Huawei rolls out Windows 8 smartphone

PanARMENIAN.Net - Huawei Device has announced its first ever Windows Phone 8 smartphone, the Huawei Ascend W1, backed by UK launch partner O2, Digital Spy said.

Huawei was not among the hardware partners for Microsoft's latest smartphone operating system when it launched last year, but the Chinese technology giant confirmed that it was interested in getting on board with the platform.

At the CES 2013 show in Las Vegas this week, Huawei officially announced the Ascend W1, running the revamped Windows Phone 8 software.

But as the new device is billed as a "powerful entry-level smartphone", this indicates that Huawei still views Google's Android as its primary operating system for more premium handsets.

The Ascend W1 has a 4-inch IPS LCD touchscreen, which is the same size as the iPhone 5, but seems rather modest compared to the 6.1-inch screen-toting Android phone also announced at CES by Huawei.

The screen also boasts a rather modest pixel resolution of 480x800, but comes with full lamination technology, claimed to provide "brilliant visibility under any lighting condition".

Huawei has fitted the phone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8230 dual-core 1.2 GHz processor and Adreno 305 GPU. The 1950 mAh battery is claimed to give 470 hours of standby time, the longest among all smartphones in its class.

The 10.15 mm thick phone's design appears similar to the Windows Phone 8X by HTC, and also comes in multiple colour options, including blue, red, black and white.

The phone has a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, and 4GB of on-board memory expandable to 32GB via microSD card.