Huawei is making a big push in SA and we are happy to see it. They strive to bring top-notch devices at more affordable prices ““ something Chinese firms are very good at doing. Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi are all top 5 smartphone manufacturers in the world and the competition is fierce. You might notice that Huawei has dropped the “˜Ascend‘ name (previously this phone was called the Ascend Mate 7) ““ they are completely refining their branding and naming conventions.
Recently the Huawei Mate 7 has made its way into the South African market and we were lucky enough to review it for an extended period of time. I actually took it on a trip to Europe and exclusively used it as my daily driver for the two weeks, so it had a lot of work to do.
Before we get to the full review, here are some key features:
- 6″ 16M-color 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass 3
- Android OS v4.4.2 KitKat with Emotion UI v3.0
- Quad-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A15 & quad-core 1.3GHz Cortex-A7, Mali-T628 GPU; 2GB or 3GB of RAM; Huawei Kirin 925 chipset
- 13MP autofocus camera with LED flash, 1080p video recording @ 30fps
- 5MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording, selfie panorama mode
- Fingerprint sensor
- 16GB or 32GB of built-in storage, side-mounted microSD card slot, hot-swap
- 4,100mAh battery
Design and Build
Let‘s not beat around the bush“¦ Huawei haven‘t been renowned for their build quality in the past. They were an affordable brand from the get go, and their devices said as much. Since they have become extremely successful, things have changed drastically, though. They have chosen the perfect time to seriously push their products in SA. 
The Mate 7‘s build is elegant and something to behold. We don‘t think pictures does it justice, so be sure to go to a store and hold it in your palm to see what it is like. That is, if you are looking for a large device. The Mate 7 is large; it has a 6-inch screen which has required the body to balloon out to 157mm long and 81mm wide. It’s nigh on impossible to use with only one hand, unless you have palms the size of Mars. That being said, it is slightly larger than the Galaxy Note 4 with a markedly larger screen. 
The narrow bezels make it extremely comfortable to hold, helped by the subtly curved back. It looks and feels like a high-end device ““ especially when you compare it to the plastic devices we got from Huawei previously. It is definitely the best device the company has built to date (with us awaiting the P8 with some anticipation), and you respect it even more when you realise it‘s smaller than the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. 
Screen
When handling the Mate 7, the screen is the predominant feature of the phone, always in your face. Understandably, you want it to be good ““ otherwise you might just as well be staring at a 6-inch slab of reflective paint. Luckily, the Mate 7 delivers with a full HD 1080p display. Sure, it doesn‘t have the Quad HD displays you‘ll find on the LG G3 and Galaxy Note 4, but as you‘ll read in those reviews, it brings no benefit to the consumer at all.
The IPS display has a pixel density of 368ppi and it delivers as a top-notch display. It has really deep black levels and is decently bright at 100% with great contrast and colour reproduction. The size and quality of the display makes it perfectly utilised with multimedia ““ from YouTube to games. It is actually 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. Viewing angles are great as well, with more-than-acceptable brightness loss from an off-angle perspective. At its price point, you won‘t find a better display ““ period.
Android ““ User Interface
The Mate 7 doesn‘t ship with the latest version of Android, but arrives with Android 4.4.2. While that isn‘t great (especially seeing that the latest flagships will all launch with Android 5.0 Lollipop), Huawei has promised that the update to Lollipop isn‘t too far off. But, to be honest, they have changed the Android interface so much you probably won’t immediately notice that you’re on old software. Visually it is so removed from anything you see on other Android devices, you might be excused from thinking it runs something different altogether.
In fact, at least in my opinion, their take on the software looks like some weird love child of Android and iOS. There is no app tray, and all your apps will be on your multiple home screens (as with iOS). A lot in the software actually looks like iOS ““ for better or worse ““ even the folders‘ popups will remind you of an unused Apple folder of apps. Personally, this frustrated me at first, as it will undoubtedly for any other Android fan. Luckily, it is a minor issue as you still have you beloved widgets available and you can still position folders wherever you like on the homescreens (they don‘t need to fill the screen from left to right, top to bottom as on iOS).
Huawei‘s UI has some very good additions as well, though. You can customise the order of the navigation buttons at the bottom of the phone as well as add a shortcut button that pulls down the notification bar for you. Overall, the software experience is very pleasant and doesn‘t bog down and crash apps as often as other Android skins (here‘s looking at you, Samsung). If you are looking for something different, but still that familiar Android feel, the Huawei is the way to go.
Performance
The biggest point to note is that the Huawei Mate 7 does not suffer from the frequent performance glitches we saw in the Huawei Ascend P7. It really is quite nippy, something we‘ve not been able to say about recent Huawei flagships. Huawei have again developed their own octo-core chip, and this time it performs markedly better than before.
The Hisilicon Kirin 925 has four Cortex-A15 performance cores clocked at 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores at 1.3GHz. This ensures the Mate 7 has plenty of power behind the scenes, but only uses it when it’s really required. This, in conjunction with the 2GB of RAM means you won‘t be disappointed with performance. There wasn’t any glaring lag during navigation, so getting to where I wanted to go didn’t take long. The phone wakes up instantly from sleep mode and impressively the fingerprint scanner takes less than a second to register and unlock your device from sleep. In fact, the fingerprint scanner worked better than we have seen from any Samsung device and is certainly up there with Apple‘s equivalents. The UI does show some strange quirks sometimes, but it doesn‘t happen often enough to hamper your experience.
Battery Life 
The Huawei Mate 7 has a gigantic 4,100mAh battery. Just for context‘s sake, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 “˜only‘ has 3,220mAh and the new Galaxy S6 has a 2,550mAh battery. It‘s amazing to have such a large battery in a device this size. Sometimes size does matter, whatever you may have heard. In our eyes there’s no such thing as too big when it comes to a smartphone battery, and Huawei has delivered an impressive amount of power. Try as you may, you will not kill this smartphone‘s battery in a day. This was with high usage and auto screen brightness.
We did everything we could, with the worst result being 44 hours of use. In a word ““ amazing. It was one of the reasons I took it to Europe.
Camera
The Mate 7 has a 13-megapixel camera stuck to its back that’s capable of taking some great shots. It does protrude slightly from the back of the phone, but that should bother very few people. 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. The app is easy to use and intuitive, but most won‘t need to venture too far from Auto mode or HDR.
Of course, it‘s not perfect. We did notice that in tricky higher-light conditions, the Huawei Mate 7‘s photos can end up looking quite desaturated ““ almost monochrome in the worst cases. It quite easy to fix with another snap of the picture, however. Low-light performance is also hit or miss, but HDR mode does make it remarkably easy to take better pictures in low light conditions. It doesn‘t match the LG G3 or Galaxy Note‘s camera, but is just as good as anything else on the Android market. Below are some examples of the pictures it took. 
Conclusion
In all honesty, the Huawei Mate 7 is the first 6-inch phone that avoids being a royal pain to use. To be honest, there isn‘t any Android competition at this size. It’s a glorious piece of design with a beautiful screen and a great camera and for the price, you can‘t compare anything else to it. It‘s half the price of the Galaxy Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus ““ that in itself is a massive boon for such great design and performance. If you enjoyed this review, share it with your view on the device and the entry hashtag from the competition post here to stand the chance to win the phone.
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