Mobile World Congress which has kicked off in Barcelona is bound to get us some really cool new gadgets. One such unveiling happened today with Huawei showing off its new Ascend P2 smartphone which is allegedly the fastest 4G smartphone that there is. The phone has a LTE Cat 4 modem which can in theory support downloads at the rate of 150Mbps. Whether you would find a network which supports that kind of speed is a different issue altogether. Orange France is one network which has alleged its capability of supporting such high downloads.
The handset is definitely big with a 4.7 inch display which puts it in the same league as the big Samsung Galaxy SIII and Nexus 4. The device is ultra-thin with a maximum thickness of 8.4 mm and has a rather plasticky finish. The phone is definitely very light but is far removed from the sheer class offered by the all metal HTC One or the elegant glass exterior of the Sony Xperia Z. However, the price of the Ascend P2 should also be correspondingly low.
The handset has two cameras. The rear camera is an impressive 13.1 megapixel one and has HDR support. The front camera however, is a 1.3-megapixel one and is really tiny picturing nothing more than your mug shot for the video calls. The 315ppi display of the phone is fantastic with 1000:1 contrast and a brightness of 500 nits. The end result is detailed images that are a pleasure to watch. 720p videos can easily be enjoyed in this Android phone.
There is reasonable power backing the device with a quad-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. While these might not be the top of the range specs they are enough to smoothly manage most of the functions in the 4.1 Jelly Bean handset. Emotion UI 1.5 skin by Huawei sits on top of the Android. Unfortunately this addition only ends up diminishing the impact of raw Android and does not have any merits to its name.
This phone is good but huawei dissapointed me. I thought they gonna go with 4core 1.8 proccessor . That would was amazing. But now its just like like nexus 4 with huge price
I buy a lot of Asian goods at the local free markets but not communications or networking capable products from Huawei due to the need for security from hacking and spying from a growing number of perps in China
Unless you want to be a victim of Chinese hackers, don’t buy anything made by Huawei. Its CEO is closely connected to the PLA.
I just got a new work phone last month – the Huawei Ascend P1. A very thin and light ICS phone, but now apparently Huawei are claiming it can’t be upgraded to Jelly Bean, which appears to be a major fib. Just be wary that if they’ve pulled a fast one w.r.t. P1 updates, don’t be surprised if they say the P2 can’t go to Key Lime Pie when that comes out…