Huawei, the Chinese handset vendor we love for the sole fact that they release rock solid budget Android devices, is trying to break into the high end space. Last month at Mobile World Congress they announced the Ascend D Quad. Now barring the ludicrously idiotic name aside, on paper it’s actually quite an interesting smartphone. It’ll come with a 4.5 inch 720p display, an 8 megapixel camera, a quad core processor that Huawei designed themselves, and best of all there’s an XL version that has a slightly thicker body to accomodate a whopping 2,500 mAh battery! Like many other handset vendors, Huawei failed to provide a launch date or price point when they showed this thing off. According to a rumor coming from the Chinese website CNMO, the D Quad isn’t going to hit the market until July. That’s about 100 days from now. Let that sink in for a little.
Do you know how much stuff is going to happen over the next 100 days? HTC’s One X is going to ship, Samsung is going to announce, and probably start shipping, the Galaxy S III, CTIA will take place in America, Apple will hold their annual Worldwide Developers Conference, and Google will host Google I/O 2012. It’s bad enough that we’re already having a hard time remembering the phones that were announced less than a month ago. In three months … forget it.
Once the D Quad does to come to market however, it’ll be interesting to see how much it undercuts the competition. Right now the most expensive Huawei device sold in this writer’s home country, Finland, is the 320 EUR Honor. The D Quad is easily going to cost at least 400 EUR, and when it had that kind of price tag will people be willing to shell out that much money for a device from a brand they’ve never heard of, much less know how to pronounce properly?
We’ll be keeping an eye on this story.
[Via: Unwired View]