Key Features: 6-inch 1,920 x 1,080 pixel IPS screen; HiSilicon Kirin 925 CPU; 13-megapixel main camera with LED flash Manufacturer: Huawei
What is the Huawei Ascend Mate 7?
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is a very large phone, one whose display is close to tablet-like proportions. Gamers and those who like to watch videos on the way to work should have an instant interest in such a phone.
And, contrary to what the name suggests, it’s definitely phone-sized: the screen is six inches across, not seven.
As is so often the case with Huawei phones, you need to fiddle with the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 to iron out a few weird tweaks that have been applied. But with a little effort, this is one of the best large-screen phones money can buy. At £400, it’s a good lower-cost alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7: Design
Huawei is not a master of design. Often its inspirations are all-too apparent, and the original motifs it devises tend to be a little wonky. But it’s getting better, and the Mate 7 is certainly one of the best Huawei phones yet.
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 has a look very similar to the HTC One Max. It’s imposing, mostly metal and has a fingerprint scanner on the back. A paragon of simplicity it is not.
However, aside from a slight lack of originality the design is remarkably good. Here’s the important bit – for a 6-inch screen phone, it’s very easy to use.
A handful of clever choices ensure this, and while not exactly a surprise, it is a relief after the Huawei Ascend P7, which seemed to value being thin over being enjoyable to use day-to-day. That phone missed the point. This one gets it, or at least seems to.
The first important bit is that the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is clearly as much all-screen as the company could manage. Bezels are super-thin and there’s very little expanse above or below the display.
For empirical evidence – the Mate 7 is just 0.5mm wider than the 5.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Granted, you’ll find much greater differences compared to phones of 2014 such as the LG G3, but clear effort has been put into making the phone as manageable as possible.
It’s not just the width, but the height too. This phone is thinner, shorter and less wide than its predecessor the Ascend Mate 2.
To make this possible, the soft keys are built into the software, and despite the current trend for front speakers, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 keeps its one on the rear to ensure it doesn’t add more bulk. The result is a phone thats 7.5mm less tall than the HTC One Max, a phone we found to be flat-out too big at the time.
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is big, but not too big. Now that phones are that bit thinner, bezels that bit smaller, we’re at last finding 6-inch phones that we don’t wish we could shrink down.
Huawei has also put the soft keys towards the centre of the screen to make them easier to reach, and it works. Obviously, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 remains a handful, but this is among the most accessible 6-inch phones to date.
It also feels good. About 85 per cent of the back is anodised aluminium, with just a couple of plastic bungs on the end to house the antennas, which would have trouble transmitting through metal. Build quality isn’t quite Apple-grade on closer inspection – in our sample the ‘volume up’ key lost its clickiness after a few days of use, but we assume this is an unfortunate fault with our sample (it is labelled an Engineering Sample, so this seems likely).
Much like the soft keys, the power button is placed within reach of your digit (right thumb in this case), and the phone’s super-slim 7.9mm body adds to how breezy this phone feels to use. Yes, we’ve complained about Huawei’s obsession with slimness in the past, but in a 6-inch phone, cuts to every dimension are appreciated.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7: Fingerprint scanner
After first noticing the similarities with the HTC One Max, we were worried about the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s fingerprint scanner. The HTC’s was so particular it became a nightmare to use.
In another unexpected win for Huawei, the Mate 7’s fingerprint scanner is, as of October 2014, the best you’ll find in a phone outside of the Apple Touch ID sensor. It’s miles better than HTC’s fingerprint scanner and far better than the Samsung one used in phones like the Note 4 and Galaxy S5.
First, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 does not make you move a finger over the scanner, just place it on there. And it scans your entire fingerprint when calibrating, rather than just the central part.
As such it’s able to be much more forgiving of fingerprints placed at an angle or non-centrally. I still experienced plenty of ‘non-recognised fingerprint’ messages, but it automatically rescans without any extra interaction required within a fraction of a second. It easily achieves the main fingerprint scanner goal of outpacing a typed-in passcode, which the HTC One Max and Samsung Galaxy S5 fail at, in our experience.
The scanner also sits in just about the perfect position for your forefinger, and is recessed by a full millimetre or so, making blind operation a doddle. It works without getting near the power button too. Huawei rarely shows the big players of Android how things are done, but it certainly has with the Ascend Mate 7’s fingerprint scanner.
Other less interesting aspects of the phone still worth noting include that it uses dual pop-out trays for microSIM and microSD cards on the left edge. You get a reasonable 16GB of storage in the phone, but a memory card slot boosts up its media cred several notches.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7: Screen
The lead attraction of the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is its screen. More specifically, its screen size.
While the screens of ‘standard’ high-end phones have teetered over the 5-inch mark, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s 6-inch model still seems huge.
This is also the first Mate-series phone to really impress with its screen quality as well as size. Previous Mate models used 720p resolution displays, but the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 has a Full HD one.
While this resolution has been surpassed by a small handful of phones including the LG G3, the 368ppi pixel density this affords the Huawei Ascend Mate is easily enough to appear very sharp indeed.
The IPS LCD screen type used here gives a fairly similar screen character to LG’s best too. You get pretty decent colour accuracy, enough to convince the eye if not a professional colour calibration tool. There’s some control over the colour too. You can choose how warm or cool it looks using an easy slider in the Settings menu, giving the display a yellower (warm) or bluer (cool) character.
Viewing angles are great as well, with more-than-acceptable brightness loss from an off-angle perspective. There’s a bit of backlight bleed in the top millimetre of the screen, which may be a result of cutting down the area above the screen, but it’s minor and not too distracting.
The potential elephant in the room here is the Galaxy Note 4. Its display offers better blacks and far greater pixel density thanks to its QHD-resolution panel. We also expect it to bring slightly better colour accuracy in the right mode. But with an RRP £230 higher, these comparisons breeze past the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 without denting our opinion of it.
It is a fantastic canvas for games and video, better than 5-inch phones by virtue of its size. An extra inch may not sound like a lot on paper, but it’s a big difference in person.
We can’t give this praise without emphasising that we’re happy to dole it out because the phone hardware isn’t a pain in the backside to use, unlike so many earlier giant-screen phones. Finally, 6-inch phones are starting to make sense.
Huawei supplies the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 with a plastic screen protector attached, one that’s guaranteed to be bubble-free unlike the one you might try to apply yourself. It’s rather good as it doesn’t have the mottling effect so many screen protectors can burden your phone with. But it’s arguably a bit unnecessary.
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 uses Gorilla Glass 3, the same scratch-resistant layer used in many (or even most) high-end phones. It’s less likely to get scratched than the phone’s aluminium back.
As the protector appears to cause zero image quality compromise, you might as well leave it on until it starts looking tatty. We’d given it a few little nicks within a week, mind.
Add fairly good outdoors visibility to the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s good image quality and you have a great little media phone. One of the best at the price.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7: Speaker
Speaker quality is also surprisingly decent given the phone only has a single mono speaker outlet on the back. It tries much more than most to provide a bit of mid-range body, avoiding the quite reedy sound that often comes out of single-speaker phones.
We put the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 up against the Samsung Galaxy S5, which has a similar single, rear-mounted speaker and found Huawei’s phone to be beefier-sounding, less tinny and better-equipped to deal with ambient noise.
A good deal of this seems to be down to Digital Sound Processing (DSP). There’s clear evidence of compression in quieter bits of audio – to be clear we’re talking about a ‘studio’ compression effect, not the kind of compression that turns a CD into a 64kbps MP3. It’s can be used to alter the perception of loudness of audio to good effect, especially when dealing with cruddy speaker drivers, as it is here.
It’s loud enough, but the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 falls down a bit when you switch it to silent mode. The vibrate function is unusually weak, meaning you’ll need to manually check your phone to ensure you don’t miss anything if you turn the volume down.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7 – Software and apps
If you’ve read the earlier parts of this Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review, it’ll sound like we’re onto a winner. However, that’s not the impression you get when first booting up the phone.
Its default interface is dreadful, possibly the worst we’ve seen from a ‘known’ phone maker. Its incredibly tacky-looking, decked out in gold ‘bling’ icons and wallpapers. Software is frequently the worst element of Huawei’s phones, and at least to begin with it is here.
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 uses Emotion UI, the custom Android interface seen in most other Huawei phones. It’s one of our least-favourite custom takes on Android because it alters a lot in normal Android, but generally doesn’t demonstrate good taste in doing so.
The default UI is a prime example.
However, finally Huawei has got off its backside and properly implemented its themes system for a Western audience. Emotion UI has supported themes for years, but in the phones we’ve seen you’ve only had direct access to a few inbuilt ones, needing to scout out others from an obscure Chinese (and Chinese-language) web portal.
In the Huawei Ascend Mate 7, the ability to download new ones has finally been properly integrated. You have access to loads, and the majority are better than that which the phone uses by default. Wonders never cease etc.
These themes alter the wallpaper, the icon style and the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s lock screen, changing its personality quite radically at times. There’s plenty of fiddling to do if you fancy. Within a few minutes we found a nice and simple one.
However, all of them get rid of the separate apps menu you normally see in Android. Everything app and game you download has to be arranged on your homescreens, demanding a bit more active curation than most other phones.
We’ve complained about this style many times in the past, and it remains contentious. However, it’s not as bad in a 6-inch phone like the Huawei Ascend Mate 7.
25 icons fit comfortably on each homescreen, meaning everyone should be able to fit their daily-use apps within a homescreen or two. The phone also supports folders, further cutting down how much you have to juggle homescreens.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7 – Performance
The biggest point to note, though, is that the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 does not suffer from the frequent performance glitches we see in the Huawei Ascend P7.
It really is quite nippy, something we’ve not been able to say about recent Huawei flagships.
We hope that part of this is down to improved optimisation in the often-faulty Emotion UI, but the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 also has a seriously fast processor. It’s a HiSilicon chip, produced by a Huawei subsidiary.
The HiSilicon chips we’ve seen to date have routinely underperformed next to Qualcomm Snapdragon rivals, but the Kirin 925 chip here is arguably competing with the Snapdragon 805 – which we’re yet to experience in a phone, as of October 2014.
The Hisilicon Kirin 925 has four Cortex-A15 performance cores clocked at 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores at 1.3GHz. In true Hisilicon fashion, this is not a particularly up-to-date setup. The Exynos version of the Galaxy Note 4 uses a similar setup but with the newer A53/57 64-bit cores.
In six months, the Hisilicon Kirin 925 is going to be looking quite musty, but for the moment it offers very compelling performance. For example, in the Geekbench benchmark the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 scores 3285. That compares favourably with the Snapdragon 805 and Snapdragon 801 scores we’ve seen – the Snapdragon 801 Galaxy S5 scored 2843 when tested concurrently.
It has loads of power, especially when you consider it’s significantly cheaper than the smaller-screen flagships from the biggest names. Its roughly on-par with what we expect to see from upcoming Snapdragon 805 phones.
If there is going to be a 64-bit Android app revolution, the Ascend Mate 7 won’t really be part of it (its a 32-bit CPU), but to be honest it probably won’t kick in until this phone is starting to look very old anyway.
Native 64-bit support is only coming to Android with Android L. The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 uses Android 4.4.2 at present.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7 – Apps and Games
The GPU used by the phone is the Mali T-628 MP6, the same GPU used in the Exynos version of the Galaxy Note 3. AnTuTu reported the GPU as a much weaker Mali T-624, but results suggest this is a mis-reporting. Despite the high benchmark scores, the Mali T-628 is actually a bit less powerful than the Adreno 330 used in the Snapdragon equivalents.
Just as important as raw power is the extra ultra low power chip that monitors the phones sensors while the screen is off. Its this chip that means you can use the fingerprint scanner without turning on the phone, without causing serious battery drain. Of couse, lots of power comes in handy when gaming too.
We’ve been gaming even more than usual with this phone – that screen positively wills you to – and have found that the Ascend Mate 7 has enough power to tackle top-end 3D games. Ramping Dead Trigger 3 up to it highest graphical setting still brings good performance (the game now offers a user-selected graphics setting).
The real big-hitting benefit for gaming, though, is the screen. A good 6-inch display is much more involving for the sorts of games that can feel a little cramped on a 4.5-inch display. It also gives your thumbs much more room to move without cramping the screen in games that use virtual sticks.
In a slightly old-fashioned move, Huawei has teamed-up with Gameloft and pre-installed five of its games on the Huawei Ascend Mate 7. However, you’re not really getting something for nothing – they are either demos or free games anyway, often requiring extra assets to be downloaded.
A few essential apps come pre-loaded too, things like Facebook and Twitter. However, aside from a bunch of little utilities apps there’s not much bloat.
You get things like an FM radio, a ‘mirror’ app and a magnifier, which uses the rear camera set to close-up focus in order to work as a sort of digital magnifying glass. The quirkier bits are automatically filed away into a Tools folder, though.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7 – Camera
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 has a 13-megapixel camera main camera with a chunky LED flash.
It’s a pretty good setup that’ll do the job for day-to-day photography out on the street. You get pretty good levels of detail in sunlight and even in darker conditions – despite lacking HDR, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 manages to hold onto detail fairly well in lower-light conditions.
While there’s clear processing/sharpening going on at pixel level and the edges of the frame get a bit scrappy-looking, you can get great levels of fine detail in the right conditions.
However, it’s not perfect. We did notice that in tricky higher-light conditions, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s photos can end up looking quite desaturated – almost monochrome in the worst cases.
While things like this are common in phone cameras, we’ve come to rely on HDR modes a bit to patch them up. The Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s is far from the most effective we’ve seen, though. It’s not the go-to fix-all it is in the best examples.
This phone is a middleweight contender in the phone camera world, but when the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s camera is far from its star feature, that’s not a bad result.
Huawei has kept the modes on offer fairly simple too. You get Panorama, Beauty mode (which de-wrinkles your crows’ feet), HDR, burst mode and Watermark. There aren’t too many crazy processing filters, as you get in Sony’s phones.
It has a go at the post-focus modes attempted by other phones at present too, and this gets a spot as one of the main camera modes – right on the front page. However, as is generally the case with this kind of shooting, you’re much better off just taking normal photos in the vast majority of cases.
On the front is a much better-than-average 5-megapixel camera. With good light youll get loads of detail in your selfies. However, for low-light indoors shots, that the camera uses a pretty tiny sensor is very evident – the noise is much clearer than in a high-grade 2-megapixel selfie cam.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7 – Battery Life
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 has a gigantic 4,100mAh battery. For some extra context, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 ‘only’ has a 3,220mAh unit.
As you’d hope from a unit of this size, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s stamina is very good. You don’t need to be terribly careful to get two days’ use out of the phone, and for a spot of purely anecdotal evidence, the battery was at around 50 per cent at 11:30pm on one night, which got me through to about 5:30pm the next day before needing a charge – with some web browsing in-between too.
It does seem as though Huawei has taken a rather ‘brute force’ approach to the Huawei Ascend Mate 7’s battery efficiency, probably because the HiSilicon Kirin 925 isn’t all that power-efficient by itself compared to the best from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon range.
For example, you actually have to specify apps that can run when the screen’s turned off. Everything else will be blocked. This may become a problem for those not intending to take a diploma course in how to use the phone’s settings menu, as it’ll limit what apps will be able to ping you push notifications.
Our standard video test supports this too. Youll get 12 hours of 720p MP4 video playback off a charge, with the backlight set to mid-level.
Thats a great result, but not the sort of earth-shattering one you might expect of a phone with such a giant battery. We got more out of the Sony Xperia Z2, for example.
Huawei Ascend Mate 7 – Call Quality and Connectivity
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 HiSilicon Kirin 925 processor may need some concessions to bring great battery life, but the phones core hardware otherwise covers most of the connectivity basics we expect from a £400 phone.
You get 4G, with wide-spanning support for the UK’s networks. In the OnePlus One (also Chinese), band 800 support was missing, but it is here, ensuring you can get 4G from all the main networks. It’s Cat 6-compliant too, meaning it can handle speeds of 300Mbps.
NFC is here too, along with the standards of Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and Wi-Fi Direct. There are a couple of missing bits, though. Wi-Fi support only goes up to N standard, not AC, and there’s no IR transmitter.
What is NFC, and why is it in your phone?
This means those who rely on ac to get Wi-FI coverage in the further reaches of their lofty mansions (or those with poor quality routers), may notice patchy Wi-Fi, and you can’t use the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 as a universal remote.
Should I buy the Huawei Ascend Mate 7?
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is one of the first phones we’ve tested that justifies having a giant 6-inch screen. It’s not that the software offers extra functionality to make those extra inches work – it’s not Galaxy Note 4-grade in that regard.
Rather, the screen is high-quality enough to seem better all-round than the 5-inch screens of more expensive phones, and the body isn’t so big and awkward it feels like wielding a chopping board as a phone.
You still need to consider whether you’ll appreciate the larger screen size over a smaller body, though. Things like games and films look fantastic on the Huawei Ascend Mate 7, while offering the phone-style convenience that you don’t get with something like the Nexus 7. But pulling the phone out for a quick snap really doesn’t feel as nimble as it would with a smaller phone.
It’s all about where your priorities sit. Screen size needs to be near the top. But if it is, this is one of the best-value options. There are no serious compromises in the hardware by current standards, and while there are plenty of Huawei quirks to raise an eyebrow at, many can be patched up. And when the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 costs more than £200 less than the Galaxy Note 4, that’s not a bad compromise.
Verdict
The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is one of the first 6-inch phones that avoids being a royal pain to use. The software is quirkier than a French art house film, but good performance elsewhere makes up for it.
So whats the worlds fastest smartphone? The Samsung Galaxy S4? HTC One? iPhone 5? Wrong, wrong and wrong - if youre talking about mobile data speeds the Huawei Ascend P2 is the unlikely hero stealing the crown.
The reason the Ascend P2 lays claim to the worlds fastest title is due to the Cat 4 LTE innards it sports, which can provide a theoretical speed of up too 150Mbps, but youre never going to actually see that.
With 4G baked inside the handset you can expect EE will be picking up the Ascend P2 pretty quickly in the UK, although were yet to see any network commit to Huaweis latest flagship smartphone just yet.
You can pre-order the Huawei Ascend P2 with some online retailers, with the SIM-free handsets setting you back around £339.99 (around $530, AU$560), and we reckon this will probably translate into around £25 per month on a 3G contract.
Huawei has a bit of a reputation for being a budget phone merchant and the Ascend P2 is the Chinese firms latest attempt at changing that assumption - and lets hope it does better than the Ascend P1 which arrived in stores with nothing more than a whimper.
In terms of competition the Ascend P2 doesnt enter at the top of the smartphone tree, with the likes of the Galaxy S4, iPhone 5 and Sony Xperia Z all offering a more premium - and expensive - experience.
The Huawei Ascend P2 will find itself rubbing shoulders with the mid-high level of handsets which include the Sony Xperia SP, Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, Nokia Lumia 820 and even the Samsung Galaxy S3.
However its also got one of its own kind to contender with too in the form of the Huawei Ascend P6 - a super-slim smartphone which may not have such a blockbuster camera, 4G connection or as large internal storage, but it does sport a far more attractive design and its difficult to see how the Chinese firm will be able to market both successfully side by side.
On paper the Ascend P2 looks relatively good value for money with a 4.7-inch, 1280 x 720 display, 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB internal memory, 13MP rear camera and front facing 1.3MP snapper.
Jelly Bean is the operating system of choice on board and along with the likes of 4G and NFC, Huawei has managed to make the Ascend P2 a compact 136 x 67 x 8.4mm, and the lightweight plastic body tips the scales at 122g.
In terms of design the Ascend P2 doesnt exactly break any new ground, but its a relatively stylish, functional handset which sits reasonably well in the hand - although we found it offered little in the way of grip which lead us to worrying about dropping it, and sometimes actually dropping it. Whoops.
Were told though the back cover (which isnt removable by the way) on our review isnt the same as the one which will find its way onto the P2 which youll be able to pick up from stores, so hopefully it will offer a bit more grip.
As you cant peel off the back cover theres no access to the 2420mAh battery housed inside the Ascend P2, which explains why the SIM-port is located on the right side of the handset under the easily accessible power/lock key.
The microSIM port itself is covered by a plastic flap which isnt too tricky to flip open, although popping your SIM in and out is more of a challenge and unless you have some decent length in your nails youll need to use the little tool included in the box to manipulate the card.
An added bonus on the right hand side of the Ascend P2 is the inclusion of a dedicated shutter key towards the base of the handset, giving you instant access to the camera app as well as an easy way to snap photos.
Up top theres a headphone jack and a microUSB port, which keeps the bottom of the Huawei Ascend P2 clear for the sweeping black, glossy plastic finish.
On the left you get the customary volume rocker switch and moving round the back reveals a camera lens and single LED flash housed in a textured metal frame for a bit of added protection, plus theres a dual speaker grille near the bottom of the handset.
Available in both white and black the Huawei Ascend P2 is a solid, well built, if not slightly uninspiring handset which wont look out of place next to its competition.
Interface
The Huawei Ascend P2 comes running Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and wed expect it to get bumped up to Android 4.2 in due course.
Its not just stock Android which adorns the P2 though, with Huawei sticking its own gloss over the Google-made system, known as Emotion UI 1.5, which weve already had an encounter with on the Ascend G510.
At first glance the Emtion UI on the Ascend P2 looks pretty standard, with a slightly tweaked lockscreen providing quick links to the phone, messaging and camera apps.
Unlock the handset and youre taken to one of up to nine homescreens - although you can tailor the number displayed to suit your personal needs by pinching the screen.
The first major difference youll notice on the Emotion UI is the main widget which dominates the main homescreen.
It appears to be several widgets, but hold down on any one of them and youll notice its on big widget with various components.
This multi-widget allows you to tailor its layout to suit you, with favourite contacts, weather, clock, music player and gallery options.
You can change the layout around and swap out some for different sized options - although you cant include any third party widgets in here, which makes it slightly limiting.
We also found this widget a little overpowering, taking up pretty much the whole screen and it seems like a bit of a waste of space. Its a nice idea but theres not enough options and the size is a real hindrance in our eyes.
Next up is the app draw, or more accurately, the lack of the app draw. Yep thats right, Huawei has completely removed the Android app draw from the Huawei Ascend P2, forcing you to have all your apps on your homescreens. Its all very iOS, dont you think?
Now we appreciate the reason why Huawei has done this. Its looking to simplify the Android experience and were sure theres some people out there who get confused when they see the same app on a homescreen and in the app list - although this is confined to first time users.
For a seasoned Android user the Emotion UI is almost like using a totally new operating system as the normal functions of the app draw no longer exist - its confusing, but we got used to it after a couple of days.
Thankfully things are a little more Android in others areas - take the notification bar for example. Drag your finger down and youll be greeted with the standard Jelly Bean layout, although Huawei has added a row of welcome quick settings.
Theres a decent selection of toggles here too, with the likes of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS lining up alongside rotation lock, brightness and airplane mode.
Scroll to the end of the line, hit more and youll be able to re-order these settings to get your frequently used toggles at the front, plus theres a few more you can swap into the lineup.
Back to the homescreen and hold down on a clear area to pop up a menu which allows you to change the wallpaper, choose homescreen transitions and select a variety of widgets.
Because all your applications are stored on the homescreens youll find they start to fill up - luckily a simple drag and drop of one app onto another will create a folder, allowing you to keep a tighter control on your downloads.
General operation on the Ascend P2 is pretty smooth, although it lacks the snappiness of other quad-core handsets such as the Galaxy S3.
The 4.7-inch display is crisp, clear and responsive which aided our navigation around the Ascend P2, although we found the Emotion UI did make Android look a little childish.
You can change the "theme" of the operating system by selecting the Theme app to make things look a little more professional, although we would have still preferred the stock Android look over any of the options on offer.
Huawei has looked to make Android more intuitive in other places as well - a visit to the Settings menu will give you the choice of two tabs at the top of the screen, "general" and "all".
"All" shows you the standard Android settings menu, but tap on General and youll find Huawei has hand picked some bits it thinks youll be using most often including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and screen brightness.
It does make finding what you want slightly easier, although we didnt have a big issue with the stock settings menu so this addition feels a little forced.
In short the Huawei Ascend P2 isnt going to blow you away with a super slick operating system and the Chinese firms interpretation of Android is a little puzzling in places, but on the whole its smooth and easy to use, if not a little babyish in style.
Contacts and calling
Contacts
Contacts are handled in the People app which gets a position in the dock at the bottom of the screen by default, but it can be swapped out for any other app.
Although the name and app icon are different, behind the scenes youve got the stock Android contact management system which has just been given a little bit of Huawei gloss on the Ascend P2.
Huawei hasnt taken it upon itself to build Facebook or Twitter integration into the Ascend P2 which means you wont be able to pull through all your buddies from the popular social networks - which in turn leaves your contact list looking very bland thanks to the absence of profile pictures.
Google doesnt provide this integration as standard, but the likes of Samsung, HTC and LG happily build in a bridge as part of their user interfaces to allow you to sync everyone and its a shame Huawei has neglected to follow suit.
It has included the Favourite and Groups features on the Ascend P2 however, and the former will pull through your best buds from Google and display them in large tiles within a separate tab of the People app.
Groups are pretty straight forward as well, with the Huawei Ascend P2 scanning your Google account for any contact cards which may have been pulled together under a sub-heading, such as "Work" or "Family".
All your friends are displayed in the normal list, with a profile picture space to the right of their name.
You can add a contact easily by hitting the head with a plus icon in the bottom corner of the app, which will take you to a form so you can enter details about your new found friend.
Its a basic, easy to use interface which gives you all the core functionality, but none of the added extras you get on the likes of the Sony Xperia SP or Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini.
Calling
The Phone app is your one stop shop for all your calling needs, be it tapping out a number on the keyboard, quickly returning a call from your last dialled list of flicking through your contacts to the buddy you wish to converse with - its all covered here.
Fire up the app and youre thrown into the dial pad tab, which doubles as your recent calls lists, with received, missed and dialled numbers appearing in the space above the numeric keypad.
Theres smart dialling present so if you start tapping out some digits the Ascend P2 will start offering up suggestions based on numbers in your contact list - or if you tap 3, 2, 3 it will also offer up "Dad" - its all very clever, but nothing we havent seen before.
Of course you can also make a call by going via the people app, selecting the person you wish to speak to and then tap on their number within their contact card to get the phone ringing.
In terms of signal the Huawei Ascend P2 didnt have any problems finding and holding onto bars, never leaving us feeling cut off.
Call quality was more than acceptable and we could easily have a conversation in a relatively noisy environment without too much hassle, but we werent blown away with crystal clear audio.
Messaging
Thanks to the Android Jelly Bean innards of the Huawei Ascend P2 youre blessed with a wealth of messaging options from email and text messages to social media.
First up is text messaging which is another of the apps which gets a default place in the app tray, allowing you to access it quickly from any homescreen.
Once again the difference within the app between Ascend P2 and stock Android is minor, providing you with a clean, intuitive allowing you to get texting right away.
That is until you hit the keyboard on the Ascend P2 which is possibly one of the most frustrating implementations weve come across.
The keys are too small and accuracy isnt up to scratch leading to numerous errors in even the shortest of missives.
We dived into the settings menu in search of next word prediction and auto-correct, and although the options seemed to be available, once enabled the keyboard didnt provide them.
You can flip the Ascend P2 90 degrees for a landscape keyboard, although its not really that much better and it also means you lose sight of the message youre replying to.
Needless to say we quickly reverted to the stock Android board which is available on the Ascend P2 and our typing instantly improved, although after a while we buckled and downloaded SwiftKey.
Theres a couple of email clients in the form of Email and Gmail - which are common place on any Android handset these days.
The Gmail app only allows you to deal with your Google Mail account, while over in Email you can any number of accounts in one unified inbox - including any Google orientated ones you may have.
Both are relatively similar in operation and you shouldnt have any trouble getting to grips with them, and the smooth operation of the Ascend P2 allows you to browse all your communications with ease.
Annoyingly, as with a lot of Android devices, viewing HTML emails isnt particularly easy as the Huawei Ascend P2 will not let you zoom all the way out to get an overview of the message.
This means youll be doing a lot of horizontal as well as vertical scrolling to view some emails, which can get pretty frustrating after a while.
In terms of social media the Ascend P2 comes pre-installed with the official Facebook, Twitter and Google+ apps, allowing you to get online and chatting with your friends right from the word go.
Of course the Google Play store is just an app icon press away if you want to download other social mediums and the punchy quad-core processor inside the Ascend P2 means youll be uploading photos and live messaging with ease.
Internet
The Huawei Ascend P2 comes touting the title of the "worlds fastest smartphone" which relates directly to its Cat 4 LTE capabilities giving it theoretical speeds of up to 150Mbps over a mobile network.
While you wont get anywhere near that quoted top speed, you can expect to readily get 20-30Mbps over 4G, which is faster than some home broadband connections - although it may not be particularly obvious on the Ascend P2.
We tried out the Ascend P2 with our 3G O2 SIM-card and our 4G EE card, to see if it would live up to its superfast credentials.
Wi-Fi b/g/n is also on board for when you dont fancy eating through your monthly data allowance at a rate of knots, which is handy.
In terms of a web browser the Ascend P2 comes with two options - the stock Android offering alongside Chrome which has become a mainstay in the standard Jelly Bean setup.
The browsers are straight forward, no thrills offerings which will easily let you navigate to the pages you require with minimum fuss.
Browsing speed on the Huawei Ascend P2 was pretty good, but we werent blown away with blisteringly fast load times and we didnt notice any improvement compared to the Samsung Galaxy S4 or iPhone 5.
The mobile version loaded in around four seconds over 4G, while the desktop version took around 15, although we were able to begin panning around after about nine seconds.
Over 3G the load times were only a second or so slower for mobile sites, but full versions of complex websites took considerably longer to appear on the Ascend P2.
On a decent Wi-Fi network the browser had a similar performance to that over 4G, and once pages had loaded we were able to scrolling through them smoothly.
The 4.7-inch display on the Ascend P2 may not be fully HD, but text and images appeared bright and crisp, making websites easy to consume without you having to strain your eyes.
Open up an article on a webpage and the text will automatically reflow to fit the screen, making it easier to read as you dont have to scroll sideways.
If the text is still too small you can zoom in and double tap the display which will reflow the text at its new size - its simple, effective and we wish every handset offered this.
On-screen controls are pretty much absent, with just a URL bar and a button for tabbed browsing at the top of screen.
Hit the tabbed button in the stock browser and youll get a vertical list of thumbnails showing your open tabs, with the option to close each one, or open more if you desire.
Tabs are easier to manage in Chrome, as they all appear at the top of the display, making for a much faster switching experience.
Theres also a link to your bookmarks here, which sync with your Google account giving you access to all your favourite sites without having to navigate to each one manually.
All your other settings can be accessed by hitting the menu button below the screen, giving you access to your bookmarks, offline reading (not in Chrome) and sharing options.
Offline reading is also a useful feature, saving a web page to the device, allowing you to read it when youre out of signal - perfect for the train ride home or a jaunt into the country.
Of course you can always download another browser from Google Play in next to no time, so if you dont get on with the default options on the Ascend P2 its not a big deal.
For all you flash fans out there its more disappointment as the Ascend P2 doesnt support the dying format which Google itself is phasing out of its ecosystem, shutting down support from Android Jelly Bean onwards.
Camera
The Huawei Ascend P2 has been blessed with a decent 13MP camera on its rear complete with single-LED flash, which means it should be capable of taking some decent snaps.
Round the front youre furnished with a 1.3MP snapper for awkward video calls with your parents and the casual vanity check while on the train home - and its nowhere near the 5MP option on the Ascend P6.
Huawei has also equipped the Ascend P2 which a physical shutter key on the right side of the handset, giving you a quick way of launching the camera app as well as an easier way to take photos.
The camera app hasnt escaped the Emotion UI overlay, but luckily its not particularly oppressive, with a clean intuitive layout.
There are three quick tools on the right which allows you to switch between front and rear cameras, toggle the flash and an option to enable or disable the tap-to-focus function.
More options can be reach by tapping the down arrow which appears at the top of the screen (when held in portrait).
Here you get several menus including shooting mode which lets you choose from seven options including panorama, HDR, group and low light.
Next up is the filters option which includes favourites such as negative, sepia and emboss - all thrilling choices were sure youll agree.
The effects menu allows you to have some fun with your friends with options such as "big nose", "gobbler" and "professor" - oh yes theres hours of fun here for the kids, although youre unlikely to use most of these.
If youre looking for some more sensible settings then you can also adjust white balance, ISO levels, exposure, saturation and contrast - although these are hidden away in a menu within a menu.
Theres also a digital zoom incorporated into the camera which can be controlled by the on screen slider and while the further you zoom in decreases the quality of your final image the Ascend P2 does a far better job than most.
Auto-focus is present and settles pretty quickly, allowing you to get into snapping pictures and the responsive shutter button takes just a second to capture an image and turf you back to shooting mode.
The quality of pictures produced by the Huawei Ascend P2 are, on the whole, very good, with a decent level of detail and solid colour reproduction resulting in some very pleasing snaps.
It does struggle a little in poorly lit areas and with close up macro shots, but apart from that you can rely on the Ascend P2 to give you some worthy photos to show off to your friends and family.
Video
Thanks to the powerful 13MP camera on the rear of the Huawei Ascend P2, you are able to shoot full HD, 1080p video at 30fps with the handset.
The video recorder is accessed via the camera app, just flick the slide in the bottom right corner to camcorder to get started.
You get the same three tools (flash, camera select and tap-to-focus) to one side of the display, plus the digital zoom is still at your disposal.
While recording you can zoom in and out as much as you like, but you cant toggle the flash so youll need to decide if you want it on or off before you hit that red button.
In the settings menu you can also select HDR video, which will remove various shadows to give you clearer footage, while the image stabiliser will reduce the amount of camera shake in the video.
The Huawei Ascend P2 is capable of producing some really nice video footage - crisp and clear, you wont be disappointed.
Media
With a 4.7-inch display, quad-core processor, 4G connectivity and 13MP camera the Huawei Ascend P2 has the capabilities of offering up a decent multimedia experience.
The amount of available internal storage is also ok, with 11.83GB of the 16GB stuffed inside the Ascend P2 available to use, but annoyingly theres no microSD slot to expand on this.
Getting content onto the Ascend P2 is pretty straight forward - just connect it up to your computer with the bundled USB cable, allow the drivers to install and then drag and drop your music, video, photo and other files into the relevant folders on the device.
Theres a file manager app included on the Ascend P2 which means youll be able to locate any documents which may go astray in the transfer - although we still wish there was a micoSD slot.
We did find the Ascend P2 was a little bit sluggish when it came to using the music, video and gallery features - especially when we loaded the phone up with lots of content, so youll need a little bit of patience if youre planning a media marathon.
Music
The Huawei Ascend P2 comes equipped with two music player options in the form of the Google Music and Music apps.
Huaweis own Music app offers up a basic player with the option to filter you music by title, artist, album or favourites, while the playlist feature allows you to group tracks together to create the ultimate party mix.
On the player screen itself you get the standard controls such as play/pause, skip, shuffle, repeat - plus theres a quick link to toggle the Dolby Digital sound enhancement - a similar feature to the Beats Audio technology you find on HTC handsets.
If you have lyrics attached to your song files then the Ascend P2 can display these instead of the album art on the player screen, while lockscreen controls allow you to manage your playback without having to unlock the handset every time.
Google Music is more of a fully featured offering and wed recommend dragging it out of its Google folder and swapping it over with the Music app, as it offers a far more attractive and intuitive interface.
As well as giving you access to the tracks stored on the Ascend P2, you can also access any songs you may have uploaded to Googles cloud - the search giant lets you store 20,000 tunes there - which means you dont have to worry about filling up the 16GB of internal storage with your favourite beats.
The Google Music app offers all of the features as the stock Music app, but on top of this it also has the "Instant Mixes" function, which will automatically create an endless playlist of songs based on your favourite tracks and artists - which is pretty smart.
Theres also a link to the music store which is part of Google Play, which allows you to increase your music library by purchasing and downloading more tunes right on the handset.
Sound quality is more than acceptable for casual listeners, although the more discerning audiophiles may not be as impressed, but on the whole you cant really knock the Ascend P2 for its audio playback.
The internal speaker located round the back of the handset is, as youd expect, pretty tinny and you really want to be using a pair of headphones, or external speakers if you fancy pumping out the beats.
We found the Ascend P2 coped with all the major audio formats including MP3, WMA and ACC, so you shouldnt have any trouble getting your current library of tracks to play on the handset.
FM Radio
The old FM Radio is something which doesnt get much of a look-in on todays smartphones, but Huawei has taken it upon itself to include one on the Ascend P2.
Theres a straightforward app to see you through the listening process, and it allows you to have eight preset stations - allowing you to jump to your favourite DJ at the touch of a button.
Youll need to plug a set of headphones into the Ascend P2 to act as the antenna but there is the choice to play the stations via the internal speaker if you dont fancy donning the ear buds.
Video
The Huawei Ascend P2 doesnt come with a dedicated video player app, which leaves you with either the Gallery or Google Play Movies apps to choose from.
We found the Gallery app a highly frustrating way of accessing our movies as it just lumps them in with the camera photos which leads to a lot of needless scrolling to find the content you want.
Click on a video to play and you get the most basic of players, with the Ascend P2 offering up play/pause and scrubbing - and thats pretty much your lot.
There is a toggle for the Dolby Digital sound enhancement and a link to share you clip via a multitude of channels in the top right corner, but there is very little to write home about here - its a simple tap and play scenario.
Over in the Google Play Movies app videos are a lot easier to find, plus you can jump into the Google Play store and select from a wide range of titles to either rent or purchase - although the player itself is still the same basic offering.
When it came to format support the Ascend P2 was pretty hit a miss - it happily played our 720p MPEG-4, MOV and 1080p MPEG-2 clips, but it point blank refused our 1080p MKV and WMV files - so make sure you check your video works before leaving the house.
The 4.7-inch, 720p display on the Huawei Ascend P2 provided a strong playback offering, with film looking detailed and crisp, although we did find it was a little on the dark side, even with the brightness whacked up.
Its pretty comfortable to hold, and thanks to its light frame we were able to keep hold of the Ascend P2 during the entire length of a film without our wrists starting to ache.
Photos
The Gallery on the Huawei Ascend P2 is the stock Android offering, displaying your images in easy to view thumbnails, although as weve already mentioned videos are also lumped in here for good measure.
This frustration aside the Gallery is simple and functional, and it even includes a basic inbuilt editor which allows you to crop and rotate your snaps as well as apply a few simple effects such as Posterise, Vignette and Fisheye.
Of course you can always download more complete editing suites from Google Play, but the editor will suffice for casual users.
You can also easily share any of your pictures with just a couple of taps, be it over DLNA or sent in an email, MMS or posted on a social networking site.
Battery life and connectivity
Battery life
The Hauwei Ascend P2 comes equipped with a non-removable 2420mAh battery, which may frustrate power users who wont be able to swap out a dead power pack for a fresh, fully charged one.
Huawei quotes that the Ascend P2 should last for 272 hours on 4G standby, and 286 hours for 3G standby, while it should give 767 minutes of 3G talktime.
These figures are always very best case scenarios and youll probably never be able to match them in the real world, and thats certainly what we found during our time with the Ascend P2.
During the spells where we had our 3G SIM card in the handset we were able to eek out a whole days usage with the P2 without too much trouble, although it always needed a charge at the end of each day.
Swapping over to our 4G SIM and the battery life took a bit more of a battering, as with only relatively moderate usage we found ourselves dashing for the charger when it got to early evening.
If youre a heavy smartphone user then youll need to make sure you have a back up power pack with you, or are always near a plug socket, as the Ascend P2 will eat through its battery at a rate of knots if youre doing a series of demanding tasks.
There is a power management section in the settings menu to try and help you eek out extra life from your Ascend P2, but this didnt seem to make a huge amount of difference - the best thing to do is turn off mobile data and stick screen brightness on low if youre running out of juice.
Its not the best battery life weve experienced at this end of the market with both the Galaxy S4 and HTC One offering up longer lasting solutions, although if youre careful you can get a whole day of the Ascend P2, which is pretty much standard for smartphones today.
Connectivity
Weve already spoken about the superfast 4G capabilities of the Huawei Ascend P2 and that Cat 4 LTE technology is back up by Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and NFC.
Theres also a microUSB port on top of the device which is used for charging the Ascend P2 as well as connecting to your computer.
You can even use the P2 as a portable internet hotspot, allowing you to share its superfast 4G connection with other devices such as laptops and tablets - although youll want to keep an eye on your data usage to make sure you dont go over your limit and rack up a huge bill.
So all in all theres plenty of options to get your Ascend P2 connected to your various other devices, and the P2s 16GB of internal storage puts it at least on par against some of its rivals.
Theres no microSD slot, but the inclusion of DLNA support means youre able to wirelessly stream media such as photos and movies to other compatible devices such as game consoles and laptops.
Its easy to share your content too, with quick links to the DLNA system as well as Wi-Fi and co. in the gallery, plus the DLNA app makes sharing media an easy and intuitive experience.
The quick settings in the pull down notification bar means its easy to toggle key connections without having to dive into the full blown settings menu - although once again this isnt anything new and is available on a number of different Android smartphones.
Maps and apps
Maps
The Huawei Ascend P2 comes pre-installed with the excellent Google Maps thanks to its Android innards and we dont need to go one about the fleet of options it offers including StreetView, live traffic, public transport, directions and free turn-by-turn navigation.
We found the Ascend P2 usually took a couple of seconds to load up the maps app, although after that it could pinpoint our location within a second or so.
Panning and zooming around the maps was generally pretty good, but it wasnt as smooth and slick an experience as on the likes of the top end handsets from Samsung or HTC.
Turning on things such as traffic and satellite view slowed things down a little more, but it wasnt unusable on the Ascend P2 and we were still able to plan routes and check local public transport times without issue.
As we moved around the Huawei Ascend P2 managed to keep hold of our location well and track our progress on the map.
Turn-by-turn navigation was also reliable and the Ascend P2 offers up a more than acceptable sat nav replacement in-car.
The bright, crisp display meant maps rendered well and were easy to read, although the app sometimes got a bit confused when we tried to zoom in, mistaking our gestures for rotating the orientation of the map - not a big issue, but it was a little frustrating.
Apps
One of the good things about the Huawei Ascend P2 is that it hasnt been loaded up with lots of pre-installed apps out of the box - giving you a relatively blank canvas on which to grow your personal collection.
You can do this by heading over to the well-stocked Google Play store which boasts over 700,000 apps and games, as well as movies, TV shows, music, books and magazines.
Theres plenty of free and paid-for options to suit pretty much any taste, and the easy drag and drop folder creation system on the homescreens means you can organise all your downloads into a manageable system.
You do get a handful of apps included on the Ascend P2 alongside the range of Google apps which include Hangouts, YouTube, Gmail, Google+ and Voice Search.
Basic apps such as flashlight, calculator and sound recorder are all pretty self-explanatory and although they make look a little childish thanks to the Emotion UI Huawei has slapped on the Ascend P2, they are at least functional and simple to use.
They are all handy features, but none are exactly things to write home about, but the Kingsoft Office application provides a useful viewer for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
You can even edit the documents on the Ascend P2 and this could be a life saver if you need to make a quick amendment on the way to the meeting, but trying to tackle a complex spreadsheet on a 4.7-inch display is pretty tricky, so youre best off keeping things simple.
Verdict
The Huawei Ascend P2 finds itself between a bit of a rock and a hard place. On the one hand its got an impressive spec sheet and attractive price point, but on the other its supposed to be going head to head with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One and Nokia Lumia 925 - and it doesnt really match the same dazzling heights of any of these handset.
Pros
The Huawei Ascend P2 is a respectable all-round handset which offers up a decent set of specs wrapped up in a simplistic, if not slightly childish, wrapper know as the Emotion UI.
It may not suit everyones taste - especially the hardened Android fans - but for those who arent so technically minded the Ascend P2 may offer up a less baffling experience.
The Ascend P2 was able to run Android Jelly Bean with little issue and we experienced smooth operation during most of our activities on the phone.
With a 13MP camera capable of capturing some decent images and a solid build quality the Ascend P2 doesnt let itself down.
Cons
As weve mentioned the UI wont suit everyone and its certainly not the easiest on the eye - even with a large selection of themes to choose from, none really ooze premium, class or sophistication.
Battery life isnt awful, but it also isnt the best weve seen and the 4G connection can really eat into it, especially if youre planning on downloading large files or streaming video.
We didnt enjoy using the Huawei-made keyboard on the Ascend P2 either and the quicker wed installed a replacement the better a handset it became - we just wish the Chinese firm had stuck with the default Google offering.
Theres no a microSD slot available, so youre stuck with the 11.83GB of internal storage made available by Huawei on the Ascend P2 and if you plan on watching movies or playing some graphically intensive games on the handset you may find this filling up fast.
Verdict
The Huawei Ascend P2 is a highly capable smartphone which offers a strong line up of features and a decent level of specs - although it doesnt exactly excel at anything, or wow us with amazing features.
It also has the tricky problem of the Huawei Ascend P6 which basically lines up alongside the Ascend P2 sporting a fancier, slimmer metallic frame, although spec wise its not quite as cutting edge.
So as well as fighting with its brother the Ascend P2 also has the difficult task of marking itself out as a flagship device in a market dominated by the superior Galaxy S4, HTC One and Xperia Z.
Of course the Huawei Ascend P2 does carry a far more attractive price tag, but that still means its doing battle with the still excellent Galaxy S3, One X+ and iPhone 4S, and with the Huawei brand not exactly in the mind of the everyday consumer it could be a tricky sell.
Thats not to say youll be disappointed if you do opt for the Ascend P2 and it is a potentially great value 4G option at the top end of the market.
The new Huawei P8 will not make his debut during the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2015, but nevertheless remains the most interesting device that will arrive on the market in the second quarter. In recent times there have been many rumors about this smartphone.
But now we see through Twitter appear the first images with the user Erdi Ozuag – columnist Site German Donanimhaber.com. In the picture you will post later figure the front of a mobile device, identified as ‘Huawei P8′.
We find no evidence confirming that the real image of Huawei P8, especially because the device we see the word ‘Phone’. In addition to this there are details delel frames very small, a large display and the inevitable double LED flash. It could be a prototype for the moment although study more closely the device from the images there seems to be a FAKE (in the first picture we see that the display seems to be reversal and have a smaller frame than the other).
The new Huawei P8 – from that stated by Erdi – brag a display of 5.2 inch FHD, Kirin 930 processor architecture with 64-bit, 3 GB RAM, 13-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, Android 5.0 Lollipop OS and a battery of 2600 mAh.
So for now let’s go cautious then it is early to confirm that it is really the Huawei P8.
