Galaxy Note 2 vs. Ascend Mate: New 6.1-Inch Phablet Takes Title for Biggest Smartphone, But Is It Better?

Is bigger better?

Huawei's massive 6.1-inch Ascend Mate, revealed at CES 2013, has toppled Samsung's Galaxy Note 2, formerly the largest popular smartphone on the market, from its perch.

The Ascend Mate has a 1280 by 720 pixel screen. "Naturally, Huawei's phone/tablet hybrid requires a fair bit of horsepower to push all those pixels, and the company leaned on a 1.4GHz quad-core chipset from its HiSilicon semiconductor division," writes Chris Velazco at TechCrunch.

"The Mate also has 2GB of RAM under the hood, sports a ridiculous 4,050mAh battery, comes with 8GB of internal flash storage out of the gate, and runs Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 (obscured partially because of Huawei's custom Emotion UI)," he says.

In comparison, the Note II looks tiny, with its 5.5-inch screen, which us already more than an inch larger than the screen on the iPhone 5.

The Ascend Mate also has nice usability specs.

"WiFi will apparently see a speed boost to 150Mbps thanks to dual WiFi receivers and in the stage demo a 1GB file took a mere 60 seconds to download," writes Egadget. "Huawei claims the Ascend Mate will see you chatting for 22 hours, surfing the Web for 14, or watching 10 hours of video. Fully 73% of that handset's face is display."

And that display features Huawei's "Magic Touch" technology, which works even with gloved fingers.

But the Ascend Mate fall short in some areas.

The phone isn't LTE-ready, so it will only work on the slower network options still offered by AT&T and T-Mobile.

It's also heavy, nearly twice as heavy as the iPhone 5. It's 2/3 of an ounce heavier than the Note II, and nearly half an ounce heavier than the Nokia Lumia 920, which has been criticized for its weight.

Of course, the size makes the Ascend Mate nearly impossible to use in one hand or one the move, but the Note II has the same issues, and that hasn't slowed sales.

But the last straw may be availability. Huawei has no plans yet to sell the Mate in the United States. It releases in China in February and other unspecified countries in March, for an equally unspecified price.