A gigantic, ultra high-definition powerhouse

Huawei has a slew of new devices to show off at this year's IFA tech show in Berlin, from the dirt-cheap Ascend Y550 to the 5-inch, metal Ascend G7. The biggest of the bunch, however, is the Ascend Mate 7. This top-end phone packs a huge 6-inch display with an impressive 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution, an octa-core processor, Cat 6 LTE, a fingerprint scanner and a 13-megapixel camera.

The Ascend Mate 7 is due to go on sale in October, although Huawei wouldn't elaborate on either the price of the phone, or on where it'll be going on sale. With such an imposing lineup of specs, it's unlikely to go for pocket change. Keep your eyes on CNET over the coming weeks for further pricing and availability of this impressive beast.

Design and display

Let's not beat around the bush here, the Mate 7 is huge. It has a 6-inch screen which will be impossible to use with only one hand, unless you have palms the size of planets. One of the big ones. Jupiter, maybe. That screen is encased in an all-metal body that hasn't had to balloon out too much to accommodate the screen as Huawei has kept the bezel to a minimum -- Huawei boasts that 83 percent of the face of the phone is screen

As well as silver, the phone will be available in a charcoal grey colour as well as a light gold -- three colours I'm sure Huawei chose by complete accident, forgetting the iPhone 5S launched in exactly the same hues. iPhone aside, it's actually rather reminiscent of the HTC One Max, thanks partly to its size, but also the matte metal, the curved back, the lines crossing the back at the top and bottom, the camera and flash placement and of course the fingerprint scanner sitting directly below the camera. So not that similar really.

The display has a 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution, which should make it extremely sharp. Huawei has a decent history of making bright, vivid displays -- the MediaPad X1's display was great, for example -- so I'm hoping to see similarly high quality on this top-end device.

Features

The Mate 7 bristles with top-notch internal specs to go with that high-resolution display. It has an octa-core processor, made up of two quad-core units. One, slightly less powerful, is used for basic tasks, while the phone switches to the more potent side of the silicon when it needs more power for stuff like gaming or image processing.

On the back you'll find a couple of interesting things. Firstly, there's a fingerprint scanner used to both unlock the phone and to authorise payments online. It's in the same place as on the massive HTC One Max -- right where your index finger would naturally sit -- although how it performs remains to be seen.

The other feature on the back is of course the camera. In this case, it's a 13-megapixel affair with a bright f/2.0 aperture, which Huawei reckons will make it particularly good in low-light situations. (I'll be the judge of that thanks, chaps.) There's an 8-megapixel front-facing camera as well, which is a hell of a lot of pixels for a snapper on the front. The Mate 7 is evidently aiming for the selfie-loving, big-handed niche.

The phone is powered by a 4,000mAh battery. That seems pretty capacious, but with an octa-core processor and a huge high-definition display to run, I don't imagine the battery will have a particularly easy time of things. I'll have to wait for the full review to see what sort of battery life this phone can achieve.

Outlook

Even without seeing its finished design, the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 has plenty to brag about. Its vast screen has such high definition it should appeal to photographers, its octa-core processor should provide oodles of power and I'm looking forward to seeing how its wide-aperture camera performs. On paper at least, it's ticking most of the boxes for a top-end device.