The forgotten smartphone: Huawei Ascend Mate 7

November 6, 2022 Luisa Rey

In this edition of ‘The forgotten smartphone’ we go back to the year 2014. In the same year that DroidApp was founded, we were able to get acquainted with the Huawei Ascend Mate 7. There is plenty to say about this great smartphone.

Huawei Ascend Mate 7

In our weekly column ‘The forgotten…’ we discuss the most diverse smartphones and telephones. Devices that we may not have completely forgotten, or that you now think, oh yes, there was that one too. The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is the smartphone that we bring to our attention this week. It was a powerhouse of a smartphone, from a brand that at the time we still thought ‘huh, what brand is that?’ Although Huawei has faded into the background again in the smartphone area due to the American sanctions, Huawei has done very good business for years.

Enormous

The Huawei Ascend P7 appeared in 2014, the same year when DroidApp was founded. The smartphone was a colossal thing for the time and was marketed as the new flagship of the Chinese manufacturer. Huawei released another flagship earlier that year, the Huawei Ascend P7. The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 was a big boy with an unprecedented large screen, with Full-HD resolution. It had a size of 6.0 inches, with the ‘normal’ smartphone now being delivered with a 6.5 or 6.67 inch screen without any problems. The screen of the Huawei could be used in combination with gloves, the manufacturer said.

In 2014 we could talk about a phablet, a mix between a phone and a tablet. Also striking at the time was the enormous battery capacity, which amounted to 4100 mAh. Also on board was a Kirin 925 chipset, an octa-core processor from the factory of Huawei itself. The RAM came out at 2GB or 3GB. For the internal memory you had the choice of a variant with 16GB or a version with 32GB. Fortunately, with the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 you could simply expand the memory with a memory card, so you always had room for your photos. You could shoot these photos with the 13 megapixel camera on the back, or with the 5 megapixel front camera. Recording 4K images was not yet possible with the Mate 7.

Huawei Ascend Mate 7 colors

With a touch of Apple

The large aluminum housing of the device gave the phone a premium look. The fingerprint scanner was located on the back of the phone. About Android 4.4 KitKat lay the brand’s own Emotion UI skin. Huawei clearly got its inspiration from Apple, because there were many similarities with that of iOS. One of the features was, for example, the lack of the app drawer, the separate app menu. There were also various gestures that were reminiscent of that of the Apple iPhone.

The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 was generally very positively received. A nice finish and housing, ditto screen and a large battery. The speed of the device was also positively received by the users. Later, an update to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop and an update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow appeared for the Mate 7. It is also striking that the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 was the successor of the Huawei Ascend Mate 2. That smartphone appeared a few months earlier, but was not released in the Netherlands.