Huwei deserves points for courage, for dipping its toes into the dangerous waters of the phablet computer market, for that is where devices are bigger than most smartphones and smaller than most tablets, and consumers are confused and bemused.
With a 6.1-inch screen that's bigger than the iPhone 5's 5-inch one, yet smaller than small 7-inch tablets' displays, the Ascend Mate is neither fish nor fowl. As singer the late Burl Ives would have said, it's a case of "Call Me Mr In-Between''.
We have an open mind about manufacturers churning out 6-inch screen devices. But on closer analysis, getting the best of both worlds from a phone and tablet wrapped into one is a big ask.
First there's the practicality of a 6.1-inch screen device as a phone. Sure, you can hold it to your ear to call, and being 9.9 millimetres thick, slip it into a coat or shirt pocket -- although jeans' pockets are not so practical.
Unless you have large hands, you can't hold it with its heavy 198 gram frame supported by the meat of your palm. You grip it with your fingers wrapped around its edges, and that doesn't feel so stable. And forget one-handed operation.
There's a second issue about 6-inch phablets. When Apple marketed the iPad, it created a second genre of apps resized for it: iPad apps that use the entire 10.1-inch screen.
There's no special genre of apps for phabets, so you either use phone apps that generate extra white space on screen, or tablet apps with the layout scrunched up. Of course, the 6.1-inch screen offers extra real estate for displaying videos and web pages.
That said, the Ascend Mate has some really attractive features.
At $429, it's miles cheaper than what any similarly specced competition, although that advantage is diminishing as competitors' prices come down. The Samsung Galaxy Note 2, for example, which originally cost $899, now sells for under $500.
Secondly, I really like Huawei's decision to ditch dedicated app screens and force apps to be listed on home pages. The Ascend Mate home screen therefore resembles the iPhone - you can organise apps into folders - and it's straight forward.
And with an enormous 4050 milliampere hour Lithium-ion battery, the Ascend Mate doesn't easily run out of juice, as we discovered.
Huawei's strain of Android 4.1.2 includes a "suspend" button, which lets a user open a calculator, video, messaging and movie functions on top of other apps you're running, and there's a glove mode for operating it outdoors during winter.
The Ascend Mate won't connect to the new fourth generation Telstra, Optus and coming Vodafone networks - it is a 3G phone.
It has only 8 Gigabytes of internal storage, but you can add 32GB more using a micro SD card, it has 1 GB of memory, and 8 and 1 megapixel back and front facing cameras.
At 241 pixels per inch, its screen resolution isn't far behind that of the Note 2: 267 ppi.
The Ascend Mate has a fast 1.5 Gigahertz quad core processor but is prone to lag sometimes. Scrolling through tweets in the Twitter app, for example, can be a stop-start affair.
The phone has alternative themes. We found that changing to one with a dark background improved readability.
Huawei hasn't got carriers on-board so you'll need to buy it outright. It's recommended price is $429 but you can get it for $400 if you look around.
Rating: 7
Price $429 rrp
PROS
* Well priced at $429 rrp
* Big juicy 4050 mAh battery
* Can use with gloves
CONS
* Too big for a phone
* No 4G connectivity
* Sluggish at times
