Granted, Huawei is not a household name for most Westerners, and, those who do know the Chinese company associate it with low-spec, cheap feature phones. But Huawei, along with fellow Chinese tech giant ZTE, is in the process of rebranding itself as a tough competitor to Samsung or HTC. What’s their game plan? Simple: target the exclusivise high-end smartphone segment, currently dominated by devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2, but soon to be blown away by a whole new era of amazingly powerful devices like the HTC One X, the Samsung Galaxy S3, and many more.
Back in January, at CES, we were absolutely amazed of Huawei’s first effort – the Ascend P1 S, which the Chinese claim to be the world’s thinnest smartphone. And thin it is – only 0.26-inch or 6.68mm in its thickest point, which makes it a bit thinner than the 0.28-inch or 7.11mm Motorola Droid RAZR. But the Ascend P1 S is not only slim; It boasts an impressive 1.5GHz dual-core OMAP processor, 1GB of RAM, coupled with a beautiful qHD Super AMOLED display.
Now, at MWC, Huawei sets the bar even higher, by announcing the Ascend D quad, an incredible quad-core Android 4.0 smartphone, which they claim to be nothing less than the world’s fastest smartphone.
Here are the highlights of the Huawei Ascend D quad press release:
- The world’s fastest smartphone
- Powered by Huawei’s own quad-core processor, running at 1.2GHz/1.5GHz
- 4.5-inch design with compact design
- Proprietary power management system, 30% energy saving
- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
- 720p HD screen, Dolby 5.1 Surround
- 8MP rear camera, 1.3MP front camera
- 1800 mAh battery, claimed to last 1-2 days on normal usage
- 64mm wide, 8.9mm thin
The new Huawei Ascend D quad and Ascend D quad XL will be available world-wide from Q2 2012, while the Ascend D1 will start selling in April 2012.
Huawei Press Events Highlights
The Chinese phone maker just completed their press event at MWC, and here are the highlights:
- The “D” in Ascend D quad stands for Diamond. The Huawei Ascend series will include four categories of smartphones – Youth, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. The ultra-thin Ascend P1 S is hence a Platinum.
- Huawei uses its own processors, but will also continue working with partners like TI.
- Huawei claims a big performance boost for its quad-core architecture – a benchmark presented at the event showed a 35 FPS score for Huawei vs. the 13 FPS score of a quad-core tablet.
- The Chinese claim that their networking expertise (they are a major manufacturer of telecom infrastructure) helps them improve battery life in phones (network scanning is battery-intensive).
- Huawei hopes to sell over 60 million units this year (not including the Chinese home market).
So, Huawei has some pretty ambitious plans for its brand new line of super smartphones. From what we’ve seen so far, they certainly have the potential – the hardware is powerful, the design is sleek. Let’s hope that the new Ascend will not disappoint when it hits the markets later this year.
Stay tuned for more information, we’ll update you as we receive it!
