Huawei Ascend Mate2 4G review: Value king

Web browser

The Ascend Mate comes with two excellent web browsers - the stock Jelly Bean edition and Google Chrome. The two browsers feature similar layout, though we found Google Chrome to be more to our liking - it is simply more up to date than the stock Jelly Bean solution.

Two browsers out of the box

Thanks to the large 6.1" display of the device, web browsing is a real pleasure.

Other apps

Google Drive is the default office document editor out of the box. It is highly capable and completely free.

Google Drive

The phone manager app helps users optimize the performance of their device. It has a built-in scanner which identifies problematic areas that need to be tweaked.

The phone manager app

The calendar features four views - Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Agenda. The app can easily handle several online calendars as well as the local calendar. You can add multiple reminders for each event and search all events.

The calendar

The clock app supports multiple alarms, each with its own start and repeat time. World Clock, Stopwatch and Timer functions are available as additional tabs.

The clock app

You also get a Sound recorder. Its interface is clean and easy to work with.

The sound recorder

The good old calculator is here too - it has big, easily thumbable keys and you can swipe to the left to bring up the advanced functions (trigonometry, square root, brackets, etc.).

The calculator

Finally, there's the flashlight app. It holds no surprises.

A flashlight out of the box