BARCELONA—Can Huawei’s device business really take off with the help of a flying horse made out of phones? Maybe not, but the company’s marketing folks sure hope so, as it was on full display when Huawei announced its new smartphone, the Ascend D quad.
Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei Device, told a room of journalists on Sunday that the company got a little help from its many years in infrastructure. The phone was designed to reduce the battery consumption and Huawei’s proprietary power management system provides up to 30 percent in energy savings. It’s also the fastest smartphone in Huawei’s opinion.
The Chinese company is proud of the specs, including the processing power, 32-bit color graphic processor, 4.5-inch 1280 x 720 HD touchscreen, 5.1 surround sound with Dolby Mobile 3.0 Plus and earSmart noise cancellation technology. Yu mentioned more than once that it’s a superior product to what competitors are offering, and Huawei believes it can get 60 million of them into the market by the end of the year, with 40 percent of them going to China.
No U.S. carrier partner was announced, but the United States is an important market for the device, along with Europe and Japan, Yu said. The operating system is based on Android 4.0,
As part of the Ascend D series, Huawei also introduced the Ascend D quad XL and the Ascend D1 smartphones. The Ascend D quad XL comes with a 2500mAh battery, which provides two to three days of normal usage. With the same specifications as the Ascend D quad, the Ascend D quad XL measures 10.9 mm wide. The Ascend D1 runs on a 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU and has a 1670mAh battery.
No price was given, other than to say it will be competitively priced. Preparations are being made for a second-quarter commercial launch.
Filed Under: Devices
