Huawei Ascend Mate review: a supersized phone with supreme battery life

Huawei Ascend Mate review a supersized phone with supreme battery life

When Huawei revealed the Ascend Mate at CES this year, it felt like smartphones had reached an end point — they surely couldn’t get any larger. We’ve since been proven wrong by Samsung’s Galaxy Mega 6.3, but the 6.1-inch Ascend Mate has gone on sale first, and it’s every bit as intimidating as it was in January. The question is whether or not Huawei has more than just size on its side. Is this nearly tablet-sized device worth putting in our pockets, and can it fend off the suddenly tiny-looking Galaxy Note II and Optimus G Pro? Read on past the break, and you’ll find out.

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Huawei’s 6.1-inch Ascend Mate priced in China, turns Yu into part-time model

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Huawei is once again showing its aggressive side in the consumer space, this time by way of its 6.1-inch Ascend Mate which debuted at CES (with a little help from Huawei Device chairman Richard Yu, pictured above). What’s new is that earlier today the company announced a price for this Android 4.1 tabletphone in China: ¥2,688 (about $430) unsubsidized, which is pretty competitive given the specs. Need a quick recap? The Mate comes with a 1.5GHz quad-core HiSilicon K3V2, 2GB of RAM, IPS display (but only with 720p resolution) with Gorilla Glass 2 and glove-friendly “Magic Touch” technology, up to 64GB of microSD expansion (on top of the native 4GB available space), 8-megapixel camera and a 4,050mAh battery. Better yet, this particular model comes with WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100 pentaband radio, so it’ll work nicely for frequent travelers. Interested buyers can hit the order button on Huawei’s Vmall online store on the 26th next week.

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Via: Engadget Chinese

Source: Huawei Vmall

TSMC to triple 28nm chip shipment this year, asserts confidence in 20nm demand

TSMC to triple 28nm chip shipment this year, asserts confidence in 20nm demand

At yesterday’s investor meeting in Taipei, TSMC’s chairman and CEO Morris Chang shared the good news that his company’s 28nm chip shipment this year will triple that of last year, which should boost its annual increase in revenue to above the industry’s average rate of seven percent. China Times reports that orders for TSMC’s 28nm silicon are lined up to as far out as late Q3, courtesy of demand for ARM processors, baseband chips, graphics processors and x86 processors. This is no surprise considering the likes of Qualcomm (Snapdragon 600 and 800), Huawei (HiSilicon K3V2 Pro and K3V3), NVIDIA (Tegra 4), AMD (Temash and Kabini) and possibly Apple will be ordering more 28nm-based chipsets from the foundry throughout the year. TSMC did struggle with its 28nm supply for Qualcomm early last year, but it eventually caught up later on, and Chang stated that TSMC now owns nearly 100 percent of the 28nm process market.

Looking further ahead, Chang said his company’s already seen enough clients and demand for the upcoming 20nm manufacturing process, which should have a more significant financial contribution in 2014. The exec also predicted that at TSMC, its 20nm production will see a bigger growth rate between 2014 and 2015 than its 28nm counterpart did between 2012 and 2013 — the former should eventually nab close to 90 percent of the market, said Chang.

[Image credit: TSMC]

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Via: The Next Web

Source: China Times (translated), MoneyDJ (translated)

Huawei’s Richard Yu confirms 8-core chip for 2H 2013, teases super slim P series phone for MWC

Huawei's Richard Yu confirms 8core chip for 2H 2013, teases super slim P series phone for MWC

We never thought our day could get any better after Huawei’s Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu became available again for our CES stage interview (there was originally a “last minute urgent conflict”), but our man was also kind enough to share a couple more scoops with us. First of all, Huawei will be joining Samsung at the octa-core Cortex-A15 party in the second half of this year, and given what Yu’s told us earlier this week, our guess is that this will either be the HiSilicon K3V3 or a sister chipset, again manufactured by TSMC.

The second scoop of the day was delivered fresh off the stage after the interview. Yu told us exclusively that at MWC next month, Huawei will be unveiling a super slim follow-up to the current P series Android phones. We asked if it’ll be even thinner than 6.45mm (the thickness of the Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra announced at CES), and Yu said yes. The exec added that the new phone will have a beautiful metallic body as well. Exciting times, right?

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Via: Engadget Chinese

Huawei’s HiSilicon K3V3 chipset due 2H 2013, to be based on Cortex-A15

Earlier today our brethren over at Engadget Chinese got to hang out with Huawei Device chairman Richard Yu, who was kind enough to inform us that his company will release a HiSilicon K3V3 chipset — the follow-up to the current quad-core K3V2 — in the second half of this year. What’s more, much like NVIDIA’s upcoming Tegra 4, the new platform will be based on the more powerful Cortex-A15 ARM architecture instead of Cortex-A9. Yu also hinted that the K3V3 will be featured in the successors to the Ascend D2 and the Ascend Mate, but our guess is that we won’t be seeing those at MWC next month. We shall tickle the man live on stage for more answers this Thursday.

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Huawei’s D1 Quad now available in China for $425 unsubsidized

Huawei's D1 Quad now available in China

Following the MediaPad 10 FHD quad-core tablet, Huawei’s also starting to sell another device powered by its very own HiSilicon K3V2 (Hi3620) chip. Over the weekend, the Ascend D1 Quad (formerly without the “1” in the name) joins the familiar-looking D1 and D1 XL as the third member of the family, but unsurprisingly costs the most out of these three Android 4.0 phones — we’re looking at ¥2,699 or about $425 unsubsidized on Huawei’s Chinese online store, while the remaining TI OMAP4460-powered candybars cost ¥100 ($16) and ¥200 ($32) less. Huawei Device chairman Richard Yu said on Sina Weibo that while some local competitors — namely Xiaomi, K-Touch and Beidou — are able to offer quad-core devices below ¥2,000 ($315), he assured fans that Huawei’s build quality and user experience are worth the price. Staying true to his macho style, Yu also used this opportunity to take a dig at the Galaxy S III’s price-to-performance ratio. Meow!

Just a quick recap: the D1 Quad comes with a 1.4GHz 40nm Cortex-A9 chip, a mysterious 16-core GPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, 160GB cloud storage and microSD expansion, complemented by a 4.5-inch Toshiba IPS+ HD display, Gorilla Glass 2, eight-megapixel BSI main camera, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, pentaband WCDMA radio, old-school mini-SIM slot and a generous 2,600mAh non-removable cell (same as the D1 XL’s). The more we look at this, the more tempted we are. At least until the APQ8064-powered Xiaomi Phone 2 lands in October, anyway.

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Huawei’s D1 Quad now available in China for $425 unsubsidized originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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