Huawei unveiled the Ascend Mate along with the Ascend D2 earlier today at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2013. The Ascend Mate has a 6.1-inch 720p display unlike the Ascend D2 that has a 5-inch 1080p display. But the Ascend Mate has a 1.5 GHz quad-core Hi-Silicon K3V2 processor and runs on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) similar to the D2. It comes in Crystal Black and Pure White colors, we got some hands-on time with the Black version.
The 6.1-inch IPS + display at 1280 x 720 pixels resolution is quite huge, but not impressive when compared to the Ascend D2. It has Corning Gorilla glass protection and features magic touch technology that enables users operate the phone using gloves.
It runs on Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) with Huawei’s own EmotionUI 1.5 on top. It has 2GB RAM and has 8GB of internal memory with a expandable memory card slot.
The device has on-screen touch buttons for back, home and multi-tasking and the app switching is fast. There is a 1MP HD front-facing camera at the top.
There is a 8.0 Megapixels rear-facing camera with LED Flash.
The loudspeaker is present at the lower part of the back.
There is a micro USB slot at the bottom along with a microphone.
There is a micro SD card slot on the left.
At the top there is a 3.5mm audio jack and a micro SIM slot.
On the right there is a power button and volume rocker.
The Ascend Mate is 9.9 mm thick and weighs 198 grams. The connectivity features are similar to the D2 including, 3G, Wi-Fi 820.11 a/b/g/n with Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0 with EDR and GPS. The devices also comes with several features such as Easy Panel to access frequent apps, minimized keyboard and dialer to use with single hand, Smart Reading and more. It boasts a 4050 mAh battery.
Here is the entire photo gallery
Srivatsan also contributed to this report along with inputs from Varun and Parth.