Huawei launches Ascend D1 Quad XL and Ascend G600

Last weekend, Huawei announced two new devices for their Ascend smartphone lineup: the D1 Quad XL and the G600 at the SM Activity Center in North EDSA.

Ascend D1 Quad XL

The Ascend D1 quad XL is their flagship phone, it’s design they say is inspired by streamlined sports cars, measuring 64.9mm wide and a thickness of 11.5mm. It weighs a hefty 145g, but while that may seem heavy on paper it actually feels right when I held it, giving you an impression that it’s a solid and definitely not cheap phone.

Underneath it’s driven by its own manufactured quad-core, 1.4GHz HiSilicon processor which they claim offers a mobile cinematic experience like no other. It has a high-definition 4.5″ 1280 x 720 pixel IPS screen, Dolby Mobile 3.0 Plus sound enhancement, Audience earSmart voice processor, 8-megapixel rear and 1.3 megapixel front cameras; all powered by a 2600mAh battery.

Ascend G600

The G600 is an update of the Honor line and provides more features: a 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU,  4.5″ IPS screen with 960 x 540 pixel resolution, an 8 megapixel rear camera with autofocus, dual speakers with DTS sound powered by a 1930mAh lithium-polymer battery. Huawei claims that the battery can be fully-charged in four hours, powered on in five seconds and provides more than 15 days of standby time thanks to Huawei’s power-saving technology.

The G600 offers more connectivity and file-sharing with Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth and DLNA. It has 768MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, which can be supplemented with a microSD up to 32GB.

Both phones come with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Huawei seems to have built their own user interface for it. Personally I’m not a fan of custom user interfaces, but as long as they don’t compromise the experience by slowing things down for the sake of differentiation, well… Ok. Both are available in various colors of black.

The event was highlighted by video testimonials of people who were able to use the phones during the event, as well as a short talk by Yugatech’s very own Abe Olandres wherein he narrates their impression of the phones when they reviewed it. The Ascend D1 quad XL and G600 are Huawei’s latest salvo into the already crowded smartphone market.

Johnson Ma, Country Manager of Huawei Philippines says that “Huawei Device strives to combine what we know people want in a smartphone with our experience in delivering against those expectations. As part of our Ascend series of best-in-class smartphones, the Ascend D1 quad XL and the Ascend G600 allow consumers to experience speed, long battery life and exceptional mobile entertainment in a high-quality lightweight package. In addition, our more than two decades of experience has allowed us to optimize the Ascend smartphones’ network search algorithm and its base station auto-search technology, improving the speed of the phone’s signal detection to further extend battery life.”

The last sentence is basically biz-speak, where he meant that they’ve been able to develop their cellular technology that improves their phones’ ability to search for cellular signal while consuming less power. Which is awesome (but also raises the question about this recent news about them collecting user network data…).

Editor’s note: This review is contributed by Ferlin Hicarte with some slight revisions by the editor. Ferlin is a digital designer who moonlights as a hardworking corporate worker. He likes long bike rides at the beach, a road or anything that has a path on it. He loves to take photos with his Canon G12 (not like the hipster kids who bring along their DSLR wherever they go). He would one day be a great chef that also does triathlons, if he ever gets time off from designing websites and user interfaces. Visit his site at www.ferlinhicarte.com.

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