IFA 2014: Huawei announces Ascend Mate 7; huge display, minimal bezel, eight cores
Huawei's smartphone market share continues to grow. Its new Ascend Mate 7 with a 6-inch display has the power to challenge other flagship devices.
The Ascend Mate 2 made me a believer in Huawei's devices. The Mate 7 impresses me even more because it's a phone that's all display. It has an 83 percent screen-to-body ratio, which beats the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, HTC One M8, iPhone 5S, and more.
It is just a bit larger than the 5.7 inch Galaxy Note 4, but also thinner at just 7.9mm.
In addition to the large 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution display and minimal bezel, Huawei is including a fingerprint scanner on the back.
Unlike the failed HTC One Max scanner, this one just requires a touch to activate rather than a swipe. You will also find a 13 megapixel camera on the back.
Other interesting features include active noise-canceling headphones powered by the phone (the Sony Xperia Z3 has this too), an 8-megapixel front-facing camera (there's an interesting panorama front-facing feature on the Mate 2 as well), Octa core chipset that has two quad-cores which spin up when needed, and a tunable antenna.
The device also lands with a massive 4,000 mAh battery that should power the large display for a couple days.
The MSRP of the Ascend Mate 7 (2GB RAM and 16GB ROM) is 499 euros, while that of the premium Huawei Ascend Mate 7 (3GB RAM and 32GB ROM) is 599 euros. It will be available in more than 30 countries/territories including mainland China, Hong Kong, UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain from Q3 2014, with other markets to follow.