You may not be all that familiar with Huawei, but it’s a company with a huge presence worldwide and owns the title as the third largest smartphone vendor in the world. The Chinese phone manufacturer is aiming to make 2014 its biggest year yet, with a target goal of 80 million shipped devices for the year. The best way to reach that number? New phones, of course. And Huawei brought just that, with refreshes to some of its most popular models.
Company CEO Richard Yu took the stage at CES 2014 to relive the glories of last year’s CES, where the company announced the Ascend Mate. Hoping to duplicate the success of that device, Yu announced the Ascend Mate 2 with 4G connectivity. Following in the line of phablet-sized phones that its predecessor started, the Ascend Mate 2 features a 6.1-inch, 720p display. It’s slimmed down a bit, measuring just 9.5mm thick, and features internals of a quad-core 1.6GHz proceesor, 2GB or RAM, and a 4,050mAh battery that should provide extremely long usage time. A 5MP camera faces the front and a 13MP camera on the back. Perhaps most impressive, the Ascend Mate 2 supports all mobile networks and will be available in the U.S.
Though connectivity is key when it comes to smartphones, the battery in the Ascend Mate 2 became a focal point as Huawei hammered home just how much usage one could expect out of its massive 4,050mAh battery. Thanks to optimizations and power-saving technology used with the battery, Huawei makes a lofty promise of 2 days of uninterrupted use. At one point, a slide suggested one could “stream 3 movies, watch 6 saved movies, surf the Internet for half a day, and listen to 1000 hours of music.” The battery is so powerful, it supports reverse charging, meaning users can charge other devices from the phone itself. That’s not a Saturday Night Live-style parody, that’s a real feature.
Another point of emphasis with the Ascend Mate 2 is its cameras. The front-facing 5MP lens is there for those that love to snap pictures of themselves, and the camera app has 10-level automatic face enhancements that it can apply. The CEO of one of the largest phone providers in the world uttered the word “selfie” on multiple occasions because of this camera, that’s how powerful it is. On the back of the Ascend Mate 2 is a 13MP camera powered by Sony optics. Huawei claims there are “200 background processes” occurring to make photos look better. Users can also add audio to photos and share them via a remote sharing feature.
The Ascend Mate 2 will run on Android 4.2.2, but will use Huawei’s own Emotion UI. Designed to simplify the Android experience, which the company said could be “complicated,” Emotion UI comes with a startup manager so users can select the apps they want when the phone turns on and can easily switch off apps running in the background.
No price point or release date has been announced for the Ascend Mate 2.
