Huawei has unveiled the world’s slimmest smartphone in London – the Huawei Ascend P6 – measuring in with an impressive profile of just 6.18mm. The P6 represents one of the more appealing devices to come out of the Chinese manufacturer to date, backing up its compact size with an attractive metal design and the industry’s first 5MP front-facing camera.
Cameras
The concept of the 5MP camera for video calls and selfies is one that we’re happy to see finally being addressed. We may not necessarily find ourselves guilty of snapping off a lot of self-styled photos of ourselves, but no one could argue that there’s a demand for a great frontal camera in the market.
Megapixel count is a notoriously unreliable way to judge a camera’s quality, so there’s no guarantee that this shooter will actually do any better than the 1.3 and 2MP standard’s we’re seeing from this generation’s flagships. Still, it has the potential to attract a lot of users based solely on that 5MP tagline alone, so hopefully it’s up to the task of the sheer number of Instagram shots that could be coming its way.
The rear facing 8MP BSI camera with F2.0 aperture and 4cm macro view sounds impressive enough. It sports a range of features such as scene recognition, contrast and colour enhancement, object tracing focus and “instant facial beauty support”. The last one sounds quite a bit like Nokia’s Glam Me feature, albeit with a more hilariously technical name.
Under the hood
Other features include a quad-core 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal memory, a MicroSD slot supporting up to 32GB of expandable storage, Android 4.2.2, a 2000mAh battery and Huawei’s own Emotion UI. Interestingly, Huawei seems a bit evasive about the exact resolution of the ‘HD’ display in its press materials, leading us to believe it to be 720p rather than 1080p.
The phone also appears to be 3G only, offering max speeds via HSPA+, rather than a blistering 4G LTE experience.
The mere 8GB of on-board storage is a bit disappointing but as we’ve not got our hands on specific pricing yet it’s difficult to judge. At the very least there’s support for expanding that by 32GB with MicroSD, so not all is lost.
Verdict
The Huawei Ascend P6 sounds like a pretty decent phone, but much will depend on the pricing. If Huawei can keep the price below the GS4, HTC One and upcoming iPhone 5S then we can see the P6 selling fairly well. However, we feel that the overall specs, despite their niche appeal, can’t compare to the current market-leaders if it steps in to the same price range.
It’s certainly an attractive device. The tiny profile and metallic design are great. The 5MP front-facing shooter will appeal to a certain demographic, but the lack of 4G LTE will definitely hurt sales in countries with established 4G networks like the US, Australia and Korea.
Huawei is definitely making great strides towards being a real competitor in the smartphone game, but like the HTC we saw a couple of years ago, it still seems to be playing a game of catch-up, relying on niche appeal in its hardware and software to draw a crowd. If, like HTC, Huawei continues to improve at the pace in which it has been going, we very keen to see what it can offer two or three years from now, if not sooner.
Alex Angove-Plumb
Digital Content Editor
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