Huawei Ascend P1 / P1 S

Available now
10th January 2012

Along with ZTE, Huawei is one of two Chinese manufacturers who look like they are going to have a good 2012. Both companies have had success with getting handsets to market in 2011, either branded with the names of carriers or more recently under their own names too.

Huawei in particular has made some nice high-end smartphones, and (on paper at least) the new Huawei Ascend P1 and Ascend P1 S handsets are two very high end devices that challenge the class leaders.

Huawei say that these will be Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich" or "ICS") devices at launch, and the press photos certainly show an ICS device rather than an Android 2.3 handset. Other manufacturers are lagging behind with implementing ICS, and Huawei may well get a competitive advantage here.

The Huawei P1 and P1 S come with a 4.3" 960 x 540 pixel super AMOLED touchscreen with a Gorilla Glass coating, a 1.5GHz dual core processor, an 8 megapixel camera on the back with 1080p video capture capabilities and a 1.3 megapixel one on the front for video calling.

Huawei say that the P1 S (we guess "S" is for slim") is the slimmest smartphone in the world at just 6.68mm thick. The standard P1 is a little thicker at 7.69mm, but it comes with a larger 1800 mAh battery compared with a 1670 mAh battery in the slimmer handset. The P1 S weighs only 110 grams, with the larger P1 coming in at a still respectable 130 grams.

The back of the handset is covered with a material called PPVD to help dissipate heat, and this comes in a variety of colours including metallic black, ceramic white and cherry blossom pink. The Ascend P1 and P1 S aren't exactly pretty, but we guess that the "wow factor" will be how slim they are (as with the Motorola RAZR).

All the usual Android features are here such as 3.5G connectivity, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. We don't know at present how much RAM is available or what the flash memory configuration is.

Huawei say that the Ascend P1 and P1 S should be available worldwide starting in April 2012.

The manufacturer hasn't said how much these smartphones will cost, but we should imagine that Huawei will be keen to undercut the competition in order to get their presence felt on international markets.