According to The Wall Street Journal, Huawei, the Chinese brand that does both infrastructure equipment and dabbles in devices, will announce a high end Android 2.2 device on Thursday that was jointly developed with Google. That’s a huge win if it’s true, considering the only other device that Google ever admitted to having a say in was the HTC made Nexus One.
Now let’s think about this for a second. Huawei is in the same position that HTC was in 5 years ago. Remember how HTC used to make devices for operators, but their hardware never had any HTC logos? Then one day the Taiwanese firm said they’re going to compete with the big boys and ramped up their brand and now all of a sudden they’re a force to be reckoned with. That same tactic is likely to be implemented by Huawei who wants to prove that the Chinese can do more than just copy designs from the west and then pump out poorly built devices that break in less than a year.
Color me interested. I never took Huawei devices seriously. They’ve always been a generation or two behind in terms of system specifications, and I never really saw the point of buying their devices since comparable gear from either Nokia, Samsung or LG was available for the same price. What do you think we’ll see on Thursday? A radical design that will turn heads or your run of the mill slab of glass that we’ve seen time and time again since the launch of the first iPhone back in the summer of 2007?
Huawei currently sells 9 different models, but in parts of the world where very few IntoMobile readers hail from. There is the Pulse that was launched by T-Mobile UK last year, but I wouldn’t use that as an example of one of the company’s finest engineering achievements.