Huawei had massive booths at both CES in Las Vegas this past January and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. Unfortunately, the company's rumored successor to the Ascend P6, the P7, wasn't on show. It sort of makes sense. The P6 was only unveiled in June of last year, so showing off the next model so soon wouldn't be wise (smartphone manufacturers like to maintain the illusion that next year's phone isn't already in the pipeline by the time the current generation hits widespread availability). Now, with June just around the corner, Huawei is ready to show us what it's been working on.
The company this morning officially unveiled the Ascend P7. Unlike the P6, the Ascend P7 comes with support for LTE. It also packs a 5-inch 1,920 x 1,080 display, a quad-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU with Mali-450MP4 graphics, 2 GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel camera in back, an 8-megapixel camera up front, 16 GB of storage (microSD up to 64 GB), a 2500 mAh battery, and Android 4.4.2. Of course, Huawei also has its own custom user interface skinned on top of Android (you didn’t think you were getting the stock experience, did you?). The company has version 2.3 of its Emotion UI on top, which allows for customizable home and lock screens, an harassment filter, permissions and notifications managers, and power saving modes.
The Ascend P6 is hitting shelves starting this month, and will launch in Europe, Asia, and UAE first. Other markets will follow later, though Huawei hasn't mentioned any specifics as far as the USA is concerned. Suggested European pricing is €449. We'll keep you posted on U.S. availability and pricing.
Follow Jane McEntegart @JaneMcEntegart. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.