Skip to footer

Huawei Ascend P6: Super-svelte smart phone set to debut this summer

The Huawei Ascend P6 is very slim. But is it actually any good? 

|
Huawei
Huawei says its Ascend P6 smartphone, pictured here, is the slimmest in the world.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Chinese tech giant Huawei has debuted a smart phone that it claims is the thinnest in the world. 

The Ascend P6, which will launch in China and Europe this summer, is 6.18 millimeters thin – or approximately 0.25 inches. (By comparison, the iPhone 5 is 7.6 millimeters – or roughly 0.29 inches – thick.) Weight, meanwhile, is a feathery 120 grams, or 0.26 pounds. Which isn't to say Huawei has stinted on the specs: The P6 gets a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, a 4.7-inch HD display, and the Android 4.2.2 operating system overlaid with a custom Huawei "Emotion" UI. 

There's also an 8-megapixel back-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing one. 

But is the Huawei Ascend P6 actually any good? Well, a slow trickle of early hands-on impressions have begun hitting this morning, and the answer appears to be a qualified yes. Over at the tech blog Pocket-lint, Stuart Miles (who tested out a pre-production version of the P6), finds the camera adequate, the 2000mAh battery up to snuff, and the design solidly stylish. 

"This is the nicest looking Huawei device we've seen and much better looking than the Ascend P2," Mr. Miles writes. "A few tweaks to the software, even just opting for a stock Android option, could make this a great Nexus 4 alternative that delivers a thinner design and seemingly better camera performance." 

About that UI: Luke Westaway of CNET isn't quite sold.

"The Emotion UI brings a host of quirky, optional visual themes that help to keep the interface feeling fresh, though unusually there's no app tray, so all your apps live on the phone's homescreen a la iPhone," he writes. "That's no disaster, but you will need to keep your apps carefully organised or they could become hard to track down in a hurry." 

Caveat: These are early impressions. If your interest is thoroughly piqued by this super-slim phone, we recommend waiting for a full review before tossing your iPhone in the trash and trotting over to the local mobile phone emporium. 

No word yet on price or US and Canada launch date. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Huawei Ascend P6: Super-svelte smart phone set to debut this summer
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0618/Huawei-Ascend-P6-Super-svelte-smart-phone-set-to-debut-this-summer
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe