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
Final Words
I'll have to admit here that coming into the review, I wasn't expecting much - not from the Ascend Mate 2 and not from Huawei itself. After all, while Huawei was making some interesting smartphones as an OEM outside the US, it remained an ODM in the US that was best known for the MyTouch smartphones on T-Mobile. Of course, even the announcement of the Ascend Mate 2 at CES was generally ignored by most. In short, Huawei has a lack of brand and product recognition.
Yet after using the phone for a while, there’s plenty to be surprised about. The first surprise was the design and feel of the device. The phone shows no signs of poor fit and finish, and it’s refreshing to see a design that embraces its material for what it is. More and more these days, it seems OEMs try to make plastic into a material that it isn’t. While some people might have no objections to this, it almost universally cheapens the design of the phone. The worst part about this trend is that such attempts often come at the expense of actual in-hand feel. Huawei has thankfully avoided this trend. The result is a phone that resembles the Galaxy S2 in feel, which was already well-designed. If anything, it ends up better due to the soft touch coating applied to the back cover.
Other OEMs highlight various technologies with an alphabet soup of acronyms to try and convince a buyer that their display is the best. Huawei seems to have taken the approach of not talking about their display at all outside of basic specifications, yet the display is one of the best we’ve tested this year. If anything, it’s surprising to see a midrange phablet beating out ~600 dollar phones and phablets.
Outside of display, battery life is record-breaking. This is the first device that I’ve seen to come close to 24 hours of continuous usage. A combination of an efficient display, SoC/RF, and a giant battery means that it’s almost guaranteed that the phone will last a full day, if not more. If battery life is truly the only concern you have in a phone, this would be the phone to buy.
The camera is also great for a 300 dollar phone. While low light performance is effectively nonexistent, the quality in daytime is surprisingly great, and a far cry from the Moto G or Nexus 4.
Of course, it’s not as if this phone is perfect. There are still some areas that could be improved. The single biggest issue is the SoC. While four Cortex A7s at 1.6 GHz is acceptable, it would be great to see a better SoC in general, especially to resolve some of the issues related to the ISP such as low preview resolution and frame rate. I suspect that this won’t happen until Snapdragon 410 begins shipping to OEMs. The only issues that really mar the device are some friction points in the OEM UI, and some concerns over future update support.
From Left to Right: Nexus 7, Ascend Mate 2, Nexus 5
It’s important to get back to pricing. The Mate 2 will be sold unlocked at GetHuawei.com, and from June 12th to June 22nd, Huawei will be including a $50 prepaid SIM card and $30 flip case with the Mate2. The phone itself sells for $299, which is a decent price on its own. For the same price as the Moto G LTE, Huawei is giving far better battery life, display, faster SoC, better camera, and a far better WiFi module. Of course, there’s the issue of the 6” display size and phablet formfactor, but if a large device is what you want Huawei delivers incredible value for the money.
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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.