Huawei has launched its biggest smartphone, Ascend Mate 6.1, for Rs 24,900 in India. It comes with a big 6.1 inch display and has high end features which prompted us to compare it with another biggie – the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8, which too is now available for Rs 24,900.
The comparison below though is purely based on features and actual performance may differ on usage.
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Design and display
Both the phablets (phone+tablet) are huge devices, but the Galaxy Mega 5.8 is slimmer and lighter than the Ascend Mate 6.1. To be specific, the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 measures 162.6 x 82.4 x 9.0 mm (height, width, thickness) and weighs 182 grams. On the other hand, the Huawei Ascend Mate 6.1 measures 163.5 x 85.7 x 9.9 mm and weighs 198 grams. However, it is to be noted that the Ascend Mate has a much bigger 6.1 inch screen than the Samsung handset.
In terms of display quality, the Ascend Mate looks much better with its 1280 x 720 pixel Resolution against the qHD (540 x 960 pixel) resolution of the Mega 5.8. Also, the Huawei device has IPS+ technology that would allow wide angle viewing on the device. Moreover, Corning Gorilla Glass on the Ascend Mate would protect the display from scratches.
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Processor, RAM and OS
Though Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes in both dual core and quad core versions, Samsung is offering only the dual core version in India. The Broadcomm processor comes with a clockspeed of 1.4 GHz.
On the other hand, Ascend Mate has Huawei’s own K3V2 Chipset that houses a 1.5 GHz quad core processor. Obviously, we expect the Huawei device to outperform the Mega 5.8 in terms of processing.
But it is not only a better processor that counts. Ascend Mate with its 2 GB RAM and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean seems to be outperforming the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8, which comes with Android 4.2 and a decent 1.5 GB RAM.
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Camera
Samsung’s devices are known for their camera capability. The Galaxy Mega 5.8 also inspires confidence with its 8 Megapixel auto focus rear camera and 1.9 megapixel front camera.
Huawei Ascend Mate too has an 8 megapixel auto focus rear camera but only a 1 megapixel front camera. However, according to Huawei, one can even capture high definition (720p) videos using the front camera, and that too at 30 frames per second. Samsung has not revealed much about the camera capability of Galaxy Mega 5.8 and without reviewing the phones we can’t say with certainty which one of them is good in this regard.
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Battery
The Huawei Ascend Mate 6.1 with its big 4050 mAh battery lasts up to nine days of standby on WCDMA (3G) network. On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a meagre 2600 mAh battery, which is said to provide up to 12 hours of talktime over both 2G and 3G networks.
Storage
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has 8 GB of Internal Memory and an expandable memory slot for up to 64 GB. The internal storage capacity of Huawei Ascend Mate 6.1 too has 8 GB of internal storage (4.03 GB user available,) but it has an expandable storage slot of up to 32 GB.
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Connectivity
The single SIM Ascend Mate has WiFi (b/g/n), WiFi Direct, WiFi hotspot, DLNA and Bluetooth 4.0. The Mega 5.8 too has WiFi (b/g/n), WiFi Direct, WiFi hotspot, DLNA and Bluetooth. Additionally, this Samsung device comes with dual SIM.
Conclusion
Of course, Samsung is a better brand than Huawei, which is yet to make a mark in the smartphone market in India. The Ascend Mate 6.1 of Huawei outperforms the Galaxy Mega 5.85 in each and every department; but Samsung handsets are renowned for their innovative features and optimization so we would like to give a final verdict on the two handsets only when we have reviewed them.