Meet the Huawei Mate 7

The Huawei Mate 7 represents what the Chinese company can really do when it puts its weight on a goal to be among the leading handset makers.

This week, Huawei is set to launch its biggest, baddest handset to date. While fairly new to the smartphone market, Huawei has effectively leveraged its position in the enterprise and telecommunications to become one of the top five handset-makers in the world.

As an indication of its strong focus on this market, Huawei developed its own mobile chip and banked on the popularity of Android as a solid formula. Few other brands have been able to do the same, like Samsung with their Exynos chip and Apple with their A8 chip.

Everybody else has been relying on third party providers such as Qualcomm, Mediatek and Intel for their mobile chips.

The Huawei Mate 7 represents what the Chinese company can really do when it puts its weight on a goal to be among the leading handset makers.

At first glance, the Huawei Mate7 looks really similar to the HTC One M7 although its size is closer to the HTC One Max. However, the build quality and metal construction feels more solid. Design-wise we even liked it better than the iPhone 6 Plus.

With a six-inch display, the Mate7 is already huge and within the size range of the Xperia T2 Ultra. However, based on our actual use of the handset, it’s much closer and more comparable to the iPhone 6 Plus and the Galaxy Note 4 in terms of handling.

Despite having a bigger display, the Mate 7 is shorter than the iPhone 6 Plus. The device is also thinner than the Note 4 and the G3.

Where the Mate7 took some real estate is with the width but the difference is very small — 2.4mm wider than the Note 4 and 3.2mm more than the iPhone 6 Plus.

Huawei claims a screen-to-size ratio of about 78 per cent. This is one of the highest we’ve seen in any flagship device. Even the really compact LG G3 only has 76.3 per cent, the Galaxy Note 4 has 74.4 per cent while the iPhone 6 Plus only has 67.9 percent (the higher the screen-to-size ratio, the more compact the device is relative to its size).

The more premium version of the Mate 7 comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage. The Kirin 925 chip uses 28nm technology and the big.Little configuration paired with a Mali-T628 GPU is one of the best graphics to date. It generally performs better than a Snapdragon 801 and is even comparable to a Snapdragon 805.

While Apple and Samsung have already incorporated the fingerprint sensor into their devices, Huawei’s implementation is slightly different.

The sensor is located at the back panel just below the camera. This provides easier access to the index finger to unlock the phone and other apps. You can use up to five different fingerprints.

We’re already so used to the Rear Key of the LG G2 and G3 that using the Rear Fingerprint Sensor of the Mate7 feels like second nature.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing features of the Mate 7 is the dual-LTE, dual-SIM functionality. This is the first and only handset we’ve seen that is capable of having two LTE SIM slots. This allows you to use two LTE SIMS from Globe and Smart when needed.

The Mate 7 also supports Cat 6 LTE with theoretical speeds of up to 300Mbps and support for about 100 LTE networks globally.

The Mate 7 is also the one with the highest battery capacity of any flagship smartphone with its huge 4,100mAh battery rating. 

The Huawei Ascend Mate7 will be released in the Philippines on Nov.  20 with a suggested retail price of P27,890 for the 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage in rose gold color.