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
WiFi
It's self-evident that reaching lower price points will mean that compromises will have to happen. Ultimately, the big issue is where the compromises happen. While most people are willing to give up the niceties that the high-end, high-margin flagships have, far fewer are willing to compromise on fundamental parts of the experience. Unfortunately, WiFi is one of the areas that the average consumer and OEMs alike tend to see little issue with cheaping out on WiFi modules. That is, of course, until one deals with the pain of using a 2.4 GHz-only phone in an area where 5 GHz is the only usable spectrum.
Fortunately, Huawei hasn't done this at all. While the spec sheet doesn't give any immediate indication of the WiFi module in the Mate2, some digging through files such as the build.prop can give clues. The reference to a WCN WiFi part effectively limits the possible controllers to WCN3620, WCN3660, or WCN3680. From there, simply determining the band support and fastest 802.11 standard supported based on PHY rate and other information gives all the necessary information. In the case of the Ascend Mate2, we're looking at a WCN3680 part. This means that 2.4 and 5 GHz are both supported, with a maximum data rate of 433 Mbps via single spatial stream 802.11ac.
As seen by the graph above, the Ascend Mate2 does respectably well for maximum speed, although it's not quite as fast as the One (M8). Anything that doesn't support 802.11ac would be far slower than the Mate2.
GNSS
As with any MDM9x25 IP block, the Ascend Mate2 uses Qualcomm's GPSOne Gen8B, which supports GPS, GLONASS, and Beidou. I didn't notice any significant issues here, and I managed to acquire an accurate lock in around 10 seconds when doing a cold lock (no WiFi, no assistance data, airplane mode). A cursory search of the FCC documents for the Mate2 seems to lack any specific information on antenna placement for the phablet.
Cellular
Although I haven't had sufficient time to run a ton of speedtests to see the distribution of data speeds, the cellular architecture of the Ascend Mate2 is rather typical. There's receive diversity, but no transmit diversity, which means that this is similar to the Samsung Galaxy S4 in antenna setup. Based upon the FCC test data, this phone supports quad band GSM (850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz), and band I (2100 MHz), II (1900 MHz PCS), V (850MHz CLR), and IV (AWS 1700/2100 MHz) for quad band WCDMA. LTE band support is for bands 2, 4, 5, and 17 for AT&T and T-Mobile US LTE support. In short, there shouldn't be any issue getting this phone to work on US/Canada GSM operators.
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Fergy - Friday, June 13, 2014 - link
You don't buy purely on pricepoint. You find out what kind of phone you want and then look for the best price/performance ratio. If I want a phablet I will look at a few phablets like this one and note3. The question becomes: is note3 worth the extra premium?Impulses - Friday, June 13, 2014 - link
That's a generalization, and I can make the opposite case too: most people don't buy unlocked phones by paying full price upfront, and once you do you often have a price point already in mind (often something under $400).PubFiction - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
It still wouldn't hurt to throw other phablets in for comparison or controlled outgroups. And to be more fair they could do something like compare it to a note 2 or an older phone since many companies do not really have mid range phones they just have late model phones that are not midrange due to age.dawheat - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
This honestly seems like one of the worst reviews on Anandtech.- 1 line about the 720p resolution on such a large screen - 240dpi is so 2012 and easily seen on any web page
- Pretty bad GPU performance
- For phablets, put to shame by the Oppo or OnePlus phones which are not much more expensive but far more capable.
Maybe a year ago this phone would be a worthwhile budget phablet, but Oppo and OnePlus have already shaken up the phablet market.
nevertell - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
But it's a gr8 m8, m8, I r8 8/8.coolhardware - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
For someone that wants LENGTHY battery life without adding an extended battery (for Note2, Note3 etc.), this seems like a nice choice. The pixel density is low http://pixensity.com/list/phone/ (it is very near the bottom) but for a quite capable unlocked phone the price is not bad IMHO.SanX - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
Totally agree. I couldn't believe to see Anand name on the top of this absurd review of such utter junk. Hey Anand, everything is fine there? Need an eye doctor or others too? Holly &&%$$, it's like i swimmed in the toulet at Engadget.nrfitchett4 - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link
have you even tried the phone? It runs surprising well. The only time it bogs down is after several hours straight of clash of clans with xmod running on top. The only crash I've seen is an occasional contacts crash (weird because I can't find any info on why, maybe other contacts being imported). It runs much better than my G2 at half the price. I bought it because I am no longer subsidizing or financing phones and I was tired of having to charge my "great battery life" G2 at work. I love the battery optimizations and how it tells you if apps are eating battery in the background instead of a bunch of nonsensical google services in the battery list. I noticed the 720p screen for the first day, and after that, I didn't notice it being grainy or pixelated.To each their own, but I find that the midrange market is prime for explosive growth because Android runs just fine on lower end hardware. Funny how lower end hardware is snapdragon 400 and 2gb of RAM...
cknobman - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
Why dont you ever throw in the Nokia Lumia 1520 into these comparisons? Especially when you are looking at things 5.5+ inches?I'd love to see how my Lumia stacks up against some of these other phones.
I have never done an official battery life test but everyday @7am I take it off the charger and @11pm I put it back on and it always has >50% battery life left.
If I dont do any gaming or heavy downloading it will have >60%.
Duraz0rz - Thursday, June 12, 2014 - link
No reason to not include the 1520/930/Icon camera in the comparison, at the very least, especially when he mentions the Lumias on the camera architecture page!