Huawei 6.1" Ascend Mate

Huawei's conspicuous 6.1" smartphone we saw leaked a few months agojust materialized as the "largest screen smartphone" Ascend Mate, and, really, at this size, who can argue with that claim. For comparison, the looming Galaxy Note II has a 5.5" display.

The game is to replace your phone, tablet, laptop, camera and so on, with one converging device, but we'll leave to Mr Market to decide whether this can be done via a 6.1" smartphone successfully enough, be it one with "a screen-to-body ratio of 73% – the highest in the industry."

Apparently Huawei couldn't ring the manufacturer which produces Full HD displays at that size, and made do with 1280 x 720 pixels HD resolution for the IPS screen. The screen also sports the "Magic Touch" tech, allowing you to use it with gloves on. 

The upside of the "mere" HD resolution is that there aren't as many pixels to push for the GPU, and a homebrew 1.5 GHz quad-core Hi-Silicon K3V2 processor is powering the handset, which should mean no slouch, as the K3V1 in theAscend D was pretty fast in the first place. You also get an 8 MP rear camera with HDR, 1 MP at the front, pentaband HSPA radio, and dual-antenna design for improved reception.

The phone can be considered compact for the screen, thanks to the on-screen navigation buttons, and the 163.5 mm x 85.7 mm x 9.9 mm (6.5" x 3.4" x 0.4") chassis, but will still feel awkward to hold with one hand at that size, and at 198g of weight. The obligatory one-hand phablet UI is here, too, cramping the keyboard and dialpad left or right so you can reach them with your thumb without being Shaq.

On the plus side, Huawei has equipped it with the largest ever stock battery in a smartphone at 4050 mAh, so that you can keep watching'em movies on the subway for 10 hours, promises the company. With that screen size, it will be a shame if you don't come next month, when the phone will be launching in Huawei's homeland.

Sony Xperia Z and Xperia ZL

The specs on the Xperia Z are what we expected from the rumors. It will be a 5" 1080p display, a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM, LTE, a 2330mAh battery, and the highly anticipated new 13MP Exmor RS camera sensor. As we saw in leaked images, the Exmor RS camera sensor will allow for HDR video recording, and a newly announced feature is that it will also offer a 10fps burst mode at 9MP. The phone also has NFC and a microSD card for those of you looking for that. 

 

An interesting addition to the Xperia Z is that the phone will be water resistant to a depth of one meter. To achieve this, the Xperia Z has glass panels on the front and back, as well as plastic strips on the sides that cover the ports. And, they cover all of the ports from microSD card slot, to headphone jack, to microUSB. 

The phone will be running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which is part of the reason why the March release date is so disappointing, because that will be coming up on Google I/O and the expected announcement of Android 5.0, although Sony has promised an upgrade to 4.2 "soon after launch". Other software enhancements include Sony's ClearAudio+, Bravia Reality Display, and the Bravia Engine 2 which all work to enhance the device's multimedia output. There is also a new Battery Stamina mode, which automatically kills all background processes and apps when the screen is off, delivering "easily four times longer standby" according to Sony. Although, the company didn't happen to mention what this would mean for multitasking.