Huawei Ascend P6 review and Full Specification

From 80s-era goliaths and 90s-era Nokia wedges through to today's monolithic slabs, phones are continuously changing their size and shape. Even today, some smart phones are neatly palm-sized, while others -- like the Samsung Galaxy Mega -- sport screens so large that to use them you must stretch your thumbs further than nature ever intended.

Huawei's take on this is evidently 'the skinnier the better', as it's given the Ascend P6 a superbly narrow 6.18mm frame. That makes it the thinnest phone on the market today. Into that body, Huawei has packed a quad-core processor, a 720p displThe Chinese manufacturer has managed to pack a quad-core processor, 8MP camera and othertop features into a phone that’s only 6.18mm thick.

Known mostly for lower-budget handsets in the UK, Huawei is squarely aiming the Ascend P6 at taking on Android heavyweights like the Samsung Galaxy S4, the HTC One and the Sony Xperia Z. To that end, Huawei hasn’t gone down the plastic route, instead focusing on an all-metal finish.

We got some time with the new handset at the global media launch in London, and had a little play around with what the Huawei P6 has to offer.

If you want a ridiculously slim phone to slide into your pocket and don't mind that its specs are more typical of last year's kit, the Ascend P6 is one to consider. Its overheating is a concern though, as are the small issues with construction and software. Let's hope Huawei sorts them out before it goes on sale.

Huawei's take on this is evidently 'the skinnier the better', as it's given the Ascend P6 a superbly narrow 6.18mm frame. That makes it the thinnest phone on the market today. Into that body, Huawei has packed a quad-core processor, a 720p display and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.

The mobile market is a fickle place, so it doesn't matter where you are right now; it's all about where you're going. Huawei? Well, it's definitely got its sights set on an upward trajectory. The Ascend P6 is the latest rung on the ladder, intended to elevate the company to mobile greatness. But, with competition stiffer than ever, can it really call a device with a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 720p display and 8-megapixel camera a flagship? (For its P-series at least?) Huawei's certainly giving it a try, and it's hoping that beauty, not brawn, will win the day.

We got some time with the new handset at the global media launch in London, and had a little play around with what the Huawei P6 has to offer.

The recently confirmed Ascend P6 has landed, and Huawei hopes it will stir interest in the hearts of mobile users. Debuting across Europe, China and Australia in late June / early August with a €449 ($600) price tag, it's asking you to take it seriously, and that's what we'll do.

Huawei Ascend P6 :  Features 

Despite the size-zero frame, Huawei has managed to include many of the features we’d expect from a smartphone challenging the Android elite. The 4.7-inch Gorilla Glass 2 screen has a 1280 x 720 resolution which means it’ll handle 720p HD content, but doesn’t better the HTC One’s 1080p clarity.

Built around a 1.5GHz quad-core processor with 2GB RAM, the Ascend P6 has 8GB of native storage – although roughly half of this is taken up with pre-installed components. Luckily, the Chinese company has added microSD storage, so you can boost the space for your music, movies and apps.

Wireless connectivity is given in the form of 3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Interestingly, Huawei has left out 4G compatibility at this stage, saying that it’s not an issue for the majority of customers at this point. However, we anticipate seeing a 4G version arriving at some point. There’s also no NFC compatibility, so you’ll be unable to pair this with any NFC-compatible speakers you have knocking around.

There’s a slim 2000mAh battery encased underneath the Ascend P6’s brushed metal chassis, which should see you through each day without needing a top-up. 

Huawei Ascend P6 :  Display

The P6 packs a 4.7-inch screen with a 720p resolution. That's no match for the Full HD big boys like the Sony Xperia Z, HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4, but it's still a decent resolution that puts it more or less in line with phones like the Nexus 4.

Icons and text don't have quite the same pin-sharp clarity you'd find on the Full HD phones, but you do have to get pretty close to the screen to tell the difference. If you regularly find yourself reading a lot of ebooks, the extra clarity afforded by a 1080p display might be a worthy investment, but 720p is more than good enough for most tasks.

Colours are rich and bold, making Netflix shows and YouTube clips look great. If you're not keen on the colour balance, you're able to change the screen temperature in the settings. I found the default setting to be the most accurate though.

Huawei Ascend P6 : Camera

There are two cameras tucked inside the Ascend P6: A rear-facing 8MP f2.0 camera with an LED flash and a front-facing 5MP snapper for video calls. It’s fair to say that the picture-taking capabilities of the Ascend P6 don’t match the HTC One, but for casual snap-on-the-go this is certainly up to the task.

To this end, Huawei has added what it calls the IMAGESmart engine to its camera software which automatically selects the best shot requirements for your environment. It works like any automatic scene-selection and is quite handy at avoiding underexposed pictures.

Some fun features have been added, including a “beautifier” mode that’s designed for prettying up selfies. Snap your face and engage the beauty mode to knock three, five or ten years off your face. We’re not quite sure yet how well it’ll work – or why it’s been included – but it seems like a bit of fun to us.

Many of you may have headed directly here, or at least held a particular interest given the P6's unusual camera configuration. With a generous five megapixels on the front-facing camera, Huawei has given the P6 a standout feature that many will be drawn to. The rear-facing camera, on the other hand is a rather less-notable 8-megapixel affair. Naturally, we gave both of them a spin to see how they fared.

Huawei Ascend P6 : Processor and performance

The P6 is packing a quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz. That's slightly slower than the 1.9GHz brute of the Galaxy S4, but it's not worlds apart, so I was hoping for a good performance. On my benchmark tests, the P6 gave varying results.

While its top score on the Geekbench test was a satisfyingly high 1,667, another run gave a result of only 858. The same pattern occurred on the CF-Bench tool. The top-end score isn't bad, but it's nothing on the 3,087 of the S4. At the bottom end of the range, it's thoroughly miserable for a quad-core phone.

I also found general use of the phone to be a a mixed bag. For the most part, it was reasonably responsive and smooth. At times, though, it seemed to struggle more. There were some jerky motions when swiping between apps or pulling down the notification bar, and delays when opening apps. It was certainly not the sort of experience I would expect from a quad-core chip. It's clear that the Emotion interface is bogging things down a lot.

As with the construction issues, it's possible that some of the performance problems might be a case of slightly glitchy software on this early sample. An update might be able to bring the processor to a more usable level, so I'll take another look when it's on sale. Even so, it's disappointing to see.

The processor had enough juice to make light work of Riptide GP, but it struggled quite a lot with N.O.V.A 3. It gave very low frame rates, resulting in stuttery gameplay that wasn't at all enjoyable.

Huawei Ascend P6 : Software

By default Emotion UI pushes its "Me" widget on you, which is the usual gathering of favorite contacts, images, videos and weather and date widgets. Basically, all the usual suspects that manufacturers are sure we're most in need of direct access to. You're not stuck with this, of course, and not only can you customize (and remove) the widget entirely, Emotion UI also lets you easily set another screen as your default destination. One thing that remains absent, however, is the app tray. So, if you appreciated the ability to keep your essentials on the top layer, with everything else hidden away, you're fresh out of luck with Emotion UI. You can exert some control, though, by stuffing less-used apps into folders, and tucking them away on home screens out of view -- with the ability to create up to nine, which should just about suffice.

The skin extends to the main settings menus, theming them slightly differently to Android's stock Holo look and feel. Oh, and if you don't like it? No problem: Huawei will have an extensive number of choices available (at least 100, last we heard) when the phone actually launches. The default themes we saw on our review device, however, all had a few things in common. First, and this may seem like a small detail, but the app icons are all rounded squares, regardless of what the original app icon intended. An example? WhatsApp's green speech bubble suddenly gets an opaque rounded square behind it. The result is something that looks like an attempt at iOS; an important distinction from actually looking like iOS. Let's hope that some of those other themes offer more variety, and something a little more modern. After all, even Apple thinks iOS 6 icons need an update.

There are a few other quirks in Emotion UI that make themselves apparent. To start, despite running Android 4.2.2, there's no gesture keyboard, which will be a major loss if you've become reliant on that. The good news, of course, is that you can go ahead and download it from the Play store for free, but it's an unusual omission nonetheless. Another odd, but not entirely unwelcome addition is a battery-level indicator in the notification bar that also displays a numerical percentage. This extra info is undoubtedly useful, but we also found ourselves becoming more pre-occupied with remaining battery life than ever before. One minute, it's at 97 percent. Then you play a few rounds of a game, and what's that, now it's 92 percent? Definitely not a feature for those with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Huawei's added a few other features that again will likely split opinions. By default, a folder of "management" apps has been added that includes such useful-sounding options as being able to determine which apps can and cannot send push messages. It will also alert you each time an app sends out such a message for the first time, asking you to OK it. Definitely good for the security-conscious, but much like Windows' User Account Control, you can soon find yourself bypassing it completely to prevent further pestering, despite best intentions. Not all the inclusions are quite so heavy-handed, though. One straight out of the "it just works" camp is the media-sharing app. One press while connected to the same WiFi network as our smart TV, and we were watching video and viewing photos on the larger screen. DLNA and media-sharing apps aren't anything revolutionary, but when they work as effortlessly as this, we're inclined to applaud them.

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