If you are looking for a high-end phablet, there’s an alternative to the popular Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus in the form of Huawei’s new Ascend Mate7.
The S$749 flagship device, from the Chinese company known more for its networking gear, is up for the fight with a 6-inch screen and a number of unique features, as it reaches Singapore in time for the holiday season.
First up, the 6-inch screen should put it in the region of similar large-sized phones sought after by an increasing number of users.
The display resolution is Full HD, or 1,920 x 1,080, so the Ascend Mate7 is not going to be as sharp as, say, the Galaxy Note 4’s 2,560 x 1,440. But the rest of the Huawei phone should give big name rivals a tough fight.
The 7.9mm thick metallic body, for example, is slim by most comparisons. More important are perhaps some of the innovations Huawei is touting under the chassis.
The company’s Kirin processor comes with eight cores to adapt to what users do. It uses four “large” A15 cores running at 1.8GHz, as well as four “small” A7 1.3GHz cores at different times to maximise performance while saving on battery power, where possible.
So, when you are just surfing the Web or going about some light tasks, the A7 cores do their job. When heavy lifting is required, say, when a game is fired up, the A15 cores kick in.
This is when 85 to 95 per cent of a single core’s processing capacity is used up, according to Huawei.
What’s also interesting is the phone’s speedy connections. Like the fastest smartphones out there, the Ascend Mate7 can theoretically download files over a 4G+ network at up to 300Mbps, double the 150Mbps on many 4G rivals.
Also onboard the phone is the increasingly important finger sensor. Here, it is used for unlocking the phone through a sweeping motion.
It doesn’t hurt that the phone also has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. Not top of the class, but not too bad from a phone that’s looking pretty attractive for its S$749 price.
