Plano, Texas — Huawei’s first Windows Phone 8 smartphone will be available later this month through Walmart.com and select Walmart stores, Huawei announced.
The Huawei W1, known outside the U.S. as the Ascend W1, will be available with a no-contract unlimited-service plan and will be priced “competitively,” Huawei said. Microsoft said the phone offers “a lot of value for your dollar” and would be suitable for first-time smartphone buyers or people upgrading from older smartphones.
Huawei didn’t say whether the GSM/W-CDMA phone is a 3G or 4G phone, but the device works in U.S. GSM 850/1900MHz networks, foreign 900/1800MHz GSM networks, and U.S. W-CDMA networks in the 850/1900MHz and AWS bands.
The 0.4-inch-thick device features a 4-inch 480 by 800 IPS LCD display with Gorilla Glass, dual-core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, 512MB RAM, and a 5-megapixel rear camera with 720p video capture, LED flash and 4x digital zoom. The front-facing camera features 0.3-megapixel resolution.
Its lithium-ion battery delivers up to 7.5 hours of talk time or up to 320 hours of standby time via Huawei’s power-saving technology.
Other features include 4GB of embedded memory, 32GB MicroSD card slot, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 and stereo Bluetooth. It measures 4.84 inches by 2.5 inches by 0.41 inches and weighs 4.41 ounces.
