[rwp-review id=”0″]
Huawei has been aggressively making its mark in the smartphone market with powerful and well designed phones. We’ve previously reviewed the impressive Ascend P7 and now we take a look at its flagship and very impressive sibling, the Ascend Mate7.
Design
The Ascend Mate7 has a 6 inch display with a very thin bezel giving it an almost edge to edge screen look. It’s directly comparable with the Lenovo Vibe Z2 and Z2 Pro range and the Nexus 6 in terms of size and form factor.
The smartphone has a full metal body all around giving it a nice premium look and feel. The front has a 5MP 720p camera capabale of taking very good selfies and more than adequate for quality video chatting. The back has a 13MP shooter with a LED flash beside it. Below the camera sits a fingerprint scanner for that extra security measure. The look and placement of the fingerprint scanner reminds us of the HTC One Max. A single speaker grill also sits on the lower left side of the back cover which is not removable.
The phone weighs 185g, which is quite decent for a phone its size. In comparison, the Nexus 6 weighs 184g and the Vibe Z2 Pro weighs 179g. The body is a mere 7.9mm thick and the bezel is as narrow as 2.9mm. The Nexus 6 and the Vibe Z2 Pro are 10.1 and 7.7 thick respectively.
The overall feel and look of the Ascend Mate7 is that of a very well built quality smartphone. It feels and looks premium all round and is definitely good value for money considering its price range. The phone gets an easy two thumbs up for build quality and feel.
Display
The display is a FHD (Full HD) LCD screen with a 1920 x 1080 resolution at 368ppi. This is less than both the Nexus 6 and the Vibe Z2 Pro, but still looks very good. The Ascend Mate7’s resolution is comparable to that of the iPhone 6 Plus with the latter having a slightly higher pixel density due to its smaller display size (5.5 inches).
The full HD screen looks extremely good in use, functions very well under direct sun light thanks to the ultra high brightness. Images, letters and icons look crips and very well defined. Colors are more on the realistic side without any false boosting you usually see in Samsung’s displays.
What we liked the most about the display is the edge to edge design with the 2.9mm bezel. Huawei says the phone has 83% screen to body ratio. We haven’t done the math but it surely looks it and it’s both beautiful and enjoyable to use.
Performance
Huawei spared nothing here. The Ascend Mate7 boasts a super eight-core Kirin 925 SoC chipset or a quad-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A15 depending on region. Both processors are beasts and ensure that large display and the device has ample processing power for the heaviest of tasks.
The Ascend Mate7 supports 2 micro-SIM cards and 4G (LTE) data connectivity. It also boasts a mammoth 4100 mAh battery, easily capable of lasting for a full day or more depending on usage.
Multitasking, 3D gaming and HD videos all perform flawlessly on this device. Performance has been solid and without any glitches throughout our testing period.
Software
Huawei has done well in this department as well. The overall experience felt unified and uninterrupted. All icons are equally sized and the phone’s default color palette is pleasant to say the least.
The Ascend Mate7 is highly customizable in its own way. The theme, the window transition, navigation bar and overall behavior are all customizable and changeable to the user’s liking.
One aspect I really liked is the way the notifications are listed in the notification panel. They’re ordered in a chronological order with a timeline scale on the left side signaling when the notification came in. It’s very organized and helpful.
The phone also comes with very handy features like:
- Ultra power saving mode
- 360 fingerprint scanner
- App lock that’s integrated with the fingerprint scanner
- Phone Manager app
- Huawei Cloud+
The 360 fingerprint scanner worked about 75% of the time; which is somewhat disappointing. Unlike the HTC One Max, the fingerprint scanner is built to pick up on prints regardless of the angle the finger is placed or swiped through. When successfully scanned, the phone immediately unlocks to the home screen. This is customizable and the phone can be set up to open to any app you’d like it to directly open to. That said, we found the experience to be flimsy and unreliable, we decided to make do without it, especially when compared to the fluidity of the iPhone’s TouchID sensor.
While we decided to opt out of using the fingerprint scanner to unlock the phone, we found it to be very useful to use to unlock particular apps. For example, you can lock your gallery, file manager and/or finance app to open only using the fingerprint scanner. We found this to be a welcome and practical feature few devices out there have.
Phone Manager app is very handy. It conducts a scan over your running and existing apps and an overall health check to optimize your phone’s performance. You can use it to whitelist or blacklist certain apps, restrict apps from accessing the internet without your knowledge or permission and manages background running apps to boost battery performance.
Huawei Cloud+, as the name suggests, is Huawei’s own cloud storage service. It also allows user to remotely manage the device by locking/wiping it and/or changing the password.
Overall, the software on the Huawei Ascend Mate7 is one of the cleanest, simplistic and practical Android experiences we’ve come across (stock Android aside). Huawei has really outdone themselves with this one. The built in apps are minimal, great looking and very practical.
Camera
The device comes with a 13MP main shooter with a LED flash shooting images up to 4128 x 3096 pixels in resolution. It also supports a full HD (1080p) video taking capability with 30fps.
The camera takes very good pictures, boosted by a Sony 4th generation sensor which gives the camera the edge it has. Pictures are crisp and colors are vivid, albeit, realistic in tone. The camera does take really good close up shots and has a function that provides dual focus points. This isn’t the best smartphone camera we’ve come across, but it isn’t bad at all.
Verdict
The Huawei Ascend Mate7 is a beautiful smartphone inside out, if you can handle the 6 inch form factor. Huawei has done a fantastic job in building a device that is powerful, sexy, full of handy features all with a very impressive battery life.
While there are other phablets out there that offer higher specs in terms of display resolution and camera, as well as, built-in practical accessories like that of the Note series, the Ascend Mate7 has everything a basic smartphone user in need of a large display size needs and more.
While the fingerprint scanner is a let down, the phone doesn’t go wrong in many other places. If you’re looking for a well rounded, fluid and pleasant experience on a 6 inch-er, and cannot afford the heavy price tag of other 6 inch smartphones out there, at a mere AED 1,899 ($516), the Huawei Ascend Mate7 is definitely the smartphone for you.
