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 says its Ascend P6 smartphone, pictured here, is the slimmest in the world.
Huawei
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.
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