Display and Processor
It was highly anticipated that Huawei Ascend Mate 2 will come with Full HD display in line with the modern trends but that did not happen. On paper the display remains same with 6.1 inches of diagonal length and 720p HD display resolution, but there has been an Improvement. The Huawei Ascend Mate 2 comes with a better IPS panel based on Low Temperature Poly Silicon (LTPS) technology which makes it more responsive, brighter and better integrated. The display still enjoys the Corning Gorilla glass protection as its predecessor and perhaps Huawei has decided to ditch the Full HD tag to keep the price in check. The chipset in the Global variant is Qualcomm’s MSM8928 SoC which is Snapdragon 400 with 4 Cortex A7 based cores clocked at 1.6 GHz and assisted by Adreno 306 GPU. The cortex A7 based architecture is a significant improvement over the 1.4 GHz Cortex A9 based K3V2 processor in the Huawei Ascend Mate in terms of energy efficiency and processing power. The RAM backing up both the processor is the same 2 GB.
Camera and Memory
The camera features in the new phablet show necessary improvements which match expectation. The Huawei Ascend Mate 2 4G has a 13 MP BSI sensor at the back with f/ 2.0 aperture and covered by 28 mm lens. The camera unit is manufactured by Sony which has a reputation for building premium quality imaging hardware. The rear cameras in both of the smartphones are capable of Full HD video recording. The 5 MP front camera sports f/ 2.4 aperture and large sized 1.4 micrometer pixels for better low light performance. The Huawei Ascend Mate on the other hand has an 8 MP shooter at the back which gave us pretty good day light performance and a neat interface but the low light performance slipped in terms of details. The front camera features a 1 MP sensor and is capable of HD video chat. The internal storage memory has been doubled from 8 GB to 16 GB in the next generation phablet and remains expandable to 64 GB. The internal storage should suffice for most users in Ascend Mate 2, where as it will fall short for most in Ascend Mate.
Battery and Features
The battery rating remains same at 4050 mAh in both of these handsets. Huawei Ascend Mate was much appreciated for the copious battery backup it provided and Huawei Ascend Mate 2 will do you one better. Yes, more backup can be extracted from the similar rated battery in Mate 2 owing to energy efficient processor and display along with optimizations from Huawei. Huawei claims that battery will last for 2 days on single charge and you can also use Ascend Mate as a battery bank to charge other phones (using USB OTG) and that is saying something. A large battery backup is much appreciated in a large display device. There is not much difference in weight for both of these phablets (198g VS 202g) and the Ascend Mate 2 is slightly thinner at 9.5 mm (9.9 mm VS 9.5 mm). The thin bezels at the front give it more premium looks. On the software front, Huawei Ascend Mate comes with Android 4.1 jelly bean O.S. (which you can upgrade to Android 4.2) where as Huawei Ascend Mate will come with Android 4.3 out of the box. The Ascend Mate 2 also comes armed with 4G LTE connectivity which is slowly gaining popularity in India.
Key Specs
Conclusion
Huawei has improved on various Aspects but the modifications don’t seem enough to empower Ascend Mate 2 for another complete year. With Snapdragon 800 processors and octa cores popping in mid range segments, Huawei’s advantage remains limited to its large sized display which has not been significantly improved in terms of raw specs. If company manages to keep the price around 25,000 INR (for which Ascend Mate is now selling) this can be an admirable 6 inch proposition at respective price range.
