Huawei Ascend Mate 2 Review: Incredible Battery Life & Value
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Joshua Ho on June 12, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Ascend Mate 2
Display
As always, with all touch-only devices the display is one of the most critical aspects of the experience. A poor display can often make the experience worse, even frustrating. Things like poor viewing angles, poor color calibration, low peak brightness, high minimum brightness, and other flaws in the display are all potential areas where a display can fall short. In order to try and add a level of quantitative analysis, we turn to SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5 with a custom workflow to test our displays.
As always, before we get to colors, it’s important to cover the basics. In brightness and contrast, the Mate2 is great, there’s really nothing else to be said. While I’d like to see LCDs start hitting higher brightness levels (without RGBW subpixel layout), this is a great start compared to its competition. I also didn’t notice any issues with viewing angles, and while the pixel density is below 300 PPI, it's surprisingly acceptable.
Next up is grayscale. It's important to note here that these grayscale measurements were done with the i1 Pro, so the luminance values at the low end are usually inaccurate, thus the contrast won't agree with the i1Display Pro. Here things are still in line with most flagships today, but it’s still a bit disappointing to see that most OEMs favor higher maximum luminance over proper white balance. Like the Galaxy S5, some levels of gray have a noticeable green tint to them. Nokia and Sony are probably the ones to follow here by offering adjustable white point based on user preference. For a 300 dollar phone, this is a great showing.
In the saturation sweep, Huawei effectively puts many other OEMs to shame. While there’s a hint of saturation compression, this is a great calibration out of the box. The only notable issues are that the magenta saturations are a bit too blue, and that the yellows are shifted towards the green. This level of calibration is withing reach of Apple’s iPhones, the Nexus 5, and the One (M7).
Finally, the same trend is seen in the GMB ColorChecker. Huawei excels here, and is easily competitive with high-end phones. Overall, this is an extremely good display. It’s good enough to put some recent high-end smartphones to shame.
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Ketzal - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
Just a heads up, the results of your Nexus 5 web scores are WELL wrong. I ran the tests and received considerably better results than what's reported here in your tables. Obviously, Android and Chrome have moved on since the debut of the Nexus 5 last year. I believe you need to update your tables with some kind of statement to indicate test date as it's misleading and not a fair accurate comparison by date. I'm sure you tested the latest version of Chrome on the Huawei? Doesn't that immediately invalidate the table? I'm running stock 4.4.3 Android and ART. On another note, I'd love to see a performance graph update for each version of Android. I'm sure it would be very popular. Keep up the fantastic work.Impulses - Friday, June 13, 2014 - link
ART isn't enabled by default is it...groundhogdaze - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
Great battery life is a godsend for me. I've got so many gadgets that need charging that I'm almost to the point of needing to do triage on them.Electron? - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
This came as a surprise, but it's great to see a phone that really pushes the boundaries on battery life.Really hoping your next review will be the LG G3. Anandtech is pretty much the only site that goes in-depth on battery life these days.
JoshHo - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
I hope it is too. :)dawp - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
I have a prism2 from t-mobil which is a huawei device which I am generally been happy with, I'll have to look into this phablet when I bet a bit extraa cash.GNUminex_l_cowsay - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
I find it odd that you write a review of a device where in you you compare it e to phones that I would consider consider competing devices. But, then you don't include those phones you mentioned in the benchmark comparisons. I'm wondering why you didn't include say the onemaxx or note3?2 or 1mini or moto g. 3 of the phones l mentioned you mentioned and all seem like better comparison points to me than the phones used in the charts.KillaKilla - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
What happened with the photography? Anandtech has had good, or at the very least not bad, photography throughout for a decade or more, yet here it's mediocre at best, laughable at worst. One shot even has a reflection of the camera in it!rivethead23 - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
I currently own a Note 2. Bought it used for around $200. (Swappa!) I'm not bothered by the 5.5 screen (and size) on the Note 2 and actually looked at the Mega but ultimately decided against it. Since reviewer began by speaking about the note series I was disappointed to see no comparisons to the note series. Someone else mentioned the Note 2 would have been a good point of comparison and I think it would be.nrfitchett4 - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link
I bought my wife a note 3, brand new on swappa (not retail) and it was 450 dollars. This new on Amazon with 2 year warranty was 290. Its not really a fair comparison. Yes my wife's note 3 has a prettier screen, but that is about it. This is a solid midrange phablet and should be compared with other phones in the 200-400 new price point.