Huawei Chief Richard Yu couldn’t resist flashing the 6.1 ” Ascend Mate phablet a few days ago at a Huawei store in Gangzhou, China, and we got our first glimpse at Huawei’s idea of bigger is better.
The Huawei Ascend Mate is lined up for a CES entry in January, but we guess Richard was just too excited to wait till then before he could show it off to the world. A few pics captured at that particular moment did give us a fair idea of what the Ascend would look like, but now we have a full set of pics which seem to have leaked out well before the CES announcement, and show off the Huawei Ascend Mate in all its glory.
The photos which were sourced by Chinese website Mydrivers.com show off the Ascend mate from different angles. Here they are for your viewing pleasure.
As you can see from the pics above, The Ascend Mate comes without any physical buttons, opting for on-screen buttons instead, which means more screen real estate to play with. The device also appears to have a slight curvature at the back, which should make it more comfortable to hold in your hand, as against a big device with a flat back.
Incidentally, there is also a leaked ad for the Huawei Ascend Mate, which seems to clearly show what Huawei thinks is going to be the main competitor for their own phablet. Have a look at the print ad below to know who that is.
As far as we know, there is only one 5.5″ phablet out there – the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and going by this leaked ad, it would seem that Huawei intends to show off the increased screen space at 6.1″ as their main selling point of bigger is better. As you can see above the ad shows the outline of a 6.1″ screen with the 5.5″ screen as an inset
Of course, the Huawei Ascend Mate is definitely no slouch in the specs department, and seems to be pretty powerfully equipped to handle anything that is thrown at it, as we will see when we sum up the specs in a bit. The question is, with every OEM worth its salt pitching in with a 5″ 1080p display equipped device, all of them with respectable specs and looking pretty good on paper, which one will customers pick as their device of choice.
It would be interesting to see consumer reaction to a massive 6.1 inch device. After all, when the original Galaxy Note was released last year, not many, including yours truly believed that anyone in his/her right mind would want an un-pocketable device like that. Boy, were we wrong! In fact the success that Samsung met with, led to a successor which was bigger and better in every way than the original.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has already met with resounding success, as well as sales the world over, and with the kind of special features like AirView, Multi-Window, Smart Rotate, S-Pen enabled apps etc that Samsung has cleverly packed into the device, enhance the functionality and made the best use of the 5.5″ display.
That said, the Ascend Mate is definitely no slouch in the specs department as you will see below. But the fact remains that Huawei will need a lot more than just a bigger display with higher resolution to compete with the latest gem in the original phablet lineup. What are your thoughts? Would you pick this big fella over the Galaxy Note 2 if you’re in the market for a new phablet? Let us know in comments below.
Huawei Ascend Mate Specs (Rumored)
- 6.1-inch Full HD 1080p Display
- Quad-core 1.8 GHz processor
- 2 GB RAM
- 13 Megapixel camera
- 4000 mAh battery
- 9.9 mm thickness
Via UnwiredView
