Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is a great device, perhaps even the best device Huawei made this year (and ever). This Chinese smartphone manufacturer announced the Mate 7 back at IFA in September and has sold a significant amount of Mate 7 units thus far, though they didn’t manufacture many of them. Ascend Mate 7 carries a rather steep price tag and that’s why Huawei went the subtle approach with the manufacturing here, however the Mate 7 usually sells out whenever it is available for sale. A couple of days ago the company has teased a December 12th launch for a special edition Ascend Mate 7 called “Monarch”. That phablet just launched in China, so let’s see what’s new here.
We originally thought that Ascend Mate 7 “Monarch” will come with a Sapphire display and perhaps a slightly higher processor clock speed, but that’s not the case. This phablet actually brings a bump in storage space, it comes with 64GB of internal storage, and it also comes in Amber Gold color only. That’s not all though, Huawei also gives out extended warranty with this device and a VIP membership card for some extra goodies from the company. You wonder how much will this cost you? Well, as we originally thought, this handset is 700 Yuan more expensive than the original, which means it costs 4,399 Yuan ($711). Is this a steep price? Sure it is, and I really don’t see the point of purchasing this instead of the original Mate 7, but hey, that’s just me. Keep in mind that this handset is available in China only and you can get it via Vmall for the aforementioned price of 4,399 Yuan ($711).
Ascend Mate 7 “Monarch” features a 6-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080) IPS LCD display along with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable internal storage. This phablet is powered by Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 925 octa core processor (quad-core 1.8GHz Cortex-A15 and quad-core 1.3GHz Cortex-A7) which comes with Mali-T628 GPU for graphics rendering. On the back of the device, you’ll find a 13-megapixel sensor and a dual LED flash while there’s 5-megapixel snapper located on the front of the device. This device ships with a non-removable 4100mAh battery which should provide plenty of juice for you to use and Android 4.4 KitKat comes pre-installed with Huawei’s Emotion UI on top of it. Ascend Mate 7 measures 157 x 81 x 7.9mm while it weighs 185 grams.
