Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

Is big beautiful again?

Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review
A metal body, fingerprint scanner and a clever microSD slot

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It might be a bit unwieldy, given the size, but the Huawei Ascend Mate stands up well as a camera. The Chinese company has added a 13MP rear-facing lens capable of snapping at a 4128 x 3096 resolution.

The front-facing 5MP camera will take reasonable selfies as well as providing 720p video calling via Skype, Google Hangouts or any other video calling client.

Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

The rear-facing 13MP camera has a few cool features to play with

The usual array of effects and settings are included – the ISO range stretches from 100-800 with Huawei boasting better low-light performance with the added LED flash.

The HDR mode and auto focus worked well when I took the Ascend Mate 7 for a stroll around the park and there are some useful touches, like voice or fingerprint-activated shooting.

Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

There's the usual range of camera features to tinker with

Also included are the options to geo-tag pictures and face detection. Something else that Huawei has included in previous phones, like the Ascend G6, is the Beauty level slider to improve selfies by smoothing out the skin and enlarging the eyes.

You can take a panorama mode for sweeping vistas or, if you're taking shots of fast-moving items, the best photo mode. This is essentially a burst mode that works like the Zoe feature on HTC's smartphones; taking several pictures very quickly and allowing you to select the best.

I played around with the various settings and filters and you can see the images below.

Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

An overcast day shot with HDR mode enabled

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Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

The nostalgia filter gives everything a sepia-based tint

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Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

The autofocus was very effective, picking up the detail in the birds as they flew overhead

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Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

The vintage filter employs a washed-out palette

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Huawei Ascend Mate 7 review

The Ascend Mate 7 performs reasonably well in low-light, and you can adjust ISO settings manually to compensate

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