Huawei Ascend P1 LTE review

First impressions

Huawei doesn’t have the same cool cachet of the likes of Samsung and HTC in the annals of Android phone-makers. But the purveyor of cut-price kit has made a very decent fist of ensuring that the Ascend P1 LTE looks and feels the part.

The black shell of the handset, fairly standard slab form factor and familiar Android phone layout of home, back and menu buttons means that it doesn’t exactly stand out from the crowd. But it’s still a pretty good-looking bit of kit even so.

Design

Unlike the original Ascend P1, which an angular shape that recalled Sony’s more recent phones, this LTE-toting re-swizzle is a more rounded affair. It’s a cute design, though, and most closely resembles the vanilla Android powered likes of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Where it does lose out a little in comparison is that at 9.9mm thick, it’s 2.2mm beefier than its predecessor. But with that extra bulk allowing for 4G technology to be packed inside and a removable backplate and battery, we think it’s a price worth paying.

Elsewhere, the fact that Huawei hasn’t deviated from the design and three-button layout of the majority of Android phones means the Ascend P1 is instantly familiar and easy to get to grips with.

Features

Huawei's rep rests on the sub-£100 Android kits with the kind of spec sheets that you’d expect for that kind of outlay. Not so this turbo-charged take on the Ascend P1.

Leading the charge is a more than capable eight-megapixel snapper, secondary 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls, a 1.5GHz dual core processor, 4GB of on board storage and scope to add a microSD card. And there’s a 4.3-inch none-more-Samsung Super AMOLED screen on board too, with a 960x540 resolution that we found plenty sharp enough.

But the real meat here naturally is 4G support, which EE reckons offers speeds “typically five times faster than 3G”. While we didn’t experience the kind of 40Mbps speeds that EE claims, tests we conducted pegged the service consistently at between 20-25Mbps in and around London.

With pages loading nigh-on instantaneously and whole albums and data-heavy apps (we tested Spotify and BBC iPlayer) downloading in seconds for a satisfyingly zippy mobile web experience.

Software

The Ascend P1 LTE runs an almost completely unadulterated version of the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android. This is a very good thing, ensuring it’s flab free and sans the sort unnecessary adornments and animations that can blight the Android experience.

But that still means you get the pull down notifications bar, ample scope for customisation, five home screens, resizable widgets, the stock keyboard and Android Beam for sharing content via NFC. And as with all Android phones, you’ll get to pick from the thousands of apps and games on offer at Google Play.

It’s perhaps a little disappointing and somewhat surprising that Huawei didn't see fit to equip the LTE version of its handset with the newer Jelly Bean version of Google’s OS. But given that official beta versions of Android 4.1 are doing the rounds already, it’s a safe bet it’ll come to the Ascend P1 LTE soon enough.

Ease of use

One of the major concerns over 4G phones is that next-gen connectivity will tear through handsets’ battery life.

We didn’t find that to be the case with the Ascend P1 LTE's 2,100 MaH battery and got a full day’s use out of the handset, after putting it through its paces on 4G-hammering applications throughout the day, taking in everything from downloads to streaming via the iPlayer and tethering our lappy.

The stripped-down, familiar button layout and similarly spartan approach to Android also make the handset incredibly easy to get to grips with for anyone who’s used an Android handset before.

Verdict

Huawei’s latest is a solid enough handset that’s made much more attractive by its 4G capabilities. And all at a price that’s not that much more per month than a top-end 3G smartphone.

Given that early EE customers will be first-adopter types who don’t mind paying the premium for bleeding-edge tech, though, we’re not sure who it’s aimed at right now.

Especially when you consider that EE is offering the exclusive titanium version of the Samsung Galaxy S3 for a £29.99 one-off outlay and £46 per month – just a fiver more than you’re paying for Huawei’s kit.

-Eight-megapixel auto focus camera

-16GB internal memory

-microSD card support

-4.8-inch Super AMOLED screen

-Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

-1.3-megapixel front-facing camera

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Samsung Galaxy S3: Top 5 reasons it will change the game

1 Simultaneous international launch means its impact is undiluted

The S2 managed to annex magazine, tech site and newspaper column inches and rack up over 20 million sales despite a botched, staggered release that meant it landed on some US carriers six months after it debuted in Europe.

This time Samsung is giving its flagship a simultaneous global release. With no dilution of its impact at launch, that ought to equate to the Galaxy S3 making a massive splash early on.

Team this with Sammy's rumoured vast ad-spend and the resulting massive visibility for the S3 and it means it’s odds-on to power to a sales record for an Android phone and come close to the kind of numbers usually reserved for iPhones.

2 It’ll engender an age of quad-core apps

The huge sales that the Galaxy S3 is set to rack up will provide a huge financial fillip for devs to create apps that take advantage of its graphical muscle. We think you can start pencilling the first massively immersive, graphically rich games in about 12 months time.

That’s not to say that it’ll kill off the likes of Angry Birds and its 79p, casual ilk. More’s the pity. But quad-core phones like the S3 must mean the clock is ticking for them…

3 It’s going to take 'phablets' to the mass market

The Galaxy Note has done sales of over five million since landing last October. That’s much more than was expected. But still a long way from the numbers needed to say that larger screen devices have come of age.

With a display mooted to be between 4.6 and 4.8-inches, the S3 is a phablet in all but name. And by hipping the mass market to the joys of acres of screen real estate, the S3 could be the gateway device that pushes that much maligned form factor to bigger things.

4 It’ll give NFC the push it needs

In keeping with Samsung’s status as an Olympics sponsor, the S3 will surely be touted as the event’s official phone.

What will this mean? Well, we think part of the deal will be that it’ll pack NFC support to be used by punters around the Olympic site to pay for low-ticket items and salty sustenance at high-street retailers and restaurants by swiping their phone over a reader.

More importantly, let’s assume the S3 does 30 million units. That’s tens of millions of extra handset owners with NFC-capable phones in their pockets. We think on sheer numbers alone, the S3 will be critical in taking the tech overground.

5 Brand recognition

Part of the S2’s success was down to Samsung’s greater brand visibility compared with other Android phone makers, not least HTC.

That, teamed with the penetration achieved by the S2 and the Note, and the fact that sales of HTC’s One range don’t seem to be matching their glowing reviews, mean that all the stars are aligning for the S3 to blow a huge hole in the market.

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Samsung Galaxy S3: Top 5 reasons to upgrade from an S2

So it's perhaps not surprising that some carping critics have claimed it's a disappointing iterative update from the Galaxy S2.

They're wrong, though. Here's five, cast-iron reasons the S3 is worth every penny of your outlay.

1 4.8” Super AMOLED HD screen

The S3’s screen is 22 per cent larger than the Galaxy S2. It’s also massively crisper and brighter, with 309ppi pixel density that puts it up on par with the iPhone 4S’s super high density Retina display. The edge-to edge-design and thinner bezels make it seem even more capacious.

Not convinced you really need all that much display real estate? Well, consider this: there’s a reason why smartphone screens keep getting bigger. And it’s because the things we now most use them for, whether it’s gaming or watching media or surfing the web, just work that much better with more display to play with.

Still not convinced? Try playing any game that features a virtual joypad on the S3 and then try the same title on an iPhone with its 3.5-inch screen and tell us which handset makes it more playable. It's the S3 every time.

2 Quad-core processor

It’ll drain the battery, claim the naysayers. Benchmarks show it doesn’t outperform dual-core chipsets by that much, the same vinegary churls add.

I’ll address these points individually. First, the S3's 2,100mAh battery – compared with the S2’s 1,650mAh number - ought to handle the extra drain with aplomb. So that's that covered.

And what about the claim that dual core processors are amply powerful to handle any application designed to run on a modern smartphone?

Well, that's partly true. But only because right now there aren’t many apps designed with quad-core chipsets in mind.

Give it a year, one in which the S3 and the similarly quad-core processor-toting HTC One X will ensure a massive potential audience for said apps, and it’ll be a very different story.

Console-quality is often over-used term for smartphone game graphics, but we’ve got a feeling that when the first wave of quad-core games arrive the description will actually be justified.

Just as importantly, the 1.4GHz Exynos quad-core processor will ensure the S3 has got more than enough brawn to handle future Android updates. So you can be sure you won’t be on the outside looking in while your mates get acquainted with all the new features that incoming versions of Google’s OS bring to the platform.

3 Mirroring

The Samsung Galaxy S3 allows you to mirror your PC or iPad screen on your handset. Handy, no?

Less practical, but much cooler is that it can do the same with any large screen. That means you can even use the S3 as a de facto games console and get yourself a massive advantage when you're hammering your way through Halo 3’s multi-player carnage.

4 S-Voice

Although the technology is by no means new, voice controls on smartphones are still at a fairly nascent stage. And right now, although S-Voice lets you schedule alarms, turn on the handset and ask it questions, it’s never going be anyone’s primary means of interacting with their phone.

But, and we admit we’re basing this on the brief hands-on time we had at this month’s launch, that’s not to say that S-Voice isn’t loads of fun to use. And it’s still the best feature the S3 boasts when it comes to showing off down the pub with your chums.

5 SmartScreen

Really good ideas always seem forward-slappingly obvious in hindsight. And SmartScreen is definitely one of them.

This neat addition to the S3 uses the phone’s secondary front-facing snapper to monitor your eye movements. This means it can tell when you’re watching a movie and you wont go into sleep mode when you haven’t touched the screen for a few minutes.

It’s amazing what a difference it makes to enjoying media and is a great way to conserve battery life, too. And it’s proof positive that, as Sammy is wont to claim, this phone really is “designed for humans”.

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Top 10 Android apps of 2012

1 Swiftkey 3

This Swype-alike improves on its predecessors in the alt-virtual keyboard category by adding contextual intelligence. That means that it ‘learns’ your typing patterns and your lexical tics to predict what you’ll input next. It also autocorrects errors and lets you sync it with your written correspondence via SMS, Facebook, Gmail and more to get the best idea possible of how and what you type.

2 Google Chrome

Chrome is fast as mobile browsers go and offers unlimited tabs, which you can flick through like a deck of cards in a UI touch that’s more than a little reminiscent of the much lamented webOS. The real boon for us, though, is that signing in to Chrome means you can sync open tabs and bookmarks across from your desktop, laptop and/or tablet.

3 Google Now

Billed as a challenger to Siri, Google Now features the same voice commands functionality of Apple’s iOS personal assistant. But it ups the ante by intelligently learning from users’ behavioural patterns and serving up reminders according to their location, the time of day and previous search habits. Our advice is: don’t fret about the potential privacy infringements. Just enjoy an app that’s the closest thing so far to a robot concierge.

4 Weather

Weather apps are pretty unlovely things most of the time. This great title from OneLouder (we love the Spinal Tap reference) is the exception. It’s exceptionally pretty, with a clean, modern look and some unobtrusive and attractive animations.

It’s great on the function front too, serving up real-time information, as well as oodles of handy gen for forecasts, alerts for extreme weather sent to the notifications bar, as well as sunrise and sundown times. The Radar map that shows weather in your locality and updates as you use it is also a bit of a boon.

5 Flipboard

Seemingly aeons after it landed on iOS devices, Flipboard hit Android. Better late than never.

As reading apps go, it doesn’t get too much better, thanks mostly to a smartly laid-out user interface that makes this supremely simple to use. Naturally, you can also tailor the news and articles it serves up to your preference and check out pieces your friends are recommending too.

6 TED Talks

This is a brilliant repository of talks from the fields of technology, entertainment and design. New speakers are added weekly and there are already thousands to get through. If you’re in the market for something a bit more edifying than a turn on an endless running games, this is just the ticket.

7 Pinterest

Like Flipboard, this also took its time coming to Android. But it’s a neat app that was worth the wait. And also like Flipboard, it’s easy to get to grips with. And because it’s nigh-on identical in terms of form and function to the website, you probably know how to use it already.

8 Google Drive

Somewhere between Google Docs and Dropbox, this teams word processing smarts, so you can create new docs on the go, and spreadsheets to work on numbers and whathaveyou, with 5GB of free cloud storage and the option to add more for a smallish charge. Automatic synching across all devices helps offset some of the frustration that movement of files within the app is severely constrained.

9 SkyDrive

Another impressive cloud storage solution, this time courtesy of Microsoft which has implemented a lovely UI that takes more than a few cues from the live tiles of Windows Phone. Hotmail account holders get 7GB of free storage.

10 Instagram

Photo filters with similar functionality are ten-a-penny on Android. But none have the same hugely engaged user community as Instagram, with whom you’re able to share your snaps instantly.

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Top 5 smartphones of 2012

Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE

It should come as no shock to most of you that the brilliant Samsung Galaxy S3 - voted Best Smartphone at the uSwitch Mobile Awards 2012 - should lead the charge of the year’s very best releases.

Rocking a stunning 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display and a quad-core processor that handles multitasking with aplomb, the Galaxy S3 is as powerful as it is cutting-edge. And now with 4G LTE support, the best just got even better.

What’s perhaps even more impressive about the S3 is its amazing array of software that really puts the ‘smart’ back into smartphone and sets it apart from the competition.

From the intelligent SmartStay mode that keeps the screen awake for as long as it’s in use to Pop-up play function that lets you continue watching a video while working on something else, the S3 is packed to the brim with intuitive, well thought out features.

It’s hardly a surprise then that it’s already shifted over 30 million units worldwide and should no doubt be at the forefront of your consideration when picking out a new smartphone. 

Apple iPhone 5

Dedicated smartfans need no introduction to Apple’s perpetually best-selling iPhone and the iPhone 5 lives up to its predecessors’ status by packing yet more improvements in an even slicker and slimmer design.

For starters it’s the first ever handset from the Maker of Shiny iThings to offer worldwide LTE connectivity. Secondly, it’s fitted with a dynamic antenna that seamlessly switches between 4G and 3G networks to give you a speedy, uninterrupted mobile internet experience.

Apple has also upped the screen size to four inches, which boasts a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio that makes it ideal for streaming movies and working on the go. The Retina display with an eye-popping 326 pixels per inch density is superb, offering even richer colours and contrast than before.

And if you need more reasons to decide on an iPhone over a sea of iClones, there are literally hundreds of thousands waiting for you at the App Store.

Nokia Lumia 920

Nokia has built its reputation on designing top drawer smartphones known for their sturdy build quality and chic, colourful designs and the Lumia 920 is no exception.

The Finnish phone-maker’s latest flagship kit, featuring a slick, slim and slab-like form factor that comes in an array of bright colours, really is a breath of fresh air in a market saturated with drab and uninspired handsets.

Powered by the latest, snappiest Windows Phone 8 operating system, the 920 makes it a piece of cake to connect with the people and information that matter to you.

And it’s no slouch in the hardware department, with specs that include a 4.5-inch PureMotion+ HD display, an 8.7-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optic that takes excellent snaps and shoots in full HD, and of course, 4G LTE connectivity for blazing fast internet.

If you’re in the market for a great smartphone that’s not an iPhone or an Android, you need not look any further.

HTC Windows Phone 8X

HTC is not one to be left out of the cool parties and it’s very much an A-List presence with the fantastic Windows Phone 8X, home to a 4.3-inch HD Super LCD2 display, a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor and an eight-megapixel camera.

Aside from running on the same, superb Windows Phone 8, which is probably not hard to tell from its name, a stylish design and selection of vibrant colourways also makes the 8X very much an effort in the same vein as the Nokia Lumia 920.

What sets the 8X apart, though, is the kind of industrial quality that’s become a hallmark of the HTC brand, and exclusive features, not least of which includes a built-in amplifier for Beats Audio, a 88° ultra-wide-angle front camera that captures almost three times the area of other phones and an advanced image signal processor (ImageChip) that enables speedy autofocus and continuous burst mode.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what the 8X offers, and in our opinion, it’s easily one of the best smartphones HTC has made yet.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 LTE

Even a year ago, very few would have believed that a smartphone equipped with an utterly enormous 5.3-inch display could ever break into the mainstream consciousness, especially following several long-forgotten attempts failed trying, among which only the Dell Streak rings a bell anymore.

Well, that’s exactly what Samsung’s Galaxy Note did, with over 10 million units sold of a device that not only brought the stylus back into fashion but also transformed a formerly ‘niche’ form factor into one that’s increasingly becoming the norm.

The Galaxy Note 2 takes all that its predecessor achieved and enriches it with a better S-Pen stylus, a larger 5.5-inch screen and whole host of features such as MultiView that lets you split the screen into two to keep working while you do something else, Air Play, which enables you to preview content by simply hovering the S-Pen over them and Quick Command, which reveals a list of apposite options with a simple swipe.

Aptly dubbed a ‘phablet’ for combining the size and functionality of a smartphone with the advanced capabilities of a tablet, the Galaxy Note 2 is proof-positive that bigger sometimes really is better.

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