Hands-on with Huawei Ascend Mate

The 6.1-inch Ascend Mate. In the flesh!

We once said that 2013 will be the year of phablets, a portmanteau of "phone" and tablet", and Huawei's 6.1-inch Ascend Mate stands to be one such device. While other manufacturers have concentrated their efforts on 5-inch form factors (including Huawei, with their 5-inch Ascend D2), very few have gone beyond that. Question being: How big is too big? For any device bigger than 5-inch, users would usually be looking at a near tablet-sized form factor. (As a point of reference, tablets have been made in the 7-inch range, ignoring the gap between 5-inches to 7-inches; same goes for phone manufacturers.) In this case, the Ascend Mate, which is very much a phone, blurs the line between both product categories.