Watch out, here comes Huawei

Huawei's new flagship smartphone, the Ascend Mate7.

Huawei's new flagship smartphone, the Ascend Mate7.

Published Mar 31, 2015

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Durban – Towards the end of last year I predicted Chinese tech titan Huawei, already causing all sorts of headaches for global smartphone leaders Samsung and Apple in Asian markets, would break into the South African mainstream.

There are signs it’s starting to happen. I’ve been testing Huawei’s impressive new flagship, the Ascend Mate 7, and in the short time I’ve had it, the phone has garnered plenty of admiring comments from colleagues and the public.

Interestingly, for every “I love that new iPhone?” or “Sjoe that Samsung is big” remark I’ve received, there’s been one along the lines of “Wow, is that the new Huawei? It’s gorgeous” – a clear indication of growing local brand awareness. A few people even pronounced it correctly, “wah-way”.

That’s partly due to great public relations and marketing, with Huawei pushing particularly aggressively into the sports sponsorship space. But increasingly it’s also down to positive word of mouth as proud owners rave about the purchase.

And if any device is designed to garner rave reviews, it’s the Ascend Mate 7. The first thing you notice is its size. It’s huge. But not uncomfortably so. That’s because with the Mate 7 Huawei has cleverly squeezed a six-inch screen into a device that feels surprisingly compact in hand.

That’s partly due to the almost total elimination of bezels, with the screen filling a whopping 83 percent of the phone’s face, leaving very little wasted space. The curved back also helps, as does the fact that Huawei has managed to keep the phone incredibly slim, just 7.9mm.

Of course, big phones aren’t uncommon any more. Heck, even Apple has a six-inch phablet now. To stand out from the plus-sized crowd these days, a contender needs to have head-turning good looks. The Mate 7 has them in spades.

The all metal body – mine came in brushed silver – exudes understated quality. Throw in the super bright 1920x1080-pixel display with an iPhone 6-beating 367 pixels per inch and you’ve got a device that can compete in the eye candy department with any of the smartphone supermodels.

But looks aren’t enough these days. Discerning smartphone buyers want brains and brawn too. Again, the Mate 7 doesn’t disappoint.

Under its alluring steel and glass exterior lurks a powerful octa-core processor, comprising eight distinct cores, which spring into action in different configurations depending on the demands of a specific app. This, combined with the enormous 4100 mAh battery, gives the Mate 7 the best performance-to-stamina-ratio of any currently available smartphone I’ve tested.

I flogged the Mate 7 uncompromisingly hard, using it for all my email correspondence for an entire day, editing word documents over the cloud, browsing the internet, watching high-definition videos and playing games, often with several windows and apps open simultaneously.

It handled the abuse with aplomb and at the end of the long day there was still 20 percent of the juice in the tank when most other smartphones would have given up the ghost some time around mid-afternoon.

Of course, this startling performance might deteriorate over several months’ use, but it’s still impressive.

Another standout feature is the fingerprint reader. Placed cleverly on the back just where your forefinger naturally comes to rest, it actually works consistently enough to be useful, unlike those on some other smartphones, making it my preferred method of unlocking the device.

The 13 megapixel camera impressed me with its bright, detail-rich daytime shots. Panoramic shots with the phone held in portrait and landscape modes looked particularly good. Low-light shots were not quite up to the standards of the Samsung Note 4 and iPhone 6 but still better than most smartphones.

I hesitate to mention this for fear of encouraging the trend, but selfie fans will love the wide angle option on the front and rear-facing cameras which makes it a breeze for them to snap the perfect groufie – or group selfie. Ellen, you have a lot to answer for.

As for niggles, I don’t have many. The 16GB of built-in storage is a little miserly, but that’s easily remedied with the addition of an aftermarket micro SD card. I’d also have preferred it to come with more recent version of Android than Kitkat 4.4.2. But these are minor beefs.

If you’re looking for a beautiful, premium-quality, large-screen smartphone you wont find anything better at this price than Huawei’s Ascend Mate 7. There’s little to touch it at any price.

You can get it on contract starting from around R280 a month with prepaid prices varying between R7 000 and R9 000, but as low as R5 700 from the Orange online store.

This is great value when you consider similarly specced rivals from Samsung and Apple will set you back more than R11 000.

For more details and images visit my blog alanqcooper.tumblr. com.

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