Huawei Ascend Mate 2 Review: Incredible Battery Life & Value
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Joshua Ho on June 12, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Ascend Mate 2
WiFi
It's self-evident that reaching lower price points will mean that compromises will have to happen. Ultimately, the big issue is where the compromises happen. While most people are willing to give up the niceties that the high-end, high-margin flagships have, far fewer are willing to compromise on fundamental parts of the experience. Unfortunately, WiFi is one of the areas that the average consumer and OEMs alike tend to see little issue with cheaping out on WiFi modules. That is, of course, until one deals with the pain of using a 2.4 GHz-only phone in an area where 5 GHz is the only usable spectrum.
Fortunately, Huawei hasn't done this at all. While the spec sheet doesn't give any immediate indication of the WiFi module in the Mate2, some digging through files such as the build.prop can give clues. The reference to a WCN WiFi part effectively limits the possible controllers to WCN3620, WCN3660, or WCN3680. From there, simply determining the band support and fastest 802.11 standard supported based on PHY rate and other information gives all the necessary information. In the case of the Ascend Mate2, we're looking at a WCN3680 part. This means that 2.4 and 5 GHz are both supported, with a maximum data rate of 433 Mbps via single spatial stream 802.11ac.
As seen by the graph above, the Ascend Mate2 does respectably well for maximum speed, although it's not quite as fast as the One (M8). Anything that doesn't support 802.11ac would be far slower than the Mate2.
GNSS
As with any MDM9x25 IP block, the Ascend Mate2 uses Qualcomm's GPSOne Gen8B, which supports GPS, GLONASS, and Beidou. I didn't notice any significant issues here, and I managed to acquire an accurate lock in around 10 seconds when doing a cold lock (no WiFi, no assistance data, airplane mode). A cursory search of the FCC documents for the Mate2 seems to lack any specific information on antenna placement for the phablet.
Cellular
Although I haven't had sufficient time to run a ton of speedtests to see the distribution of data speeds, the cellular architecture of the Ascend Mate2 is rather typical. There's receive diversity, but no transmit diversity, which means that this is similar to the Samsung Galaxy S4 in antenna setup. Based upon the FCC test data, this phone supports quad band GSM (850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz), and band I (2100 MHz), II (1900 MHz PCS), V (850MHz CLR), and IV (AWS 1700/2100 MHz) for quad band WCDMA. LTE band support is for bands 2, 4, 5, and 17 for AT&T and T-Mobile US LTE support. In short, there shouldn't be any issue getting this phone to work on US/Canada GSM operators.
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tim851 - Friday, June 13, 2014 - link
"The first place to start is industrial and material design. While many people like to suggest that any weight given to ID or MD is effectively evaluating fashion for the sake of evaluating fashion, design is critical to a phone's utility. A phone or a tablet is something that people will be constantly feeling and looking at, thus a phone that's unergonomic or finished poorly will dramatically affect the rest of the experience."I agree. The problem is that most reviews don't really criticize material or industrial design, but aesthetic design and whether or not a device is made from plastics or metal. As if metal has any advantage over metal besides it's perceived quality.
The abundant disses of Samsung's devices on the use of glossy plastics (or lately the faux materials) are totally unnecessary. Any customer can judge a phone's looks by themselves, they don't need a reviewer to help them out.
Euphonious - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
This review honestly tells me practically nothing about how pleasant or enjoyable the device actually is to use. You've discussed the luminance and white balance of the display in exhaustive detail whilst glossing over the software and the actual experience of using the device in three fairly short paragraphs.How much difference does it make to the real-world desirability of a phone if its saturation accuracy is 3.6063 rather than 3.8685? Nobody is going to notice that, but they will notice a shoddy UI or an unergonomic design. Reducing everything to numbers really misses the pleasure and pain points which make a good or a bad phone.
nrfitchett4 - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link
I bought this about 3 months ago and don't regret it at all. Sold my LG G2 to amazon for 145 and got this for 290. It is a little unwieldy at times due to size, but its easy to use, runs really well and I haven't had any software problems. I don't use many apps these days, and only play a couple of games so 16gb of storage with a 32gb micro sd card works fine for me. I unlocked mine using code from Huawei (all you have to do is ask) and rooted it. Its running JB, but I'm scared of what lollipop would do to an already great software experience. I wasn't a fan of the UI at first, but decided against 3rd party launchers when I saw how much battery they were eating.torimish - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
I really think Huawei deserves some more brand recognition. I'm in Australia, and I recently purchased the Huawei Mediapad Honor X1 - basically a 7" phablet, a great convergence device. I've done away with my ultrabook, and use this while travelling with a BT keyboard, and while it's pretty big for pocket use, it's easy to stash in my hand-bag.The quality of these phones - and the price point they are currently sitting at - make for excellent value. I took a gamble (was advised build quality wasn't up to some of the other devices), but I have been very pleasantly surprised. This Ascend looks good, too.
I'd seriously recommend anyone try these Huawei devices. Build quality and finish is up there with the likes of Samsung and Sony and Apple. I'd really like to see Anand do a review of the Mediapad X1. You can't argue with fully unlocked, broad gamut of 4G/LTE bands, 1920x1200 resolution etc for less than $400 USD . . . and all day or two battery life.
MarkWebb - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Ordered!mikkej2k - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
OK phone.Gethuawei.com website is broken. Call in customer service is also awful - be careful.
zlinghaha - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
Avoid this crap. I just got the phone but found it cannot connect to a mobile network when I turn off Wi-Fi after it stays on Wi-Fi for some time. It cannot connect to a mobile network even after I re-start the device. This is over-hyped crap.FarWestNow - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link
A good phone with a great camera (13mp). It's big, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I drop phones constantly, so I bought a Trident case, which so far seems to be fine. (looked for an Otter Box but they don't make one for the AM2.) Only real downside is that it gobbles up data like a fiend and my model came stuffed w/Google apps, and I've had to shut off the mobile network data manually when I'm off Wi-Fi to make sure I stay under my data cap. Four out of five stars....nrfitchett4 - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link
turn off auto-sync. I haven't noticed any extra data used. You can turn off mobile data as well, leaving only wifi, phone and sms on.