The Huawei Ascend P1 smartphone has now completed FCC testing. The Chinese phone-maker still hasn't revealed any official launch information for the 4.3-inch flagship, and it's missed its originally promised April reveal date. This FCC approval means the company is at least certified to sell the handset in the US.
The Huawei Ascend D1 introduced at MWC alongside the quad-core Ascend D Quad has just undergone FCC testing. In the process, it has become the first of the Ascend range of devices that the regulatory body has approved for sale in North America. The listing cement the presence of a quadband GSM radio and pentaband HSPA+/WCDMA radio, meaning it will support AT&T and T-Mobile networks when unlocked.
T-Mobile has gone ahead and priced the entry-level Huawei Prism handset aimed at first-time smartphone users. Arriving in stores on May 6, the Android 2.3-powered handset will cost just $20 after a $50 mail-in rebate and on a two-year contract. Contract-free, the phone will cost $150.
Intel and Huawei have established a partnership that will focus on testing TD-LTE network technology. The companies will establish a testing lab in China, where engineers will continue to work on interoperability and implementation trials.
The Huawei Prism, a basic smartphone, is scheduled for sale starting May 6 at Best Buy, with wider retail availability later in the month. This new 3G phone will be on the T-Mobile network, and runs Android 2.3. Retail pricing is not known.
Chinese mobile hardware maker Huawei has boosted its research and development budget to $4.5 billion for this year, representing a 20 percent increase from 2011, ComputerWorld reported. The money will go towards introducing new technologies to smartphones, including inexpensive cloud storage and gesture control. The tech would use the front camera to capture the motion of a user's hands for three-dimensional interaction.
An upgrade roadmap has given out tentative upgrade timing for Android 4.0 as well as T-Mobile's next myTouch smartphones. Although details are still in flux, TmoNews heard that the custom, upsized version of the Samsung Galaxy S II for the network would get its update on or near May 14. Those with the two most recent HTC phones for the carrier, the Amaze 4G and Sensation 4G, would get theirs over a month later, on June 16.
Chinese handset maker OPPO is holding a contest for the public to name a forthcoming, as-yet-unannounced phone. At the same time, Engadget China has leaked an image of an OPPO handset that could snag the title of World's Thinnest Smartphone. The ultra-slim handset is rumored to measure just .26-inch thick.
Should rumors prove accurate, Microsoft will soon have a new OEM partner offering Windows Phone 8 handsets and Windows 8 tablet products. Chinese smartphone giant Huawei is reportedly looking to debut new phones and tablets running Microsoft's upcoming system by the end of the year.
Huawei on Monday said that its profit had tumbled 53 percent in 2011. The company made the equivalent or $1.8 billion and primarily blamed a tough world economy and resulting currency shifts. Most of its 2011 sales were buoyed by its home device group, whose modems, smartphones, and tablets saw revenue jump 44.3 percent; about 20 million were smartphones.
Huawei has annouced that its ultra-slim Ascend P1 smartphone will start shipping in May. The Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) powered handset is one of the world’s thinnest at just 0.26-inches (6.68mm) thick. The first countries on the launch list include Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Vodafone UK is launching the Huawei Ascend G 300 this Friday. The value Android phone will be the first Huawei branded handset sold in the UK, a milestone for the Chinese manufacturer.
An uncommon study from Stenvall Sköld & Company has shown that much of Apple's mobile device share in China is disproportionately located in its urban areas. Based both on its own device analysis and research from local firm Umeng, it saw the distribution of 21 million iOS devices understandably skewed towards those provinces with the most urbanized populations. The highest concentration at 13.4 percent wasn't in one of the biggest cities but instead Guangdong province, home to Shenzhen and the Foxconn plants that make most of the iPads and iPhones for the world.
Prepaid wireless provider Cricket has just revealed that the Huawei Mercury smartphone will soon get a software update to get the Muve Music service. Users need to be on the carrier's Muve Music $65 per month plan, which is $10 more than the regular plan. Muve offers unlimited music downloads, ringtones, and ringbacks.
Samsung should retake the edge in the smartphone space as of the first quarter, Canaccord Genuity said in early estimates. Analyst T. Michael Walkley saw Samsung going back to 28.2 percent share on the back of 41 million smartphones. Apple would have its strongest winter ever, but at 32.6 million iPhones would have a more modest 22.4 percent.
Huawei claims to have tested new network technology that is capable of handling data transfer speeds in excess of 30Gbps. The Chinese company suggests its "Beyond LTE" technology achieves such performance due to improvements in antenna structure, radio frequency architecture, algorithms and multi-user multi-input multi-output (MIMO) management.
Foxconn International reported a return to profit for 2011. Although relatively slight, its $72.8 million was a sharp reversal from a $218.3 loss the year before. Officials credited the turnaround to a broader shift towards smartphones among its broader customers, including Huawei, Motorola, Nokia, and Sony, raising the overall money it made.
Huawei's self-proclaimed fastest phone in the world, the Ascend D quad, may have had its released moved back by at least a month if tips are accurate. While unconfirmed, CNMO understood that it would go from expectations of shipping before the end of the spring to only starting production in June. The actual release would "likely" be in July, but the step left room for it to ship later still if timing required it.
The first live images of the upcoming Huawei myTouch smartphone have been shared by TmoNews. The touchscreen device will ship with Android 2.3.6 onboard if the photos can be trusted, though not many other specs are revealed. The handset appears to be a mid-range offering, more in line with recent mid-range myTouch phones than the high-end of early on.
Gartner on Sunday revealed the extent to which Apple's share of China's smartphones trailed others. Although Apple leads worldwide, it sat at 7.5 percent, or fifth place, in China's sphere. Samsung, in the lead at 24.3 percent, had over three times as much share.
Huawei's device chairman Richard Yu in an interview set out high ambitions for the company. In a chat with Engadget, the executive wanted the Chinese cellphone designer to be the "industry's top brand" in three years. To him, it was less a matter of ambition and more basic survival, as companies that didn't aim to be large risked disappearing entirely.
The Bluetooth SIG has cleared Huawei's Vision U8850 handset, suggesting the midrange Android smartphone may be headed to the North American market. The Bluetooth standards group tested a variant that supports HSDPA 850MHz and 1900MHz bands, pointing to compatibility with AT&T's network, though a specific carrier has yet to be confirmed.
Huawei has used the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona to announce several new LTE smartphones and devices. The Chinese vendor has revealed that it would add LTE supported versions of the Ascend D series and Ascend P1 handsets as well as the E3276 wireless network card and E5776 Wi-Fi hotspot to its product portfolio. Huawei will be introducing the devices to the European and Asian markets by July.
Carrier T-Mobile will switch from LG to Chinese manufacturer Huawei for its supply of myTouch-branded handsets, PocketNow found out. The reason for the switch isn't known, but the two handsets are seen below, with the U8680 on the left and the U8730 on the right. They are said to differ only with the inclusion of the hardware QWERTY keyboard on the second device.
Huawei primarily focused on its flagship Ascend D quad smartphone during the company's media event at Mobile World Congress, however the company also brought along its new MediaPad 10 FHD tablet. The latter device received only a mere mention during the press conference, but Electronista had a chance to try it out following the main event.
As expected, Huawei brought its flagship quad-core smartphone, the Ascend D quad, to Barcelona this week for Mobile World Congress. The company claims the device is the fastest smartphone yet, a bold claim for a handset maker that has just recently begun to try to establish its own brand after spending years as an original design manufacturer. In our hands-on preview, we try to discover if the device holds up to Huawei's promises.
Huawei is the first to start a series of introductory events at Mobile World Congress. It's expected to be one of the first with a quad-core smartphone in the Ascend D Quad (formerly D1 Q) as well as a 10-inch tablet, the MediaPad 10. Check Electronista's live coverage page from 9:30AM Eastern for updates as they happen from the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona.
(Update: official details) Huawei's marketing coordination inadvertently spoiled its Mobile World Congress plans early on Sunday after the scrolling ads at Barcelona Airport started showing one of its products with Arnoud Wokke there to capture a photo. Now referred to as the Ascend D Quad, the former D1 Q is billed as the "world's fastest smartphone." The claim is likely a reference to the quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3, although whether it's actually faster than some dual-core phones is up for debate.
Electronista is traveling to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2012. Updates may come in at unusual times, but we should have updates over the weekend, especially mid-Sunday, as most of the cellphone and tablet world shows its hand. Hands-on coverage will continue through mid-week.
Huawei's MediaPad 10 was spoiled a few days ahead of its Mobile World Congress debut on Tuesday after a leak through Russia's Mail.ru. The 10-inch design is at once a refinement and close cousin of the seven-inch version. It keeps a very thin aluminum design and is believed to be lightweight, albeit with a familiar looking dock connector similar to that of the iPad.
China Telecom on Tuesday local time confirmed its plans to carry the iPhone 4S. The phone will be available on March 9 with preorders beginning a week earlier, on March 2. Prices will start out at free on a contract for the 16GB iPhone 4S.
Huawei in a series of teasers on Weibo and its forums (one, two since broken, three, four) has provided the first official look at the Ascend D1 Q. While they don't confirm the internal hardware, they do show a thicker design than the Ascend P1 S. The body would support talk of the "Q" referencing NVIDIA's Tegra 3 quad-core processor.
Region-specific Gartner data has shown that Apple was losing Chinese smartphone market share in the last few months before the local release of the iPhone 4S. Its portion dropped from 10.4 percent in the summer to 7.5 percent in the fall. The company mostly lost its fourth place position to local designer ZTE's 11 percent.
Chinese smartphone giant Huawei has continued its push for an increased presence in the US. Currently best known as a relative new comer that has targeted the bottom to middle tier of the Android market, the company has shown it has aspirational tendencies with new high-end devices planned for North American release. The latest sign is news that it is planning on moving its R&D to Silicon Valley, staffed by up to 600 employees.
Huawei's media event at Mobile World Congress may have already been spoiled early after company chairman Yu Chengdong possibly spoiled it in his Weibo profile. The February 26 Barcelona event would purportedly include the Ascend D1 Q, a presumably quad-core cousin of the Android 4.0-based Ascend P1 S. Its choice of chip wasn't mentioned, but would most likely be NVIDIA's Tegra 3 given the company's own event and other phones coming from Fujitsu and HTC.
Wireless carrier 3 has introduced its Web Cube 3G hotspot to the UK. The broadband router, made by Huawei, offers broadband networking to up to five Wi-Fi devices. 3 is targeting renters and students who want Wi-Fi at home without being tied to a contract or a landline.
Huawei will bring out its seven-inch MediaPad tablet on AT&T's network tomorrow, February 3. Unfortunately, it will only be offered to enterprise users, so a business account is required. Pricing is not being revealed either, with the carrier stating only that prices will vary depending on the business account.
Chinese electronics maker Huawei will bring two of its flagship Ascend Android-powered phones to the US market soon, Twice found. One of them, the Ascend P1, will be the slimmest on the US market, it's claimed. Either will have a dual-core, 1.5GHz processor and ship with Android 4.0 onboard.
Huawei began shipping its Honor smartphone to China Unicom late last week. The Honor joins the Galaxy Nexus in that it ships preloaded with Android 4.0, the latest mobile OS from Google. Otherwise, the handset has a single-core, 1.4GHz processor, 4-inch, 480x854 touchscreen and an eight-megeapixel camera with 1080p recording, autofocus and an HDR mode.
A new study from iGR has suggested that Android might be dominant in the US but that many of those buying weren't making a conscious choice for the platform. About 47 percent of the smartphone base in the country reportedly was using Android, but only 45 percent of those were knowledgeable about Google's OS and chose it by name. Another 27 percent picked their phones based on Google's reputation.
ZTE plans to double its smartphone numbers this year as it expands out of China, cellphone strategy head Lv Qianhao said in an interview Tuesday. Its motherland and the US would be the "key engines" for growth in 2012 as it focused on higher-end devices, he explained to Reuters. Best known for its budget Android phones, it was leaning towards the high end and just recently unveiled the Tania, its first Windows Phone.
Huawei isn't normally known for high-end phones; usually, it's the company serving the $200 off-contract smartphone to a Chinese resident who might never get a smartphone otherwise. The Ascend P1 S, then, came as something of a surprise at CES this week when it it not only hit a record-breaking 6.7mm (0.26 inches) thickness but became one of the first truly official phones with Android 4.0 beyond the Galaxy Nexus. We gave the P1 S a shakedown at CES; read on for whether it signals a change in Huawei's impact in smartphones.
Huawei said Wednesday that it will begin shipping its seven-inch MediaPad tablet with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) preloaded. The company will be providing existing owners running Android 3.2 on their devices with an over-the-air upgrade to the latest OS before the end of March. Huawei also planned for three new colors, black, brown, and pink.
Huawei has unveiled the Ascend P1 S, which for now is the world's slimmest smartphone at 0.26in (6.68mm). The Ascend P1 S is a major upgrade to its previous flagship smartphone, the Mercury. The Ascend P1 S has a dual-core TI OMAP 4460 chip powering a Cortex A9 CPU running at 1.5GHz, the same engine that powers the Google Nexus Prime. Not surprisingly, it will ship with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. The Ascend P1 S also has SGX 540 graphics for its 4.3-inch 540x960 Super AMOLED display. It is capable of recording 1080p HD video with its 8-megapixel main camera, and 720p video with a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera.
Apple has confirmed expectations and set a release date for the iPhone 4S in China. Its most recent phone will ship to the mainland on January 13 alongside 21 other countries, focusing mostly on Africa and the Caribbean. The roser includes Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, and Uganda.
The Meizu MX had its formal launch on New Year's Day both in mainland China and Hong Kong. In a repeat of last year's M9, lines in at least some locations were long at a level normally only seen for Apple launches, with over 900 seen at the Hong Kong store. Allegations in 2011 that Meizu had stacked the lines have faded this year as Meizu still had to control lines by asking most in line to come only when called.
Chinese smartphone designers are quietly forming a pact to fend off patent lawsuits from Apple, Microsoft, and Nokia, a rumor maintained Friday. Lenovo and ZTE, as well as smaller firms like Coolpad, Konka, and TCL, were said by Digitimes to be forming a collective. The details weren't given, although a patent defense would most likely involve pooling patent resources together and sharing resources on how to work around other companies' patents.
US Cellular will soon be running a new budget Android phone, the Huawei Ascend II. The hardware centers on a 3.5-inch, 480x240 touchscreen and runs Android 2.3. The carrier is the second US-based carrier to carry the phone, following Cricket, which launched it in July.
Cricket became the next US carrier to switch on LTE on Wednesday with a launch in Tucson. Its 4G network is estimated to run about five to ten times faster than its EVDO-based 3G. In an unusual step, Cricket keeps the 5GB cap the same and bases price on speed: a $50 plan provides a more 3G-like 3Mbps, while subscribers need to pay $60 to get 6Mbps.
After months of silence, Google's mobile VP Andy Rubin posted word that Android device activations were now up to 700,000 each day. The rate comes after months of the company claiming a flat 550,000 per day. He had no update on the activation growth rate or whether Google had moved significantly beyond the 200 million total devices switched on since Android launched in October 2008.
