Huawei Ascend P1
Design
This super-skinny new smartphone claims to be one of the thinnest ever at just 7.6mm -- the famously slimline Samsung Galaxy S3 is 8.6mm after all, though the Motorola Razr is 7.1mm. That stat doesn't include the protruding lens for the eight-megapixel camera however, or the bulge at the bottom of the handset, which houses the speaker.
The casing is glossy black plastic with a carbon fibre effect and to be honest feels a little on the cheap side, with rattly buttons. The SIM card slips into a slot on top covered by a rather flimsy plastic grommet -- hopefully you won't need to fiddle with this too often, as it doesn't feel like it would stand up to much attention.
Features
The 4.3-inch Super Amoled display shining out from behind protective Gorilla Glass is bright and vibrant, but perhaps not as sharp as it could be, with a pixel count of 960x540. So it's not quite HD, and you may miss some of those extra pixels when viewing HD video or playing HD games.
The 4.3-inch Super Amoled display shining out from behind protective Gorilla Glass is bright and vibrant, but perhaps not as sharp as it could be, with a pixel count of 960x540. So it's not quite HD, and you may miss some of those extra pixels when viewing HD video or playing HD games.
The dual-core 1.5 GHz Cortext-A9 processor is backed by 1GB RAM and it delivered an impressive AnTuTu performance benchmark score of 5,814, which puts it behind quad-core brutes like the Galaxy S3 or the LG 4X HD, but ahead of fellow dual-core smarties like the Sony Xperia P. it seemed to have no trouble multi-tasking, while streaming video and playing intensive games likeBlood & Glory held no terrors.
Software and camera
It's running the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS straight out of the box, and while that's nice, we've already had a glimpse of the Jellybean future with the Google Nexus 7, which takes the shine off a little. Still, there's little to complain about with the OS, which is slick, intuitive and fast.
It's running the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS straight out of the box, and while that's nice, we've already had a glimpse of the Jellybean future with the Google Nexus 7, which takes the shine off a little. Still, there's little to complain about with the OS, which is slick, intuitive and fast.
The eight-megapixel camera comes with a bright, if rather severe, dual LED flash (though it works very well as a flashlight) and autofocus, as well as quite a few extras, like face detection, red eye reduction and HDR (High Dynamic Range), which helps to compensate for extreme levels of contrast in an image. Picture quality is pretty good overall, though it lacks that level of sharpness you'll find with the best camphones, such as the S3 or the Nokia 808 PureView.
Memory and battery life
It has 4GB of memory on board, a goodly amount, though you can beef it up to 32GB with a microSD card if you feel the need.
It has 4GB of memory on board, a goodly amount, though you can beef it up to 32GB with a microSD card if you feel the need.
Actually, one of the most impressive things about the P1 is its exemplary battery life. We've all got used to high-end smartphones that struggle to deliver a full day's use, but the P1 made it through a good day and a half of pretty intensive use.
Conclusion
It might not stand with the very best screens or processors, but for a midrange smart phone the Huawei Ascend P1 offers a solid range of features and impressively long battery life too.
It might not stand with the very best screens or processors, but for a midrange smart phone the Huawei Ascend P1 offers a solid range of features and impressively long battery life too.
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