Huawei Ascend Mate 2 LTE in the flesh, first impressions

Huawei has been fervently using their own K3V2 1.5GHz quad-core processor on their flagship smartphones so it’s surprising that they’ve moved on to a Qualcomm chip for the Ascend Mate 2.

It also solves one other issue — the lack of LTE connectivity (in our Ascend Mate review, we mentioned the absence of LTE as disappointing).

The refreshed Huawei Ascend Mate 2 4G addresses all the issues we had with the original device. The rest are pretty much the same, except for a few more improvements — that includes the large 6.1-inch HD display, double the RAM at 2GB, bigger camera at 13MP at the back and 5MP at the front.

It is also slightly thinner and lighter although you won’t really notice that right off the bat.

The device is definitely massive but still usable with one hand; the display looks really good, bright and crisp.

The Emotion UI 2.0 looks the same as the old UI — simple, clean and did away with the app drawer so all apps are accessible directly from the multiple home screens.

The back panel slightly tapers towards the edges and has a glossy finish which is a little off of our taste (at least for the white variant, the black variant has a matte finish). The LED flash is now positioned below the camera instead of the left side from the previous model.

Huawei’s choice of using Snapdragon 400 is probably to keep the cost low and still provide good performance that could match Huawei’s K3V2 chip or maybe even a little better. Besides, it also comes with LTE connectivity.

Huawei Ascend Mate 2 LTE specs:
6.1-inch IPS+ LCD 720p display @ 1280×720 pixels, 241ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 1.6GHz quad-core
Adreno 306 GPU
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
up to 64GB via microSD
HSPA+ 42Mbps, LTE 150Mbps
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, dual-band, WiFi Direct, DLNA, WiFi hotspot
Bluetooth 4.0 LE
13MP camera with LED flash
1080p video recording
5MP front-facing camera
FM Stereo tuner
GPS w/ aGPS support, GLONASS
Li-Ion 4050mAh battery
Android 4.3 Jellybean
202 grams (weight)
161 x 84.7 x 9.5mm (dimensions)

The extra-large battery capacity is still the same at 4,050mAh. What’s more interesting is that the phone can actually charge other smartphones as well (needs the appropriate micro USB cable).

The configuration doesn’t really spell flagship when compared to other brands but we’ve already established Huawei is trying to keep the cost low (the reason why the retail price of the old model was under Php17k).

We’re still unsure when will Huawei release the Ascend Mate 2 4G in the Philippines but it could be around the end of 1st quarter of 2014.

You can also read our full review of the older Huawei Ascend Mate.