Huawei Ascend P6 review

For its latest assault on Android smartphone norms, Chinese manufacturer Huawei has gone slim -- very slim.

It's on sale now for around £350.

Design
At just 6.18mm the Ascend P6 is the slimmest smartphone we've ever seen. That's nearly 1.5mm thinner than the 7.6mm iPhone 5 and the difference is definitely noticeable. As soon as you pick it up you know you've got something that's vanishingly different -- if you get this phone, strangers will want to pick it up and hold it, get used to it.

It feels sturdy though, and the 4.7-inch touchscreen is protected behind Corning Gorilla Glass. It offers an HD resolution of 1,280x720 pixels (312ppi) -- not the very best in class perhaps, but more than acceptable. It looks luscious, with bright colours and deep contrast -- more than good enough for browsing or watching movies.
Huawei Ascend P6 Huawei Ascend P6Huawei

Android, software and processor
Nice to see that it's running the latest version of Android, 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, so you won't feel the need for an update for a while. Running on top is Huawei's Emotion 1.6 user interface which is perfectly fine, but doesn't offer much improvement over the standard Android UI.

That powerful 1.5GHz processor is backed by a full 2GB RAM, which really helps it to ramp up the speed. Apps open and switch at lightning speed, and there's never any sense that the P6 is hanging back. Performance-wise it feels like a considerably more expensive phone, and in our book it's the performance that counts more than appearance -- looks get tired after a while, but you'll always appreciate a hard-working processor that makes performance-hungry apps look easy. Our AnTuTu performance benchmark test gave it 14,212, behind the quad-core big boys like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One, though in truth it didn't really feel any slower, not even when playing HD games like Riptide.

The Ascend P6 offers a sleekly skinny alternative to the Google Nexus 4

Photography
The eight-megapixel camera is a step higher than we'd expect at this price and it's a pretty good one too. It offers plenty of extras, including autofocus, LED flash, touch focus, HDR, Panorama, object tracking, smile capture and geotagging. Picture quality is nothing to be ashamed of, and it delivers accurate colours and sharp edges with a good amount of detail. Surprisingly, the front-facing camera offers five megapixels of resolution, delivering just about the best quality video calls you'll find on a current smartphone.
Huawei Ascend P6 test photo Huawei Ascend P6 test photoDave Oliver



The 8GB of onboard memory storage isn't exceptional these days, but fortunately you can beef it up with a microSD card.

Despite its skinniness, there's still room for a 2,000mAh battery which will do a decent enough job of getting you through a solid day or so of steady use. Just as well, since the unibody design won't allow you to take it out and replace it with a spare.

Conclusion
Given its midrange price, the Ascend P6 isn't really in competition with heavyweights (not literally) like the Samsung Galaxy S4 or HTC One. Still, it gives both a run for their money and offers a sleekly skinny alternative to the Google Nexus 4 which retails for a similar price, as is a very good, solid midrange phone, but without the P6's panache.