Huawei announced the Ascend P6, their newest flagship smartphone and currently setting the record for the worlds thinnest smartphone, at 6.18mm thick.
While Huawei still has a little bit of work before they can enter the big leagues with Samsung and Apple, they continue to pull of feats in design with smaller components and an overall thinner design.
The Ascend P6 weighs 120g, lighter than the Galaxy S4 but a little heavier than the iPhone 5. This is to be expected though, considering the Ascend P6 is a 4.7-inch smartphone and the iPhone 5 is only 4.0-inches.
Internally the phone can compete with other high end options, but some features just don’t match what can be found by other phone makers. Starting with the display, the Ascend P6 has a 1280×720 resolution, pretty dull against the 1080p options found today.
Inside the device is a 1.5GHz quad-core processor developed by Huawei and 2GB of RAM, similar to other offerings. Early reports seem to indicate the phone can perform as well as expected, but there have been no torture tests to see how far it will go, yet.
One of the most exciting features is the 5MP front facing camera Huawei has added to the Ascend P6. This is without a doubt the best front camera on any smartphone, doubling the amount of megapixels we usually see.
On the back is a 8MP camera and this is coupled with some new Huawei software features to enhance face images and stabilisation.
Huawei has added the ‘Emotion’ UI onto Android 4.2.2 for the Ascend P6. While this is not an uncommon thing, Huawei’s idea of OS design is pretty poor compared to stock Android.
Some features are just complicated and do not enhance the experience, wallpapers, widgets and apps pre-installed make the experience clunky and unordered and we found Huawei to be a little backward in the software battle.
The Ascend P6 is a very nice if somewhat brick-like smartphone, it has the thinnest design on the market right now and some nifty internals, but lacks good software design to really draw the user. For €449 (£400) it costs only a little less than the HTC One or Galaxy S4, so we are not sure it would be a good recommendation.
