Gadgetory

bakit Aoife we got a nice little surprise in the form of an actual unit that was announced at the event and then the storm of phones and announcements rolled in shortly after but now we can finally bring you our thoughts and what has turned out to be a pretty great phone it's charged with a car from Android Authority what's going on everybody and this is the huawei ascend mate 7 Huawei has succeeded in design in the past and this time continues to do so with a larger offering in the mate 7 it's hard to get past the 6-inch screen but once you browse around the device you'll find a very well-constructed metallic frame with a nice industrial look and feel the buttons are nice and media on the side with the power button below the volume rockers this time for easier access and there's a decided lack of elements used solely for decoration there's no capacitive keys on the mate7 making for a very nice screen to panel ratio and on the back where you'll find the main addition to an otherwise metallic body is the fingerprint scanner this is the press type rather than a swipe and it rests squarely below the camera optics which do stick out just a little bit all in all this is a very attractive device and Huawei has once again proved that they have a good design language when using one hand it is simply unwieldy however good luck getting around the top elements of the phone even if you have larger hands sometimes thankfully there are some software features that help to alleviate this but we'll get to that later metal really seems to be the trend in this flagship smartphone season and it does help the mate7 score some good style points we've already mentioned the six inch screen and its implications on handling but make no mistake this is a very good panel 1080p resolution on this display brings a pretty awesome experience larger screens often get a bad rap for size but then are equally heralded for bringing a nice media experience and that's exactly what goes on here contrast is where it should be where the brightness keeps everything quite visible throughout any condition you can change what the color temperature of the display is but the default setting is already good enough and I never needed to tamper with it one bit as far as performance goes Huawei tends to make performance their own responsibility with in-house packages and that's what we get in the mate7 as well a high silicon Kirin 925 as it is called brings a 1.8 gigahertz quad-core cortex a15 together with another quad-core sex-ay seven clocked in at one point three gigahertz both working in conjunction to bring very optimized power it doesn't slip off the tongue as easily as let's say Snapdragon but it is certainly as fast as one getting through the various elements of the emotion UI is a breeze as we're all app experiences including gaming I seriously don't see much lag at all when doing my general multitasking with the only hiccup being in the recent apps screen but that's okay because we know that it has to load the screen previews before actually presenting the grid in hardware there is one main story to the mate7 but we'll touch on that last pun intended as far as internals ago this is still the phone available primarily outside of North America but my unit was still able to connect to LTE networks on t-mobile and AT&T it does struggle with keeping the connection from time to time but otherwise the mobile network experience has been pretty reliable call quality is also good with calls coming in quite clear for both ends a microsd card slot does bolster the included 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage and as far as ram goes the respective storage options will get you either two or three gigabytes of memory respectively include all of the usual smartphone goodies like Bluetooth and NFC and you'll find the standard package underneath the hood battery life proved to be worthy of the big phone stereotype as the mate7 survived two days before clocking out with above moderate usage if my screen on time was doubled a solid day and a half of heavy usage would still be possible but nestled right on the body on the back is probably always biggest claim to fame with their newest flagship the fingerprint scanner similar to the HTC One Maxx is iteration the mate7 requires a touch input rather than swipes and it's setup does look familiar to that of iOS but what makes the fingerprint reader on the mate7 so lovely is the fact that once you have it set up you can use it at any time to unlock the phone otherwise you'll be sticking with the traditional four-digit code even from the prone standby position holding a finger to the area for just a second will wake and unlock the device making access that much easier for a while now I've talked about fingerprint scanners being an even easier and faster way of getting into your device with some other iterations if it takes twice as long for me to get into the phone when I'm using my finger that I'm probably not going to use it but Huawei really did get it right here by allowing you to just use the fingerprint to get right into the phone and I think that a lot of other manufacturers can really learn a thing or two from huawei's implementation a 13 megapixel shooter adorns the rear while another five megapixel iteration now graces the front of the made 7 a few nice modes are available for either shooter all focus is another take on the depth of field snapping that takes a few pictures at different focus levels that you can then pick from a great panorama mode stitches together an entire scene quite well and yield some large files HDR is available but in my shooting I found it to do pretty much nothing to enhance most photos and finally there is a future where you can quickly DoubleTap the volume down button in order to get a really quick shot off it's more about speed than quality here though so focus will almost always be off and you can only hope that you framed your shot correctly so what the phone will go out of its way to tell you was a 1.2 second capture time will probably turn into four times that when afterwards you work to get the right focus and then finally take the proper shot and then on the front to the usual beauty mode found on asian camera apps returns bringing real time blemish hiding and for a better looking self-portrait a small box appears in the top left to help you actually look in the lenses direction as far as quality goes I found them eight seven to have a more than decent shooter details are well captured and noise levels even in night settings don't destroy most images the interface is pretty simple to navigate through so I wasn't fidgeting too hard for what I wanted and in most cases just picking up and shooting yielded a pretty nice shot even the front facing camera proved to be a good shooter though I'm still wary of the beauty modes nonetheless having a higher megapixel count for self-portraits seems to be the trend now and the mate7 does not disappoint in that department as I get into the software portion let's get one thing out of the way right now no there is no app drawer however given how much the emotion UI has matured that actually doesn't matter as much emotion has kept its flat simple interface and as such you'll be making use of folders a lot but I get underneath the home screens and you'll find a plethora of small yet useful additions for one thing using a phone this size has helped a bit by a one-hand interface that can be moved around by holding a finger down on the screen and then tilting the phone left or right it's definitely not a perfect implementation but it has come in handy in a pinch a button made just for bringing down the notification shade became an immediate and lasting addition to my navigation bar small details consistently made me say oh that's cool in the interface like the gallery where you can drag down to open a quick camera interface or the notification drop-down which has a nice way of presenting chronologically you received notifications and if you think about it for a bit elements of the emotion UI look like what we will probably find in the upcoming Android L forward-thinking on Huawei's part makes this KitKat powered Android one of the nicest iterations even if it doesn't have an app drawer and all of this is thema both roue built in application though only a limited number of themes are available in mine at the moment of all the asian iterations of the Android interface emotion might be one of the best we've used with a few key features included that actually proved useful it's snappy minimalism is undeniable the mate7 will cost you a pretty penny I'll be at an expected one of around $700 especially when imported from the markets it is currently available in North American users still have to wait for their release but Huawei has expressed a strong desire to move into more Western markets obvious competitors for the mate7 are large form factor phones but we have to put into consideration the quad HD behemoths that simply overpower the mate and screen resolution but in all other respects Huawei has proven that they can stand elbow to elbow with the rest and so their habits the huawei ascend made 7 the biggest offering from Huawei in more ways than one after some really solid mid-range offerings we're happy to see while we succeed in the flagship space showing off how they do fingerprint scanning in particular but their Android iteration is certainly no slouch and proves to be a snappy pleasing experience as well even the in-house processing package brings the performance you want with a battery life big phone where users require if you want to get the most out of the mate 7 setting up the finger P reader is a must and then you'll find that it's quickness and ease of use permeates throughout the phone well - the large size but given the direction the smartphone flagship market has been going we're not surprised that while we put everything into their latest and greatest and their success is exactly why we give it the editors choice award for making it crystal clear that Huawei is actually a real threat to the current smartphone Kings in the game today as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the huawei ascend mate 7 I still feel the same way today as I did back at Aoife in Berlin when I first set up that fingerprint scanner I think it's a wonderful iteration and I wouldn't be surprised if we see it on more phones to come in any case stay tuned to Android Authority for even more not only about the huawei ascend mate 7 but more about all of the other flagships coming out in the coming weeks stay tuned here drop us some likes in our videos and subscribe to our channel if you haven't already we're getting close to that 1 million mark so you guys stay tuned for all the content we have because of that wonderful celebration we're about to have so keep it tuned here and remember that Android 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