Huawei Ascend W1 Blue only £129.99 on O2

[Guest 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

[Guest Simon O]

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

[Guest 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.

[Guest 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.

[Guest 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.

[Guest 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 :D

[Guest 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!

[Guest 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.

[Guest unrandomsam]

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.)

[Guest 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...?

[Guest PaulOBrien]

I wonder if it's even locked?

P

[Guest tkelly0727]

Just received mines today i i love it :)

[Guest Linus X.]

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.

[Guest 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

[Guest Linus X.]

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.

[Guest tkelly0727]

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

[Guest 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.

[Guest 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.

[Guest tkelly0727]

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

[Guest 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.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=6&topicid=115286

[Guest Linus X.]

Nice to see everyone happy with their new W1s!

Huawei NZ have confirmed the NZ delivered one does not have NFC.

That's bad news, but no deal breaker for me.

Still looking for a confirmed way to unlock before I order one from O2 UK through a friend. Here in Italy it's apparently unlocked, but costs 50 Eur more...

Cheers,

Linus X.

[Guest Colossae3.23]

• ROM: 4GB, 1650MiB user-accessible
  

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.

to anyone who's bought the W1: does the 4GB ceiling hamper this phone? Its my understanding that people are saying that is not enough, and that you can't use the external storage for apps (like you can with Android)? Where as the Nokia 620 has double the space.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Colossae3.23

[Guest PaulMilbank]

I have not found it to be a problem. I have all the apps I normally use and I still have 600mb free.I don't have any really big games though.

I have noticed xbox games can be 100+mb in the store, if you are going to use this phone as a portable console for xbox games and plan to have lots installed at the same time, you are not going to be happy with it. Can the 620/8S/W1 play those games well? That is another question I have yet to find out. I'm guessing you want Nokia 820+ level hardware (1gb ram, better gpu) to make the most of those games.

[Guest Colossae3.23]

I have not found it to be a problem. I have all the apps I normally use and I still have 600mb free.I don't have any really big games though.

I have noticed xbox games can be 100+mb in the store, if you are going to use this phone as a portable console for xbox games and plan to have lots installed at the same time, you are not going to be happy with it. Can the 620/8S/W1 play those games well? That is another question I have yet to find out. I'm guessing you want Nokia 820+ level hardware (1gb ram, better gpu) to make the most of those games.

thanks for this. One thing that takes up a bit of space on my G300 is Copilot maps/nav. I have both the UK and US maps downloaded for offline use. Which I'm guessing you wouldn't need with a Nokia, at least, because Nokia maps is so highly rated. So is Nokia Maps part of the WP8 footprint, or is it in addition? And I'm wondering do all WP8 phones (including the W1) get Nokia maps also (or whatever they call it now)? Thanks.

[Guest PaulMilbank]

All phones with WP8 can get drive off the store, but it is currently region locked. The US and Europe have it I think, but down here in NZ, it is not available yet. We have to get a Nokia phone currently with it preinstalled if we want it. Hopefully they get this sorted soon.