Huawei’s Ascend G7 is a mid-range phone with high-end aspirations

Alongside the Ascend Mate 7, Huawei also announced the Ascend G7, a mid-range smartphone with high-end aspirations. In almost every aspect of the G7, Huawei tries to strike a balance between cost and premium specifications but in doing so is the device too much of a compromise?

While the frame of the device is made out of metal, it is bereft of the design nuances that makes metal feel premium. the screen, while rather large, only pushes 720p (albeit IPS) instead of 1080p like its closest competitors and honestly, we’d rather Huawei forgo the metal frame for a cheaper material that feels better in the hand, plastic can feel premium too and is probably considerably cheaper to manufacturer. The processor is a rather standard quad-core Snapdragon 410 clocked at 1.2GHz (it is a 64-bit processor if that means anything to you), there’s 2GB of RAM, 16GB of on board storage and a microSD card slot supporting cards up to 32GB. On the upside, you get cat4 LTE (150Mbps downloads) and there’s Android 4.4 KitKat.

As you can see, the spec sheet is nothing to shout home about but Huawei tries to make up for it in other respects. The camera on the G7 for example is the same as the Ascend Mate 7. This means you get a 13MP Sony BSI sensor with an f/2.0 wide angle lens at the back and a 5MP sensor at the front. Also, the battery is relatively large at 3,000mAh but that’s pretty much it.

Huawei says that it is coming to Malaysia but at €299 or about RM1,230, can the G7 entice you? We’d look elsewhere before making a decision. More details on the Ascend G7 here.