Huawei Readies Two Flagship U.S. Phones

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 1/23/2012

LAS VEGAS — Huawei stepped up its campaign to burnish its image in the U.S. market with the launch of two flagship Android smartphones, one of which is said to be the slimmest smartphone in the U.S.

Both are among the fastest smartphones because of their dual-core 1.5GHz processor, and both are among the first phones announced in the U.S. with Google’s Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS, the company said during CES.

Both models also feature 4G 21Mbps HSPA+ technology and are banded for use on the AT&T and T-Mobile networks. Both also operate in foreign HSPA+ markets.

The phones will be in Europe by the end of March and could appear in the U.S. in mid-2012, said Huawei Device chairman Richard Yu.

A CDMA version with 4G LTE is planned for later this year, executive VP Michael Chuang told TWICE. It was shown at CES.

The two Ascend phones will be followed by a Diamond series of smartphones that will take performance a step higher, Yu added. That series will be unveiled in February at the Mobile World Congress.

The P1 S, said to be slimmer than the Motorola Razr at 0.263 inches in depth, is the slimmest of the two Ascend models, and it’s only 2.55 inches wide and 5.08 inches tall. The Ascend P1 packs all the same features and performance as the P1 S but in a slightly thicker chassis at 0.3 inches.

Both 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD 960 by 540 capacitive touchscreen, SGX 540 graphics processor, 8-megapixel back camera with 1080p video capture, 1.3-megapixel front camera, Bluetooth 3.0 High Speed, Wi-Fi, DLNA certification and MHL-HDMI connection. Both also offer advanced camera features.