Huawei recently announced the Ascend P1, which caught every eyeball in the country by being India’s first LTE smartphone. Now the company has showed The Mobile Indian another promising smartphone-the Ascend D1, which, though it has not been announced, will be launched in India probably by the end of this year. Huawei has also not revealed the price of the Ascend D1, which has a dual core Processor and a long list of high end features.
We have published our hands-on experience of the Ascend P1, about which you can read here, and we had the Ascend D1 with us for a brief moment as well so here is our first impression of the phone.
Huawei has not announced the price or availability details of the Ascend D1 as yet.
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Look and feel
Ascend D1 is indeed a beautiful device. The phone has a different design than others in the market. It has a slightly raised portion at the bottom of the back panel that not only gives it a good look but also a good grip. The plastic back panel also seems sturdy.
The device measures 129 x 64 x 8.9 mm and weighs 132 grams. It is certainly thin and light as well. The smartphone is available in two colours-black and white. We have seen the white coloured Ascend D1 which looks decent and thus we hope that the black Ascend D1 should be even better.
Display
The Ascend D1’s 4.5 inch IPS, LCD touchscreen display comes with 720 x 1280 pixel resolution. As its specification suggests, the phone’s display looks very bright and impressed us immensely during the first encounter itself. We cannot say for sure how it will look in the sun, but we can safely assume that it won’t be a disappointment.
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Processor
Huawei Ascend D1 comes with a dual core ARM Cortex A9 processor which is clocked at 1.5 GHz. There is also a PowerVR SGX540 graphics processing unit or GPU. The combination is likely to play most graphics intensive games available on Android as well as other apps like video and music quite smoothly.
During our short interaction, the phone gave lag free performance. It was also quick to open and close applications. We also played a couple of games on the phone and it played them effortlessly. Its performance is aptly supported by the 1 GB RAM.
Operating system
Currently the phone is based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, but since Android 4.1 Jelly Bean has been rolled out for many handsets, and can be expected on the Ascend D1 by the time it hits the market in India.
Camera
Ascend D1 has an 8 Megapixel auto focus camera in the front along with dual LED flash. According to the company, the camera is able to take true 1080p high definition images and can also record videos in that Resolution at 30 frames per second. We took a couple of pictures in a well-lit condition and, quite frankly, they were pretty good.
There is also a 1.3 megapixel camera in the front that, Huawei says, can capture images at 720p, which is quite decent as well.
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Other features
Other notable features include its Dolby Mobile 3.0 Plus sound enhancement technology, which would be appreciated by music lovers. Also, it has an 1800 mAh Li-Ion battery that claims to provide over ten hours of talktime. Connectivity options are also in plenty in the form of WiFi, WiFi hotspot, DLNA, Bluetooth v3.0, Micro USB and USB on the go.
Moreover, it has 8 GB of Internal Memory which can further be upgraded by up to 32 GB through an external micro SD card.
Conclusion
By specification, the Huawei Ascend D1 looks very promising and is definitely a high-end handset. The key to its success will be its launch time and pricing.