IFA 2014: Huawei Ascend Mate7 and G7 hands-on

Huawei Ascend Mate7

The Huawei Ascend Mate7 features a 6-inch IPS LCD display of 1080p resolution, covered in Gorilla Glass 3. While some may be disappointed by the lack of QHD resolution on a diagonal of this size, Huawei makes up for it by the very slim screen bezels, which means the display enjoys an impressive 83% of the front panel.

Under the hood, Huawei's updated octa-core Kirin 925 CPU means business, with four 1.8GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 cores, complemented by 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable memory (there will also be a 32GB variant with 3GB of RAM).

The Mate7 looks slick and its 95% metal construction is the impressive 7.9mm slim. It's far superior to the plastic build of the original Ascend Mate, and even comes in lighter at 185g.

Around back is where things get interesting. Despite the decidedly HTC One Max-inspired design, Huawei has brought some real innovation in the shape of fingerprint identification. The fingerprint sensor offers 8-bit grey level detection, 360-degree readability, and can even be used in wet conditions. It only requires a tap with a finger to activate, rather than the tedious drag routine on Samsung devices.

Despite the upgrade to 13MP for the primary camera, it's only able to record 1080p videos @30fps, while the 5MP front-facer stops at 720p. The 4,100mAh battery is non user-accessible, but is rated by Huawei for up to 2 days of uptime and provides power saving modes that can last longer.

The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 will be available in Obsidian black, Moonlight silver, and Amber gold for €499 (€599 for the 3GB/32GB model), and is set to start selling this quarter in over 30 countries.

Huawei have just announced their latest 6-inch phablet, the Ascend Mate7. It's an update of last year's 6.1-incher, featuring a slimmer 7.9mm frame, faster octa-core chipset running on Huawei's in-house Kirin 925 processor, and a larger 4100mAh battery.

The Mate7 features a high-quality aluminum alloy build, and impressive 2.9mm side bezels for a screen-to-surface ratio that's much improved over that of the Ascend Mate. The camera is based on a 13MP Sony sensor with an f/2.0 aperture, although it doesn't come with 4K video recording.

It runs Android 4.4 KitKat with the latest version 3.0 of Huawei's EMUI, and features an "instant single-touch" fingerprint sensor on the back that can be used to unlock the device or authorize payments.