Huawei reveals "fastest smartphone in the world"

Huawei's Ascend P2 smartphone. / AP Photo/Huawei

Huawei, a Chinese company that recently became the world's third-largest maker of smartphones, calls its new flagship product "the fastest smartphone in the world" and wants to use it to expand global awareness of its brand.

Parts of the presentation of the phone at a press conference Sunday in Barcelona, Spain, suggest that the company has some way to go in polishing its pitch for a global audience.

Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business group said the new phone can be programmed to display more than 100 different "themes," or looks. This is important because "ladies like flowers, colorful things," Yu said.

Yu also said Huawei is learning from Apple how to make Google's Android software easier to use, a lawsuit-friendly utterance considering that Apple is on a global campaign to sue makers of Android phones for copying from the iPhone.

The new phone, the Ascend P2, will have a 4.7 inch screen. Yu said it will be available in the April to June time frame for about $525 without a contract. It's the "fastest" because it supports faster download speeds than other phones. However, today's wireless networks aren't equipped to supply those speeds.

Huawei Technologies Ltd. was the world's third largest seller of smartphones, after Samsung and Apple, in the fourth quarter of last year, according to research firm IDC. That's despite selling very few phones in the U.S., where the big phone companies mostly ignore it. It has a much better position in Europe, where cellphone companies have embraced its network equipment, and France's Orange is committed to selling the phone.

In the U.S., a congressional panel recommended in October that phone carriers avoid doing business with Huawei or its smaller Chinese rival, ZTE Corp., for fear that its network equipment could contain "back doors" that enable access to communications from outside. The Chinese government rejected the report as false and an effort to block Chinese companies from the U.S. market.

Meanwhile, a report by a private U.S. cybersecurity firm concluded recently that a special unit of China's military is responsible for sustained cyberespionage against U.S. companies and government agencies. China has denied involvement in the attacks in which massive amounts of data and corporate trade secrets, likely worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were stolen.

"It has not been an easy journey for us," Huawei's global brand director, Amy Lou, said Sunday of the company's quest to become globally recognized and trusted. She called the company "a great consumer brand in the making."

The world's largest cellphone trade show, Mobile World Congress, opens Monday in Barcelona.

I just picked up an iPhone 4S2 for $100.00 and I threw it to the garbage the next day.

Then got a Samsung S3 and I could not imagine requiring greater amounts of speed and utility than what it provides.

Fix'd

[Avenge7folded]

Translating the Hooway press bragging about P2 speed into everyday reality:

"It steals user data for the Chicom's faster than any phone out there!"

And now you know the rest of the story.........

[komodo55]

I just picked up an iPhone 4S2 for $100.00 and I could not imagine requiring greater amounts of speed and utility than what it provides.

[skithebumps]

It's really cool to see what the Chinese have been able to do with all of that wonderful technological information they have stolen from us through their state-sponsored Internet hacking.
Such creative people.

[oldoc44]

Think of it this way...how much more speed is needed for gossip/BS and sexting anyway? Bulk of "phone" use is in this vein anyway! LOL

[Forty-Four]

3rd largest? Never heard of them. Then again, China has such a large population that it is entirely possible for them to claim that spot with us having no knowledge of their existence.

[Uneed2BWeened]

chiPhone! chiPad! Were do they come up with these great ideas?

[OldTimeTruth]

Ya, but the bad thing is American buyers will run over each other to buy it. Draining more from the US. Watch and see.

[Filmguy870]

"Huawei is learning from Apple..." ie..they're stealing THAT, too!!!! Kung hei fat choy, dudes!