quality phones.
The Huawei Ascend Mate is a 6.1 inch screen phablet that was released in March 2013. Having dimensions of 163.5 x 85.7 x 9.9 mm (6.44 x 3.37 x 0.39 in) and weighing at 198 g (6.98 oz), it is by no means a small device. Having said this, many people will still manage to fit thing this huge thing in their trousers’ pockets. The Gorilla Glass screen looks pretty good and the viewing angles are more than adequate. However the specifications are nothing to write home about, especially when compared to the latest phablets that are currently available on the market. As a matter of fact, the Mate only supports resolutions of 720 x 1280 pixels and a pixel density of about 241 pixels per inch.
Inside the phablet, one can find a Quad-core 1.5 GHz processor which runs on Huawei’s K3V2 chipset. There are two Huawei Ascend Mate versions: the Australian version comes with 1 GB or RAM and 8 GB of inbuilt memory while the version for other markets comes with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of inbuilt memory. I have no idea why Australians are treated differently than other markets by Huawei, but probably Huawei wanted to keep the price down as much as possible for its Australian customers. Both versions can be expanded by installing a microSD card of up to 32 GB, though some reviewers said that a 63 GB microSD card would work just as well.
The Ascend Mate runs on Android version 4.1 Jelly Bean. It has a primary 8 MP camera and can take full-HD videos of up to 1080p at 30 frames per second. The 1 MP secondary camera can take videos of up to 720p at 30 frames per second.
One particular thing that impresses about the Huawei Ascend Mate is the Li-Ion 4050 mAh removable battery. According to the manufacturer, the battery can provide up to nine days of standby. Provided that Huawei is not bluffing with the figures, this is really impressive stuff. The Mate also includes an accelerometer sensor, gyro sensor, proximity sensor and compass sensors. The Huawei Ascend Mate is still not readily available in some markets but the 2 GB RAM version is currently selling at US $542 at Amazon.com.
