Supersized Huawei Ascend Mate 7 arrives with iPhone rivalling finger scanner

Supersized Huawei Ascend Mate 7 arrives with iPhone rivalling finger scanner
Huawei is bringing innovation back

Hauwei has announced four new handsets at IFA 2014 in Berlin, and the leading light of the line up is the Ascend Mate 7.

The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is another huge handset from the Chinese firm, but the inclusion of the number 7 in the name is a little confusing. This isn't a 7-inch tablet, rather a 6-inch, full HD phablet.

Under the hood sits a powerful octa-core Kirin 825 processor (consisting of 4 x A15 1.8GHz chips and 4 x A7 1.3GHz chips), crammed into a body which is a slender 7.9mm thick.

You also get a 13MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, 4100mAh battery, CAT 6 LTE (providing data speeds of up to 300Mbps) and a fingerprint scanner on the rear.

The fingerprint scanner is interesting, as unlike the one found on the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One Max, you don't have to slide your finger over it.

It instead works in a similar way to TouchID on the iPhone 5S, allowing you to come at it from any angle with a simple touch of your digit. Its placement on the rear isn't the best, but it's certainly a promising development.

Ready to Ascend?

It's not just the Mate 7 that Huawei is giving us though. The Huawei Ascend G7 is a mid-range, all metal device boasting a 5.5-inch 1280 x 720 display, 1.2GHz quad-core 64-bit processor, 2GB of RAM, 13MP camera and 5MP front snapper.

Like the Mate 7, the Ascend G7 features Huawei's new Android overlay - Emotion UI 3.0 - over the top of KitKat, while you also get CAT 4 LTE, a 3000mAh battery and 32GB of internal storage (but no microSD slot).

Then we have the Huawei Ascend Y550 and Ascend G620S - two lower spec (and low cost) devices both sporting Emotion UI 2.3 over the top of Android KitKat.

The entry level Y550 has a 4.5-inch display, 64-bit quad-core processor, 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, 4GB of storage, microSD slot and a 2000mAh battery.

You'll find the same processor inside the Ascend G620S, plus an 8MP rear camera, 2MP front option, 5-inch HD display, 1GB of RAM, 8GB internal storage and a microSD slot.

The Ascend Mate 7, Y550 and G620S will land in stores in October, while the Ascend G7 is due for release in November.

John McCann
Global Managing Editor

John joined TechRadar over a decade ago as Staff Writer for Phones, and over the years has built up a vast knowledge of the tech industry. He's interviewed CEOs from some of the world's biggest tech firms, visited their HQs and has appeared on live TV and radio, including Sky News, BBC News, BBC World News, Al Jazeera, LBC and BBC Radio 4. Originally specializing in phones, tablets and wearables, John is now TechRadar's resident automotive expert, reviewing the latest and greatest EVs and PHEVs on the market. John also looks after the day-to-day running of the site.