Huawei has just unveiled the Ascend P6 Android smartphone at a crowded event in London. At 6.1mm thick, it’s the slimmest smartphone in the world. It’s also a looker.
Currently there is nothing to announce regarding an Australian launch, but stay tuned!
The Ascend P6 has 4.7-inch, 720p display and metal body. It will be available in 19 countries at the end of July for around $600. Huawei wants to compete against high-end smartphones like the Galaxy S4, the iPhone 5, the Xperia Z or HTC One. But is being the world’s thinnest phone enough to give it a toehold?
Huawei believes so. “Samsung is not at the same level as this product. We want to compete with the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4, that is our goal,” said Richard Yu, CEO of the Huawei consumer unit during the presentation.
With Ascend P6, Huawei wanted to pay attention to three key elements: the design, the camera and the UI. On the design front, the fineness and metal body are two good bets to differentiate. It will be available in three colours, black, white and pink (yes, pink).
On paper, the specs are competitive but not groundbreaking: Qualcomm quad-core processor at 1.5 GHz, 2GB RAM, 4.7-inch screen resolution 1280×720, (not FullHD), 8GB of storage (with microSD) and 2000 mAh battery compared to 2600mAh on the Galaxy S4. The Ascend P6 will not be 4G.
Operating System and Usability
The Ascend P6 uses Android 4.2.2 with a skin on top called Huawei Emotion UI, its version of Samsung’s TouchWiz or HTC Sense. According to the company, there are over 300 improvements in the interface. What?
Among the highlights include the Me Widget, the option to customise apps and widgets on location sizes and locations. Good, but nothing new. Another function, Power Manager, saves battery consumption monitoring mobile chip level, hardware and software. And there was also news on the security front and notifications management and passwords that should offer some differentiation at the software level. AirSharing allows content sharing between mobile and other equipment, whether a TV, tablet or other mobile.
Price and Availability
The Ascend P6 will be available in 19 countries by the end of July (mostly in Europe), plus US and China. Price? About $600 off-contract, and presumably much cheaper when subsidised. It’s expected to be in 100 countries by August.
We will test the phone shortly and will share our first impressions. [Gizmodo Espanol]