Huawei launched the Ascend Mate (MT1-U06) in India earlier this week at a price tag of Rs. 24,900, and we brought you the review of the device recently. We found the Ascend Mate as one of the best phablets under Rs. 25,000. Samsung launched Galaxy Note 2 in India last year, which is still one of the popular phablet in the India market. The company is also promoting the phone through EMI offers and Smart upgrade offers. The Huawei Ascend Mate would give a tough competition to the Note 2 mainly due the large screen and the price tag. We managed to compare both these devices.
The Ascend Mate has a huge 6.1-inch IPS+ display at a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 240 PPI, while the Galaxy Note 2 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display at a resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 267 PPI. Both the screens are bright, but the Super AMOLED display in the Galaxy Note 2 has better color calibration. The Ascend Mate has a super sensitive screen that lets you operate the phone even with a thick gloves once you enable the glove mode in the settings, but the Note 2 lacks this feature. The 6.1-inch screen in the Ascend Mate has a width of 75.98 and a height of 135.98, the width and the height of the body is 85.70 x 163.50 which makes the screen-to-body ratio 73.21% higher than the Galaxy Note 2 which has a ratio of 68.56%. The Note 2 has a screen width of 48.48 and a height of 121.76, the width and the height of the body is 80.50 x 151.10.
The Huawei Ascend Mate has a 1-megapixel HD front-facing camera and the Galaxy Note 2 comes with a 1.9-megapixel camera. Both the Accelerometer, LED notification Light, Compass, Proximity and Gyro sensors. In addition to all these the Note 2 has a Barometer or pressure sensor to measure atmospheric pressure.
The Ascend Mate has on-screen buttons for back, home and multitasking. You can also hide the navigation bar to use the complete screen. The Note 2 has menu and back capacitive touch buttons and a hardware home button.
On the top both the phones have a 3.5mm audio jack and a secondary microphone. The Ascend Mate has a micro SIM card slot since it has a sealed back.
On the bottom both have a micro USB slot and a primary microphone. The Note 2 has a slot for the S Pen.
On the right side the phones have a power button. The Ascend Mate also has a volume rocker below the power button.
The Note 2 has a volume rocker on the left and the Ascend Mate has a micro SD card slot.
Both these phones pack a 8-megapixel camera with BSI sensor, LED Flash and full HD video recording. Comparing the image quality, both are almost similar, but the images from the Note 2 are slightly better. The logs of these phones are present below the camera.
The speaker grill is clearly visible on the Note 2, since the Ascend Mate has black body the tiny speaker grill is hardly visible. The loudspeaker output is better in the Note 2 compared to the Ascend Mate.
The Ascend Mate doesn’t come with a stylus, but the Note comes with a dedicated S Pen stylus. It also comes with dedicated stylus apps.
The Galaxy Note 2 has a removable battery, but the Ascend Mate has a sealed battery. The Ascend Mate feels solid and has smooth matte finish, but the Note 2 has pebble design philosophy like the S3, with worse plastics. The Ascend Mate has a 4,050 mAh battery compared to the 3,100 mAh battery on the Note 2. The Note 2 also has SIM card and memory card slots underneath. Both these phones have 2GB RAM and expandable memory up to 64GB. The Ascend Mate has 8GB of internal memory and the Note 2 comes with 16GB of internal memory. It also comes in 32GB and 64GB variants depending on the countries.
Both these phones run on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. The Note 2 was launched on Android 4.1.1, but it got an update to 4.1.2 later. The The Ascend Mate is powered by a 1.5 GHz K3v2 processor with 16-core Vivante GC4000 GPU. Both are based on ARMv7 architecture and uses ARM Cortex-A9 CPU. The Galaxy Note 2 has a 1.6 GHz Exynos 4 Quad 4412 GPU with Mali 400 GPU. You can check out the benchmark comparison here.
The Ascend Mate has Emotion UI 1.5 on top that doesn’t have a separate menu and the Note 2 has a Touchwiz UI. Coming to the connectivity features, both the phones have 3G HSPA＋ (HSDPA: 21Mbps HSUPA: 5.76Mbps ), WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4 & 5 GHz), Bluetooth v 4.0, Wi-Fi Direct and aGPS. The Note 2 has MHL, NFC and Apt-X Codec support.
So, if you are looking for an Android smartphone with a huge screen, good build and great battery life, the Ascend Mate should be your choice. If you looking for a phablet with stylus support and a powerful processor, Note 2 should be your choice. But since the Note 3 launch is around the corner, if you are ready to spend some more, wait for it.