The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 2, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Ascend Mate 7
- HiSilicon
Camera Performance
The Mate 7 sports the same camera setup as the Honor 6. I've already determined for that device that the quality suffers quite a bit due to what seems to be very poor ISP performance.
For all practical purposes, I don't see any improvement in quality in the Mate 7. The device is still very lack-luster in the camera department.
f/2 1/658s ISO50
f/2 1/658s ISO50 HDR
During day-light shots we see the same lack of detail as found on the Honor 6. It's a pity that Huawei didn't manage to improve the processing here as the camera should have been able to produce better results based on the Sony IMX214 sensor. The HDR shots similarly see a colour balance issue as the image loses saturation.
f/2 1/16s ISO3200
f/2 1/16s ISO800 HDR
In night-time shots again the Mate 7 underperforms. Under dark conditions where other flagship phones would at least capture the scene in some reasonable manner, the Mate 7, like the Honor 6 will be hard to recognize what it is you took a shot of.
The camera application provides a fresh new UI that looks fantastic. But the problem here is that I find the usability has taken a toll, as previously easily available settings are now hidden behind various sub-menus.
In the end the still-picture performance of the Mate 7 is rather lackluster and competitor devices such as the Note 4 are on a completely other level in terms of picture quality. Huawei has a lot of progress to do if they wish to compete in the camera department.
In the standard 1080p mode we get a 24Mbps AVC Baseline@L4.0 video stream at 25fps with 96Kbps stereo AAC audio. The video is sharp and fluid, albeit the colours are a tad oversaturated. It's the lack of any kind of stabilization is very obvious and the video is very shaky. Again the device offers excellent video audio quality capture which is I think one of the best out there.
When turning on the electronic image stabilization the quality of the video dramatically decreases. We see a big reduction in the details of the video and what should be 1080p turns into something inferior to 720p. It's pretty obvious what's going on here: Instead of increasing the capture frame beyond 1080p on the image sensor, Huawei is retaining the 1080p capture frame and then reduces the actual video window inside of the frame and reserves the margins needed for the EIS to operate. The video window is then upscaled again to 1080p, resulting in a blurry image and loss of detail. The effect also reduces the field-of-view of the camera.
The 720p video with both HDR and EIS is even worse off. We go down to a 14.4Mbps AVC video stream on a custom encoding profile, while retaining the audio track quality. Here the resulting image resembles more what a 480p recording would produce. I've determined that this is solely due to a badly performing ISP on the Kirin SoCs.
NAND Performance
The Mate 7 employs the same Toshiba eMMC solution as found on the Honor 6. There's not much to say here other than the performance being outright horrible and unacceptable for a 2014 product. Although the model number of the chip is the same as on the Honor 6, it still manages to underperform what was already a device which was bottoming out our benchmark suite.
Competing flagships such as the Note 4 manage to outperform the Mate 7 by a hefty factor of 4 or 5 throughout all the tests. Surprisingly I don't seem to see the effect of this too much in everyday usage, but this might just be my subjective bias.
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MantasPakenas - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
Wow. I guess this is as direct confirmation that Sony hasn't provided them a device for review as we can get. I just wonder if they've also been asked for one specifically, which they probably were.No wonder Sony continues to underperform with their handset business despite making some great devices. Their marketing can't be excused for not having a review at Anandtech as soon NDA lifts.
Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
I've tried reaching out to Sony as being one of the newer European editors (Sony has a much stronger presence here) but sadly they haven't gotten back to me in 3 months.It's a pity.
Dribble - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
/me looks for nexus 9 review - nope still not hereIt's not just Sony!
Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have feeling they picking phones which they wants to slag and make crap from..ayejay_nz - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
I second this, thanks a lot for the review.I was hoping this device would provide similar battery performance to the Mate 2, alas : [
Might have to get a 6+, however the fact that the Lightning SD Card Adapter doesn't work with it is extremely frustrating. A $750 - $950 smart phone that can't download photos quickly because of some stupid software switch that makes the adapter incompatible, sigh. May have to use a WiFi SD card or Reader : [
Ethos Evoss - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
That we ALWAYS know then u are wisiting anadtech :D THE MOST WEIRD website on the planet..I bet everybody there has iiiphhhonees 6 and pluses there.. and they having even sex with them ..@DDD
banks1990 - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
"The dimensions figure at 139.6 x 69.7 x 7.9mm"Almost the same size of a Huawei Honor 6 eh?
bernstein - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
interesting! this phone is smaller than its screen, which measures ~73x130mm.obviously its completely wrong... the mate 7 measures 157 x 81 x 7.9 mm :)
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
My apologies - yes I initially started off the same table for the specs.tipoo - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
That much throttling with that little performance is...Kind of impressive, in a way? Well, that all turns me off from this phone anyway.