25 replies to this topic

[hecatae]

The Huawei Ascend W1 brings Windows Phone 8 to the budget consumer, at a rather tasty £129.99. But would you be better off with the HTC 8S or Nokia Lumia 620?

Lets check the specifications...

• CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 MSM8230 dual-core krait 200 clocked at 1.2Ghz
  
• GPU: Adreno 305
  
• Display: WVGA 800 x 480 IPS TFT 4.0" display
  
• Rear Camera: 5MP with LED Flash, capable of recording Video at 1280x720 resolution, 30 frames per second
  
• Front Camera: VGA 640 x 480, also capable of recording video at 30 frames per second

Run of the mill so far, it's the specs below that interest me:

• Corning Gorilla Glass screen
  
• Built-in digital compass
  
• 4-point multi-touch
  
• HSPA+ 21Mbps
  
• HSUPA 5.76
  
• Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP AVRCP)
  
• NFC
  
• DLNA

Gorilla Glass at this price point, 21Mbps HSPA+ at this price for the first time ever, plus NFC for £129.99. What's the downfall?

• RAM: 512MB
  
• ROM: 4GB, 1650MiB user-accessible

If you have read The Jones' review of the HTC 8S, you will notice that the Huawei Ascend W1 suffers the same negative points.

Looking past that, the Ascend W1 would be an impressive business users phone, or for anyone who needs that impressive chipset for downloading or uploading photos, videos or documents.

TopCashBack is also possible on this device, bringing the total cost down to £124.44.

If you were looking at purchasing a Windows Phone 8 device on a budget, and to play games or download a lot of apps, the Lumia 620 is only £159.99 and has 8GB of internal storage space.

[Via: O2 UK]

Click here to view the item

[flibblesan]

It has a microSD slot that supports up to 32Gb which is good. I think this looks much nicer than the Lumia 620.

[PaulMilbank]

I am still keen to check this phone out. I vowed never to go Huawei again, but the features this phone offers as well as WP8 are amazing.

[The Jones]

I wonder if the very slightly faster clockspeed on the CPU will have any noticeable impact on performance?  Interesting that Huawei are the first Windows Phone 8 manufacturer to include DLNA although Nokia have an app for it in beta.

[andy.hyde4]

I don't get why manufacturers only put 512mb RAM it really annoys me because I don't know about Windows Phone but Android realistically needs 1gb.

[kyan31]

Do you think you could port android to this? The specs are great for the value, especially for a UK available phone, but i'm not keen on switching to a whole new OS. To be perfectly honest, android is boss compared to WP

[PaulMilbank]

Then you haven't used windows phone! I can't believe how fast and smooth WP is on similar hardware to the G300. 1ghz single core and 512mb ram is smooth as silk with WP7.8 and never slows down. Reviews seem to indicate that the W1 runs everything you can throw at it even with just 512 mb of ram. I am just hanging out to try it first hand. Android is a hardware hog!

[tkelly0727]

I chose to order this phone yesterday and hoping its a good buy.  I had a android phone and the nexus 7. So im heading to WP8 for a change.

[unrandomsam]

The Jones, on 08 March 2013 - 10:20 AM, said:

I wonder if the very slightly faster clockspeed on the CPU will have any noticeable impact on performance?  Interesting that Huawei are the first Windows Phone 8 manufacturer to include DLNA although Nokia have an app for it in beta.

What do you mean ? Some form of DNLA has been provided by Nokia / HTC for ages.

(I am only interested in a renderer / control point ideally one that takes something that foobar 2000 can spit out from flac. But anything would be ok if it was lossless so I could batch convert without having to bother about encoding settings.)

[Linus X.]

In Italy it's 25% more expensive, so I'll try to get one from the UK. Any news on unlockability? Couldn't find anything on google yet...?

[PaulOBrien]

I wonder if it's even locked?

P

[tkelly0727]

Just received mines today i i love it

[Linus X.]

tkelly0727, on 11 March 2013 - 05:43 PM, said:

Just received mines today

Cool! Does it work with SIM cards from other providers?
Happy to read any other first impressions too!
Thanks,
Linus X.

[tkelly0727]

i tried my orange sim and it didnt work. but i have a giff gaff sim and it works.
for one i really enjoy the screen its really clear and reading text is really great.
no sluggish navigation on the OS really smooth. over all im pleased with me purchased

[Linus X.]

tkelly0727, on 11 March 2013 - 08:31 PM, said:

i tried my orange sim and it didnt work. but i have a giff gaff sim and it works.

As giffgaff uses O2 network, I guess that means the sim is locked. Should you plan on unlocking, please keep me posted!
Thanks,
Linus X.

[tkelly0727]

Linus X., on 13 March 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

As giffgaff uses O2 network, I guess that means the sim is locked. Should you plan on unlocking, please keep me posted!
Thanks,
Linus X.

yes i am planning to unlock but haven't found any yet

[PaulMilbank]

Just got one yesterday. Love how smooth and fast everything is on it. I am just still trying to work out if it really has NFC or not. The NZ Delivered one from 2 degrees does not have tap to send anywhere.

[Northstandhero]

My Daughter bought the electric Pink one today, I'm very impressed with it, seems fast and smooth,might be worth a punt but not in this colour.

[tkelly0727]

PaulMilbank, on 20 March 2013 - 01:57 AM, said:

Just got one yesterday. Love how smooth and fast everything is on it. I am just still trying to work out if it really has NFC or not. The NZ Delivered one from 2 degrees does not have tap to send anywhere.

Same here gsm and other review sites saidbit has NFC but mine doesn't have and when im trying to get an NFC app its says its a feature my phone doesn't have

[PaulMilbank]

Huawei NZ have confirmed the NZ delivered one does not have NFC. There is a version with NFC, but like the u8818 with NFC vs u8815 without, it may be a china only thing unless you parallel import it or your carrier specifies it.
http://www.geekzone....&topicid=115286