Safaricom now stocking Huawei Ascend P1

At this year's CES Huawei  just proved to the attendees that it is making a concerted effort to break out of the cheap smartphone market with a phone which looks like the world's thinnest smartphone at .26-inches (6.68mm) similar to — the Droid RAZR measures .28-inches. The phone has a dual-core 1.5 GHz TI OMAP 4460 CPU running Android 4.0, 1GB of RAM, and a SGX540 graphics processor (same as the Galaxy Nexus) stuffed under a 4.3-inch qHD 960 x 540 Super AMOLED touchscreen protected by Gorilla Glass. That screen could be a weak point with its Pentile pixel pattern. On the front is a 1.3-megapixel camera to complement the 8-megapixel shooter in the rear, and both shoot HD video at 720p and 1080p respectively.

I know not many here in Kenya will agree with me that Huawei is a brand to give the likes of Sony, Samsung and Apple's iPhone a run for there money. That will however be changed if you got hold of the brand's high end phones that run on raw Android without any clutter that arises from custome UI's and other background apps that are custom with the main players in the industry.  I am yet to have a feel of the Ascend P1 but I do see myself visiting a Safaricom dealership just to have a feel of this "muscle phone". I have had a feel of a high end Huawei phone (I cannot remember the name but its a standard issue with Safaricom staff) and boy I am sold. 

The reason you will love the Huawei P1 is that the computing power comes courtesy of a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and PowerVR SGX540 graphics, which is more than enough to keep the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS chugging along smoothly.
You can get quickly acquainted with the Ascend P1 through a list of features and disadvantages below courtersy of GSM Arena.
Key features
  • 7.7mm thin body
  • Quad-band GSM and penta-band 3G with HSPA support
  • 4.3" 16M-color capacitive Super AMOLED touchscreen of qHD resolution (540 x 960 pixels)
  • Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
  • Two homescreen options - vanilla and 3D
  • Dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, PowerVR SGX540 GPU, TI OMAP 4460 chipset
  • 4GB of inbuilt storage (2.3GB user accessible)
  • 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging
  • 1080p video recording @ 30fps
  • Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA, hotspot functionality
  • GPS with A-GPS
  • microSD slot, up to 32GB
  • <!Accelerometer and proximity sensor
  • Standard 3.5 mm audio jack; Dolby Mobile 3.0+
  • Stereo FM radio with RDS
  • MHL-enabled microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
  • Front facing camera

Main disadvantages
  • No dedicated camera key
  • No video calling out of the box
  • Non-user-replaceable battery
  • PenTile matrix display
  • Price is yet to drop
The 8MP camera of the Huawei Ascend P1 can shoot 1080p videos but it knows other tricks too and will be stepping on Samsung's and HTC's toes. You get stuff like HDR, burst mode and even group mode, which takes several shots and picks the best expression on each person's face (just like the Scalado-powered solution HTC uses).
However, unlike either Samsung or HTC, Huawei offers you stock Android ICS experience, with only a few occasional tweaks. If that's not your cup of tea there's also the 3D home launcher to offer the extra eye candy and usability enhancements.

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