Huawei Ascend P6: Slim isn't everything

Huawei Ascend P6, the flagship smartphone of mystic oriental origin. Is it worthy of the hype that's floating around? We'll come to know in this issue of Bytes.

Let's start with the name. Ascend P6 got its name from its size…. and that's 6mm. When launched, Huawei Ascend P6 was the slimmest phone in tech-town, unfortunately not any more. This ex-skinniest smartphone is still brilliant to look at. Its measurements are 132.7 x 65.5 x 6.2 mm and its pretty light - just 120g. There are rumors that this phone is an iPhone rip-off but we wondered why. This phone is distinctive in its own way and has several refinements that Apple fanboys would want in their phones. The 4.7-inch screen is near-almost pulsating as the Apple iPhone 5. It has 312ppi versus iPhone 5's 326ppi. It looks good, but not when compared with iPhone 5S or HTC One. The length of the screen is quite bigger than iPhone. But an average sized hand can easily accommodate it. The metal that wraps the interior is smooth though your palm will never fall in love with it. Why? Probably because you used an iPhone and metal quality in this one feels cheap.  The SIM tray is a pop out in the side, very similar to iPhone and many other devices. Same goes for the memory card slot. What Huawei intuitively added is a detachable pin to make the trays pop out.
Now time to peek under the hood. Competent is the word that describes the phone perfectly. This phone packs a decent processor and memory. 1.5 Quad Core and 2 Gigs RAM sound pretty good. In fact more adept and powerful than the phone's price would suggest. Regrettably the phone not always performs the way these specs would allow to. Emotion UI, a weird (peculiar would be the perfect word) looking user interface that this phone comes with is probably the reason why the phone is a bit slow time to time. We also found some users complaining about instability issues with few apps in tech forums. But good news is with the KitKat update (Yes! It's getting KitKat update this month), engineers of Huawei has vowed to put an end to this shenanigans. Huawei's take on Android includes a Me tile that can be customized with your favorite on screen apps. It's neat, but not unseen before. The phone also comes with lots of themes to customize the wallpaper, onscreen icons and so on.
The primary camera, which is a salient feature in smartphones, of Huawei Ascend P6 is able to take bold and vibrant pictures. Unfortunately the quality (details) of the snap is not what you might expect from an 8MP. What impressed us most is the Scene Settings feature. It can adapt the settings itself with the changing environment of the snaps. So far, the only handset to come up with a better feature than this was the Nokia Lumia 925.
If you ever have been through the adverts of Huawei Ascend P6, you will surely find them screaming about the 5MP front camera. Why? Because it's worth it!  Designed for the ultimate self-portrait- is what Huawei claims….. and we agree with it. No camera in this range offers such spectacular selfies.   2000mAh cell battery of this chunk of metal is pretty good. It will last entire day plus few hours more in a full charge with medium usage including Wi-Fi and 3G.  Comparing with the competitors, we will give the edge to Ascend P6 keeping in mind how much skinny the phone is. The unit that we had survived 27 hours 38 minutes in total in a single charge. We browsed nearly 3 hours in Wi-Fi and 45 minutes in 3G.

SPECS

Display: 480 720 x 1280 pixels, 4.7 inches (~312 ppi pixel density) IPS+ LCD capacitive touchscreen
480 720 x 1280 pixels, 4.7 inches (~312 ppi pixel density) IPS+ LCD capacitive touchscreen
Platform: Android OS, v4.2.2 (Jelly Bean), planned upgrade to v4.4 (KitKat)
Processor: Quad-core 1.5 GHz
ROM: 8/16 GB
RAM:   2 GB RAM
Sensors: Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, temperature
Camera: Primary: 8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash  Secondary:   5 MP, 720p
Battery: Li-Po 2000 mAh battery

Price: Tk. 34,900/-

THE VERDICT
Ascend P6 is a brilliant phone, no doubt about that. It's slim, and light weight, good looking and more than an average smartphone. Its screen is top-notch, the construction is solid, and the battery-life is just lovely. The primary camera is OK and there's no better phone out there for taking selfy– if that's what you're into. However, the phone failed attempting to raise itself above the 'mid-range' shelf despite having '2GB RAM' and 'quad-core CPU'. The software instability and quirky looking UI is another reason to say 'eeh' when using the phone.
We finish our review asking one simple questions: “Come on Huawei Engineers! Would it kill you to market a phone with Vanilla Android?”