Really appreciate you guys reviewing some of the more niche phones! I was interested in this as well as the Oneplus, both got reviews I never expected.
They review the phones manufacturers provide for them. So if no Sony phones are being reviewed, that means Sony isn't giving them any phones to review. Perhaps you'd like to send them a Sony for them to review?
Do they really need a manufacturer to provide them phones? AnandTech Has enough money to buy any particular cellphone. Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 compact are considered one of the best android phones of the year. AnandTech is my favorite tech review site, seeing they're not reviewing one of the best phones of the year is really disappointing. Unless Sony specifically asked them not to review their products i think AnandTech should review Xperia Z3 lines products. At least I really want to see them review Z3 Compact.
While I'm sure AnandTech could afford to buy a device on occasion for review (and we've done so in the past), ultimately that doesn't work out -- there's always another device some people will want us to review. "Hey, you bought XYZ; it's not fair that you didn't also buy and review UVW, ABC, QRS, ...." Buying and reviewing (or not reviewing if it's not worth the time?) every product just can't be supported in a realistic manner I don't think.
Fundamentally, there's also the question of reviewer throughput -- how many people are needed to review every potentially interesting device? And can AnandTech afford to pay them? We have coverage of most major categories, but simply increasing the amount of content on a site doesn't linearly increase the site revenues, so there's a balancing act. And you still need quality content, not just a deluge of "me too" stuff.
This isn't just "potentially interesting," though. Sony has released some new and different stuff, but it's barely even mentioned. I sometimes forget they're making high-end devices.
I don't know how feasible it would be to borrow handsets if someone in your area is willing to lend theirs to you.
Wow. I guess this is as direct confirmation that Sony hasn't provided them a device for review as we can get. I just wonder if they've also been asked for one specifically, which they probably were.
No wonder Sony continues to underperform with their handset business despite making some great devices. Their marketing can't be excused for not having a review at Anandtech as soon NDA lifts.
I've tried reaching out to Sony as being one of the newer European editors (Sony has a much stronger presence here) but sadly they haven't gotten back to me in 3 months.
I was hoping this device would provide similar battery performance to the Mate 2, alas : [
Might have to get a 6+, however the fact that the Lightning SD Card Adapter doesn't work with it is extremely frustrating. A $750 - $950 smart phone that can't download photos quickly because of some stupid software switch that makes the adapter incompatible, sigh. May have to use a WiFi SD card or Reader : [
That we ALWAYS know then u are wisiting anadtech :D THE MOST WEIRD website on the planet.. I bet everybody there has iiiphhhonees 6 and pluses there.. and they having even sex with them ..@DDD
interesting! this phone is smaller than its screen, which measures ~73x130mm. obviously its completely wrong... the mate 7 measures 157 x 81 x 7.9 mm :)
Thanks for the great review! I'm so thankful you review products that are noto exclusively Samsungs, Apples or HTCs. I'd love to see more chinese phones reviews on anandtech (Xiaomi Mi4, Meizu MX4, Nubia Z7, Nubia X6, Huawei Honor X1)
Any comments on wifi performance? No 802.11ac so not expecting much.
The Ascend Mate 2 was an interesting device: inexpensive and fantastic battery life, due to the 2011-class resolution and SOC performance. If you wanted a physically large display and were okay with the lower performance then it was easy to recommend.
Especially for Android devices, it would be great if you could spend more time discussing a manufacturer's historical commitment to long-term support on their products. This includes: how regularly a product receives OTA updates; how recent the base operating system is (version of Android); whether kernel source is released in a timely manner following each update.
In the case of Huawei, I'm very leary, because their first US phone offering, the Mate 2 which was just released this year, still runs Jellybean. While they claim a Lollipop is in its future, this only came after a barrage of harassment from users complaining about abandoned support. Even then, I don't want to give them praise until the update actually exists.
Huawei has been caught numerous times straight up stealing other company's intellectual property. They deployed an exact copy errata and all of Cisco's IOS in their routers. They are in a lawsuit with T-Mobile for corporate espionage. They also got caught siphoning non-anonymous user data from their cell phones and then they lied about doing it. Huawei is a government sponsored corporation and the Chinese government uses it to do whatever they want. I wouldn't anywhere near any Huawei product.
Hi, just today I read another review and they didn't encounter any overheating nor did they have problems in low light photography. Also the autonomy was quite good (5h of gaming if I recall correctly)
Is the terminal you reviewed on the latest firmware? Maybe a defective unit or another hw revision could explain this.
The only interesting thing to me is the fingerprint scanner. Samsung should get rid of their heart-rate sensor and put one of these scanners in its place.
Andrei, I've been experiencing a significant amount of light bleed whenever I use black backgrounds on my Ascend Mate 7. The problem is located on the left side where the SIM and microSD are located. Have you noticed any similar issues?
Wow that looks bad. My unit is uniformely dark. This unit was handed out by Huawei at the official release so it might not be a representation of full production models.
The Honor 6 is better if you don't need a huge screen and don't mind the plastic housing at significantly cheaper pricing. In my 3 weeks experience with the Honor 6, I too haven't noticed any oerformance issues with flash memory performance. But I still wish they would use some slightly higher quality stuff. Since I don't game, this phone has performed like a beast. 3GB RAM is definitely a new minimum for me, especially as a Firefox with adblock user.
I would never trust this brand. Too closely aligned with the Chinese government .. and whilst China may be "the factories of the world", I can't help but think of China as a stealthy enemy of the state hell bent on taking over the world ! As for the phone .. It's a piece of over priced junk with the odd glimmer of innovative software and I think your review concludes that. But sadly they , along with other low price China brands are going to shift millions of android phones due to low prices which even Samsung can't compete with. Hopefully the more people become aware of their phones being junk tech, the less they will sell... in any country.
Thanks for reviewing this Huawei phone, anandtech. These days, Chinese manufacturers have much more interesting devices compare to the old players. Anandtech has been my favorite tech review site for more than 10 years and you guy offer the most in depth review on the whole interweb. Keep up the great work!
Seriously Andrei, thanks for this review. I've been tossing up between the note 4 and this for a couple of weeks, and just decided to get the huawei (didn't think the differences were massive from other reviews) when this review came out. You've potentially saved me from a world of disappointment.
As with other reviews on this site, the problem in this review is that there is no corresponding reference to real life usage. Just lots of numbers but for example why not a real life gaming comparison between Mate 7 and Note 4 ? NAND performs horrible in benchmarks but if in real life there is barely any noticeable change, than does the benchmark score even matter ? How about comparing the photos with other 13MP IMX214 phones ? Also frustrating i found is there is no explanation as to what exactly is the cause of poor battery performance of Mate 7, is it the fault of GPU or their modem or that it does not use a amoled screen like Note 4 ? Is it a fixable issue with rom updates ?
Ofcourse ideally Huawei could have simply thrown in some Qualcomm and so on like Samsung does, but it prevents the development of Hauwei's own innovations and implementations. HiSilicon from its last year K3V2 to this years Kirin 925, there is huge improvement and they are already releasing their 64bit chip kirin 930 this December and a Kirin 950 in June.
Basically the cause of bad battery life is that power consumption of the Kirin SoC is too high - I've explained this in the review of the Honor 6 where I took an in-depth look into the chip.
But a comparison between Honor 6 and Samsung S5 (both the Qualcomm and Exynos version) battery life don't show Kirin SOC having such suspected high battery drain problem, although yes you did mention ways battery life could have been improved but nothing to say of a huge problem.
The case with Mate 7 on the other hand with 1000mAh more battery than Honor 6 does seem weird that the battery life improvements are only marginal.
Are you serious? I own an Honor 6 and I'm getting two days of battery life under normal usage (YouTube, Gmail, Gcal, pdf reading, etc.) Under light usage I can get 2.5-3 days. This is with wifi on and auto half brightness, which I find comfortable. I'm even using Firefox for Android with adblock for browsing which is likely worse on the battery than Chrome. Some REALISTIC battery life numbers would be pretty useful--like how long were you getting under what you deem light/normal/heavy usage?
Here at AnandTech we post objective and reproducible benchmarks, this includes the battery test.
Of course the phone will last 3-4 days if you use it lightly, but this all depends on your personal usage, your environment, the brightness of the screen and a plethora of other variables.
The Mate 7 also leads the Note 4 in our tests, but only by 12%. Considering the Note 4 powers a QHD screen and has 900mAh higher battery capacity, means that the Mate 7 is much less efficient.
With regards to the UI, you mentioned the theme also customized the buit in apps, but if you notice carefully even by a basic change of the wallpaper, the whole UI and in built apps cleverly adapts to the color of the wallpaper in an elegant way. I love that aspect on the Emui3.0 and is way advanced then the amateurish theme implementation to come on Samsung.
There are a plenty of other aspects you UI you didn't mention, like swiping down from anywhere in homescreen you get a indepth search option, or the double click vol down on screen off for 0.6 second quick shot photo or the pretty gallery interface and other minor aspects like the addition of a button on navigation bar to bring down notification panel, their one hand UI unique implementation of moving keypad to a side by motion gesture, long press of multitask navigation button to switch quick between last two used apps (they have also added split screen functionality in their latest update of Emui3.0 in China).
EmUI 3.0 has a huge amount of features like the one you mentioned, but I can't allocate several pages just to mention every small feature found in the phone. Things like the configurable navigation buttons are for example visible on my screenshots, and much more if you look at the UI gallery.
Especially on a big-ticket item like this, I see a non-replaceable battery as a major negative. I don't mean non-swappable; I mean not user-replaceable at all.
There are years of experience with such things by now, especially among the folks on this forum. What are people doing when their tablets or high-end phones won't charge anymore and they can't replace the battery themselves? Send it in to the manufacturer? Throw away a $500 item? Are there reliable US third-parties that do it quickly and cheaply?
it seems that Acer is preparing to present at least one new smartphones based on Microsoft’s platform. According to Focus Taiwan and sources close to the project, the Taiwanese company will unveil its return in 2015 with Acer Windows Phone, a device that could be mid-range or an entry-level, therefore cheap.http://bit.ly/1zU7zZj
'' We again find that the score is merely thwarted by the green-shift of the display, prohibiting this display to enter the group of outright excellently calibrated devices such Samsung's and Apple's newest models.'' Jesus man grow up and get life .. U wanna say samsung has better screen ? NO CHANCE ! I have alpha and I never seen such DISGUSTING LCD screen quality in my life in 2014 Man ! u can take look on that sht alpha u wanna tel me that is white???? that white is bloody YELLOW !!!
It's awesome phone..I'm a user of Huawei phone only..I have p6 and now I have m7 gold 32gb. It's faster and friendly especially os is better than Samsung 5, and camera.. thank you Huawei
Awesome phone, awesome battery life, fast processor especially in gaming. great screen, a bit low on brightness but not too bad. 6" feels good on one hand use that you actually forget it's that big. Fingerprint scanner is great, works very well. The camera is really good, surprisingly so.
While software is eye candy (which i personally am a fan of) and offers more functionality than standard Android (A lot of functionality, the little things that make it a joy to use), it is a bit buggy. EMUI 3.0 looks good, like a cross breed between iOS and Android and i love that, however, it tends to reset to default settings on some applications kinda like forcing you to stick with EMUI's default apps, like the launcher, Messaging app, phone app, music app, etc. (this can be really annoying at times, but it is controllable).
Another thing is, and this is really strange, EMUI doesn't allow other 3rd party apps to gain access to the phone's "notification access", e.g. lockscreen apps. the functionality simply doesn't work, so you end up being forced to use only EMUI's native lockcreen, which by the way is the only lockscreen that works with the fingerprint scanner, meaning if other 3rd party lockscreen apps could actually work, they’d still not work with the fingerprint scanner. make sense?
So to sum it all up... phone hardware is superb and the internals are beastly too, especially battery life, in fact best in class. It also feels and looks expensive and premium. software is a joy to look at, really eye-candy, the little things like installing apk's, checking for software updates, the shutdown screen, all look visually pleasing, even uninstalling a app looks and feels like a beautiful process. However, if you like to customise Android, then the software experience could prove to be a little bit frustrating but nothing over the edge. And since it’s software, Huawei can fix it with an update. This is a good phone.
I'm a big advocate of Samsung Note series. However I have been using Mate 7 since the first launch...because the price was much cheaper, and I found the specs to be better (160GB, sensors, larger screen, brighter screen and a more intuitive UI) and have been using it to test games. So far I am impressed by the solid build, as I have dropped the phone many times and the screen barely has a scratch. Small dents in the frame but none too noticeable. It's been a year, and I find the phone to have been quite stable. I look forward to the next series.
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tipoo - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Really appreciate you guys reviewing some of the more niche phones! I was interested in this as well as the Oneplus, both got reviews I never expected.beehofer - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Nice but I'm wondering what Anandtech has against Sony? Why no Z3 or Z3C reviews. Hmmmm.Moizy - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
They review the phones manufacturers provide for them. So if no Sony phones are being reviewed, that means Sony isn't giving them any phones to review. Perhaps you'd like to send them a Sony for them to review?beehofer - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
If only I had the resources for that :)NeoteriX - Sunday, December 7, 2014 - link
...then maybe you should think again before jumping to conclusions and spouting your mouth off with accusations.techcrazy - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Do they really need a manufacturer to provide them phones? AnandTech Has enough money to buy any particular cellphone. Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 compact are considered one of the best android phones of the year. AnandTech is my favorite tech review site, seeing they're not reviewing one of the best phones of the year is really disappointing. Unless Sony specifically asked them not to review their products i think AnandTech should review Xperia Z3 lines products. At least I really want to see them review Z3 Compact.JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
While I'm sure AnandTech could afford to buy a device on occasion for review (and we've done so in the past), ultimately that doesn't work out -- there's always another device some people will want us to review. "Hey, you bought XYZ; it's not fair that you didn't also buy and review UVW, ABC, QRS, ...." Buying and reviewing (or not reviewing if it's not worth the time?) every product just can't be supported in a realistic manner I don't think.Fundamentally, there's also the question of reviewer throughput -- how many people are needed to review every potentially interesting device? And can AnandTech afford to pay them? We have coverage of most major categories, but simply increasing the amount of content on a site doesn't linearly increase the site revenues, so there's a balancing act. And you still need quality content, not just a deluge of "me too" stuff.
mkozakewich - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
This isn't just "potentially interesting," though. Sony has released some new and different stuff, but it's barely even mentioned. I sometimes forget they're making high-end devices.I don't know how feasible it would be to borrow handsets if someone in your area is willing to lend theirs to you.
garretelder - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
The The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is far from one of the better phones if you ask me! /Garret http://www.topreport.org/phones/Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
dont understand what u mean .. do u have it ? u even didnt hold it in hands .. and u judging ..MantasPakenas - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
Wow. I guess this is as direct confirmation that Sony hasn't provided them a device for review as we can get. I just wonder if they've also been asked for one specifically, which they probably were.No wonder Sony continues to underperform with their handset business despite making some great devices. Their marketing can't be excused for not having a review at Anandtech as soon NDA lifts.
Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
I've tried reaching out to Sony as being one of the newer European editors (Sony has a much stronger presence here) but sadly they haven't gotten back to me in 3 months.It's a pity.
Dribble - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
/me looks for nexus 9 review - nope still not hereIt's not just Sony!
Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have feeling they picking phones which they wants to slag and make crap from..ayejay_nz - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
I second this, thanks a lot for the review.I was hoping this device would provide similar battery performance to the Mate 2, alas : [
Might have to get a 6+, however the fact that the Lightning SD Card Adapter doesn't work with it is extremely frustrating. A $750 - $950 smart phone that can't download photos quickly because of some stupid software switch that makes the adapter incompatible, sigh. May have to use a WiFi SD card or Reader : [
Ethos Evoss - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
That we ALWAYS know then u are wisiting anadtech :D THE MOST WEIRD website on the planet..I bet everybody there has iiiphhhonees 6 and pluses there.. and they having even sex with them ..@DDD
banks1990 - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
"The dimensions figure at 139.6 x 69.7 x 7.9mm"Almost the same size of a Huawei Honor 6 eh?
bernstein - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
interesting! this phone is smaller than its screen, which measures ~73x130mm.obviously its completely wrong... the mate 7 measures 157 x 81 x 7.9 mm :)
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
My apologies - yes I initially started off the same table for the specs.tipoo - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
That much throttling with that little performance is...Kind of impressive, in a way? Well, that all turns me off from this phone anyway.tipoo - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Ach, and that storage performance...Yup, all interest gone.massig93 - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Thanks for the great review! I'm so thankful you review products that are noto exclusively Samsungs, Apples or HTCs. I'd love to see more chinese phones reviews on anandtech (Xiaomi Mi4, Meizu MX4, Nubia Z7, Nubia X6, Huawei Honor X1)protomech - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Any comments on wifi performance? No 802.11ac so not expecting much.The Ascend Mate 2 was an interesting device: inexpensive and fantastic battery life, due to the 2011-class resolution and SOC performance. If you wanted a physically large display and were okay with the lower performance then it was easy to recommend.
There's no reason to recommend this phone.
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
I'm still lacking the proper equipment for Wifi tests, but from what I can see the Wifi reception and performance didn't change from the Honor 6.alfredska - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Especially for Android devices, it would be great if you could spend more time discussing a manufacturer's historical commitment to long-term support on their products. This includes: how regularly a product receives OTA updates; how recent the base operating system is (version of Android); whether kernel source is released in a timely manner following each update.In the case of Huawei, I'm very leary, because their first US phone offering, the Mate 2 which was just released this year, still runs Jellybean. While they claim a Lollipop is in its future, this only came after a barrage of harassment from users complaining about abandoned support. Even then, I don't want to give them praise until the update actually exists.
Reference 1: http://blog.gethuawei.com/huawei-device-usa-update...
Despoiler - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Huawei has been caught numerous times straight up stealing other company's intellectual property. They deployed an exact copy errata and all of Cisco's IOS in their routers. They are in a lawsuit with T-Mobile for corporate espionage. They also got caught siphoning non-anonymous user data from their cell phones and then they lied about doing it. Huawei is a government sponsored corporation and the Chinese government uses it to do whatever they want. I wouldn't anywhere near any Huawei product.pgari - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
The performance charts should have included the Nexus 6 and OnePlus One results, which have already been reviewed by Anandtechpichemanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Hi, just today I read another review and they didn't encounter any overheating nor did they have problems in low light photography. Also the autonomy was quite good (5h of gaming if I recall correctly)Is the terminal you reviewed on the latest firmware? Maybe a defective unit or another hw revision could explain this.
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
It was on the a late October released firmware.I'm getting the same gaming battery life of 5h (5.6h!) as pointed out in the review, I don't think there's changes in that regard.
pichemanu - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
Sorry for the gaming autonomy number, I mistakenly remembered around 2h.GTRagnarok - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
The only interesting thing to me is the fingerprint scanner. Samsung should get rid of their heart-rate sensor and put one of these scanners in its place.DestroyThaNet - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Andrei, I've been experiencing a significant amount of light bleed whenever I use black backgrounds on my Ascend Mate 7. The problem is located on the left side where the SIM and microSD are located. Have you noticed any similar issues?Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
My unit sports virtually no light bleed - the least I've seen on any LCD screen and why I was also impressed with the blacks of this IPS-Neo screen.DestroyThaNet - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Hmmm…I received another one in the mail today. Both have pretty bad light bleed problems. I'm thinking it's a manufacturing or design problem that happens often. Here they are next to an iPhone showing the same black wallpaper.http://i61.tinypic.com/2jb1729.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/imv51y.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/142603k.jpg
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Wow that looks bad. My unit is uniformely dark. This unit was handed out by Huawei at the official release so it might not be a representation of full production models.DestroyThaNet - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Dang, how disappointing. Thanks for your input, Andrei.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
hey man which pone u won ?? i bet iphone :DDDzodiacfml - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Terrible especially considering the cosst of this thing.johnny_boy - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
The Honor 6 is better if you don't need a huge screen and don't mind the plastic housing at significantly cheaper pricing. In my 3 weeks experience with the Honor 6, I too haven't noticed any oerformance issues with flash memory performance. But I still wish they would use some slightly higher quality stuff. Since I don't game, this phone has performed like a beast. 3GB RAM is definitely a new minimum for me, especially as a Firefox with adblock user.sandman74 - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
I would never trust this brand. Too closely aligned with the Chinese government .. and whilst China may be "the factories of the world", I can't help but think of China as a stealthy enemy of the state hell bent on taking over the world !As for the phone .. It's a piece of over priced junk with the odd glimmer of innovative software and I think your review concludes that. But sadly they , along with other low price China brands are going to shift millions of android phones due to low prices which even Samsung can't compete with.
Hopefully the more people become aware of their phones being junk tech, the less they will sell... in any country.
Laststop311 - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Wish we could have some american phones with battery life like this.arsjum - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Andrei,Any chance you'll be reviewing Galaxy Note 4 exynos version?
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
I've been working on the article for 2 weeks, it's coming.DanD85 - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Thanks for reviewing this Huawei phone, anandtech. These days, Chinese manufacturers have much more interesting devices compare to the old players. Anandtech has been my favorite tech review site for more than 10 years and you guy offer the most in depth review on the whole interweb. Keep up the great work!Sicariase - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
Seriously Andrei, thanks for this review. I've been tossing up between the note 4 and this for a couple of weeks, and just decided to get the huawei (didn't think the differences were massive from other reviews) when this review came out. You've potentially saved me from a world of disappointment.Bondurant - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
As with other reviews on this site, the problem in this review is that there is no corresponding reference to real life usage. Just lots of numbers but for example why not a real life gaming comparison between Mate 7 and Note 4 ? NAND performs horrible in benchmarks but if in real life there is barely any noticeable change, than does the benchmark score even matter ? How about comparing the photos with other 13MP IMX214 phones ? Also frustrating i found is there is no explanation as to what exactly is the cause of poor battery performance of Mate 7, is it the fault of GPU or their modem or that it does not use a amoled screen like Note 4 ? Is it a fixable issue with rom updates ?Ofcourse ideally Huawei could have simply thrown in some Qualcomm and so on like Samsung does, but it prevents the development of Hauwei's own innovations and implementations. HiSilicon from its last year K3V2 to this years Kirin 925, there is huge improvement and they are already releasing their 64bit chip kirin 930 this December and a Kirin 950 in June.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
Basically the cause of bad battery life is that power consumption of the Kirin SoC is too high - I've explained this in the review of the Honor 6 where I took an in-depth look into the chip.Bondurant - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
But a comparison between Honor 6 and Samsung S5 (both the Qualcomm and Exynos version) battery life don't show Kirin SOC having such suspected high battery drain problem, although yes you did mention ways battery life could have been improved but nothing to say of a huge problem.The case with Mate 7 on the other hand with 1000mAh more battery than Honor 6 does seem weird that the battery life improvements are only marginal.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
I did point out that the Honor 6 is less efficient than competing devices.johnny_boy - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
Are you serious? I own an Honor 6 and I'm getting two days of battery life under normal usage (YouTube, Gmail, Gcal, pdf reading, etc.) Under light usage I can get 2.5-3 days. This is with wifi on and auto half brightness, which I find comfortable. I'm even using Firefox for Android with adblock for browsing which is likely worse on the battery than Chrome. Some REALISTIC battery life numbers would be pretty useful--like how long were you getting under what you deem light/normal/heavy usage?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Here at AnandTech we post objective and reproducible benchmarks, this includes the battery test.Of course the phone will last 3-4 days if you use it lightly, but this all depends on your personal usage, your environment, the brightness of the screen and a plethora of other variables.
Bondurant - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
Interesting to note also that phonearena's battery test results puts Mate 7 to be better than Note 4HUAWEI ASCEND MATE7 9h 3 min (Excellent)
SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 4 8h 43 min (Excellent)
SONY XPERIA Z3 9h 29 min (Excellent)
HUAWEI ASCEND MATE 2 4G 11h 26 min (Excellent)
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
The Mate 7 also leads the Note 4 in our tests, but only by 12%. Considering the Note 4 powers a QHD screen and has 900mAh higher battery capacity, means that the Mate 7 is much less efficient.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
because they like slagging chhinese mobiles and they ar isheeps so they dont want look bad bcos they own all iphones..Bondurant - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
With regards to the UI, you mentioned the theme also customized the buit in apps, but if you notice carefully even by a basic change of the wallpaper, the whole UI and in built apps cleverly adapts to the color of the wallpaper in an elegant way. I love that aspect on the Emui3.0 and is way advanced then the amateurish theme implementation to come on Samsung.There are a plenty of other aspects you UI you didn't mention, like swiping down from anywhere in homescreen you get a indepth search option, or the double click vol down on screen off for 0.6 second quick shot photo or the pretty gallery interface and other minor aspects like the addition of a button on navigation bar to bring down notification panel, their one hand UI unique implementation of moving keypad to a side by motion gesture, long press of multitask navigation button to switch quick between last two used apps (they have also added split screen functionality in their latest update of Emui3.0 in China).
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
EmUI 3.0 has a huge amount of features like the one you mentioned, but I can't allocate several pages just to mention every small feature found in the phone. Things like the configurable navigation buttons are for example visible on my screenshots, and much more if you look at the UI gallery.Hrel - Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - link
"5.9” Stopped reading.Stupid phablets, can I get a 5" phone again? PLEASE?!
Ethos Evoss - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
yeah get honor 6Arbie - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
Especially on a big-ticket item like this, I see a non-replaceable battery as a major negative. I don't mean non-swappable; I mean not user-replaceable at all.There are years of experience with such things by now, especially among the folks on this forum. What are people doing when their tablets or high-end phones won't charge anymore and they can't replace the battery themselves? Send it in to the manufacturer? Throw away a $500 item? Are there reliable US third-parties that do it quickly and cheaply?
spixel - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
So did you actually do a real gaming test on this phone, or just basemark? Because I don't play basemark and neither does anyone else.You should put more emphasis on the real life performance of the phone and not results from benchmarks.
Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 7, 2014 - link
http://www.gizmochina.com/2014/10/17/huawei-honor6...theKai007 - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
it seems that Acer is preparing to present at least one new smartphones based on Microsoft’s platform. According to Focus Taiwan and sources close to the project, the Taiwanese company will unveil its return in 2015 with Acer Windows Phone, a device that could be mid-range or an entry-level, therefore cheap.http://bit.ly/1zU7zZjEthos Evoss - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I own this phone and It COMPLETELY doesn't match your review words AT ALL !!Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
'' We again find that the score is merely thwarted by the green-shift of the display, prohibiting this display to enter the group of outright excellently calibrated devices such Samsung's and Apple's newest models.''Jesus man grow up and get life .. U wanna say samsung has better screen ? NO CHANCE ! I have alpha and I never seen such DISGUSTING LCD screen quality in my life in 2014 Man !
u can take look on that sht alpha u wanna tel me that is white???? that white is bloody YELLOW !!!
http://s1295.photobucket.com/user/Ethos-Evoss/medi...">[IMG]http://i1295.photobucket.com/albums/b633/Ethos-Evo...[/IMG]
Farai - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I think this phone has a 6 inch screen not 5.9inch, can you clarify this pleaseFarai - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link
This phone has a 6 inch screen not 5.9 inchFarai - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link
This phone has a 6 inch screen not 5.9 inchFarai - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link
This phone has a 6 inch screen not 5.9 inchhani.shahid - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
It's awesome phone..I'm a user of Huawei phone only..I have p6 and now I have m7 gold 32gb. It's faster and friendly especially os is better than Samsung 5, and camera.. thank you Huaweinicethatme2 - Sunday, February 22, 2015 - link
What will happen if ascend mate 7 overcharged? For example 1st charge 8 hours overcharge and 2nd is 6 hours overchargedLwazis - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Awesome phone, awesome battery life, fast processor especially in gaming. great screen, a bit low on brightness but not too bad. 6" feels good on one hand use that you actually forget it's that big. Fingerprint scanner is great, works very well. The camera is really good, surprisingly so.While software is eye candy (which i personally am a fan of) and offers more functionality than standard Android (A lot of functionality, the little things that make it a joy to use), it is a bit buggy. EMUI 3.0 looks good, like a cross breed between iOS and Android and i love that, however, it tends to reset to default settings on some applications kinda like forcing you to stick with EMUI's default apps, like the launcher, Messaging app, phone app, music app, etc. (this can be really annoying at times, but it is controllable).
Another thing is, and this is really strange, EMUI doesn't allow other 3rd party apps to gain access to the phone's "notification access", e.g. lockscreen apps. the functionality simply doesn't work, so you end up being forced to use only EMUI's native lockcreen, which by the way is the only lockscreen that works with the fingerprint scanner, meaning if other 3rd party lockscreen apps could actually work, they’d still not work with the fingerprint scanner. make sense?
So to sum it all up... phone hardware is superb and the internals are beastly too, especially battery life, in fact best in class. It also feels and looks expensive and premium. software is a joy to look at, really eye-candy, the little things like installing apk's, checking for software updates, the shutdown screen, all look visually pleasing, even uninstalling a app looks and feels like a beautiful process. However, if you like to customise Android, then the software experience could prove to be a little bit frustrating but nothing over the edge. And since it’s software, Huawei can fix it with an update. This is a good phone.
Jay Park - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link
I'm a big advocate of Samsung Note series. However I have been using Mate 7 since the first launch...because the price was much cheaper, and I found the specs to be better (160GB, sensors, larger screen, brighter screen and a more intuitive UI) and have been using it to test games. So far I am impressed by the solid build, as I have dropped the phone many times and the screen barely has a scratch. Small dents in the frame but none too noticeable. It's been a year, and I find the phone to have been quite stable. I look forward to the next series.