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
Software
While fans of AOSP and those that generally like to flash custom ROMs often don't care at all about the stock UI that comes with a phone, the vast majority of people end up using whatever ships with the phone. It's not unusual to see users refusing to update past the launch firmware, so it's important to evaluate the software as-is, rather than focusing upon updates that could arrive months after the initial launch. In this case, we'll be looking at Huawei's EmotionUI 2.0 Lite, which runs on top of Android 4.3 for the launch firmware.
Unfortunately, if there's any one place where the Mate2 falls flat, it's the software. That's not to say that it's necessarily bad, it's just not as surprisingly good as other aspects of the device. The UI is very much like MIUI in style, and overall usability. While some may find this to be great, it can actually be a problem for those used to UIs more similar to AOSP UI. This means that by default, the launcher has no app drawer, and every application icon is placed somewhere on a homescreen. Therefore, searching for an application can be difficult if you don't immediately recall which homescreen it's on. Editing homescreens is very much similar to the experience one might have experienced on TouchWiz 4 as seen below, and while it's easy to understand, it doesn't really mesh well with currrent Android design guidelines. However, for the most part applications in the UI are built to fit Google's design guidelines, so using a custom launcher can alleviate some of the issues. I'm not too sure about the general aesthetics of the UI though, as there are some issues going on there as well, especially in how the iconography is distinctly un-Android. I should also mention that we both experienced issues with the camera application crashing when it's opened from a sleep state, although for some reason as soon as we tried to get a screenshot of the issue it mysteriously stopped happening. The simple home mode is also surprisingly useful as a tile-based launcher, although it effectively disables most widgets. I've included a screenshot of this mode below as well.
Outside of some oddness in the UI design, Huawei included a bunch of surprisingly useful applications. For example, the backup utility makes it possible to save applications, photos, and system data to the microSD card or internal storage. This means that a factory data reset no longer requires a significant amount of time to restore settings and applications, something that most Android phones can't do. Huawei also included the ability to selectively permit what applications are allowed to hold wakelock, which works based upon a whitelist system. Huawei also includes three different power plans, Smart, Endurance, and Normal. It seems to me that Smart and Normal share similar CPU/GPU governors, but it's likely that network management is the major difference in this case. Endurance seems to take things one step further by clocking the CPUs down to a max of 1 GHz (998 MHz to be exact), and while there's nothing wrong with this, it's probably not the best idea from a race to sleep perspective. There are a lot of neat features that I've included screenshots of in the gallery, but most of these are small touches rather than major features to discuss.
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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.