Last month we brought you news of the first ever notable 6 inch phablet readying itself to receive its new sibling and successor, the Ascend Mate 2. Though rumours back then, they were a place-holder for more news to come about the giant device. Images from fillings Chinese device certification agency Tenaa’s website alleged to be those of the upcoming Huawei Ascend Mate 2 have emerged and reveal some more details about the device that we did not have before.
As per the leaks, the Ascend Mate 2 won’t be much of a new device as had been previously thought. Apart from retaining the first generation Mate‘s display size, the resolution is likely to remain the same. Now that bit may not be music to the ears of those who expected Huawei to throw in a full HD LCD panel. If the leaks are anything to go by, a 720p display is all that the Mate will be getting alongside a custom Huawei quad-core chip (Huawei Kirin910) clocked at 1.6 GHz, 2 GB RAM and support for expandable memory (upto 64 GB). There’s no word on the internal storage capacity but 16 GB seems likely with other options like 32 GB not being ruled out. I have recently played with the first generation Mate and the 8 GB therein is not sufficient for all the heavy lifting you may want to engage in with such a huge device.
Expected to measure 161×84.9×9.54mm and weigh in at 202g, the Ascend Mate 2 will have a 5 megapixel front facing camera (following in the footsteps of the Ascend P6 as far as high res front cameras go) and a 13 megapixel camera at the back. Black and white are the colour options that the device is expected to be available in. Android 4.2.2 and not 4.4 KitKat is what the certification fillings indicate the device will run. That is expected as of now since the device is likely to still be undergoing some more internal testing. With Huawei coming out to boldly claim that the Ascend P6 will be getting some KitKat goodness in January 2014, it makes sense to expect all high end Huawei devices from the start of 2014 will ship with Android 4.4 out of the box never mind the fact that Emotion UI will be all over the place with its lack of an application drawer and an iOS style of accessing apps.
The Ascend Mate 2 devices filed for certification by Chinese authorities point to there being two variants of the device: the MT2-C00 and the MT2-U071. The two are said to be carrier-specific for China Telecom and China Unicom respectively.
