Huawei Ascend Mate review: First look

If you weren't sure about the large size of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, you're probably going to be even less sure about the Huawei Ascend Mate with its massive 6.1-inch display...

The huge device was launched at CES 2013 and it sits in the middle of Huawei's portfolio, with the Ascend W1 Windows Phone 8 at the bottom and Ascend D2 at the top.

The Ascend Mate measures 163.5mmx85.7mmx9.9mm, which isn't small by any stretch of the imagination. We found it difficult to do most things on it – typing for one is tricky, with the Mate's gigantic keyboard. 

We found ourselves rather painfully stretching our thumb muscle to reach across to the other side. The size of the device does feel rather uncomfortable in the hand, or at least it will to users with average-sized hands.

At the top of the device, there's the SIM card slot which is connected by a rather flimsy piece of plastic to the main chassis, and an earphone port. 

The device is available in black or white, with a metal-look bezel around the sides.

The back plate is made of plastic, which unfortunately is a little on the creaky side, as is the norm with plastic-based devices.

At the bottom of the device, there's the microUSB charging port.

To give you some idea of just how big the Huawei Ascend Mate really is, we took some pictures of the device next to the Nexus 4, which features a 4.7-inch screen - not at all a small handset.

The Huawei Ascend Mate's screen is bright, and with a resolution of 1280x720 pixels it's very detailed, too. The device runs Android 4.1 with the Huawei Emotion UI.

The The Huawei Ascend Mate's redeeming feature, aside from the screen is its huge 4050mAh battery, which Huawei claims will provide up to nine days standby.

Has the Galaxy Note 2 met its match? We'll know more once we've tested the handset properly. Initial impressions, however, are that it might be a tad too big to be a viable handset...