Huawei Ascend D1 Android phone (preview)

Cheap, pre-paid phones like the $99 Ascend Y100 and the incredible value for money $169 Ascend G300 are normally Huawei's bread and butter in Australia. However, the Ascend D1 is a very different story. Boasting a 4.5in screen with a 720p HD resolution, the Huawei Ascend D1 will aim to compete with mid range smartphones like the HTC One S and the Sony Xperia S.

Although the Huawei Ascend D1 isn't a flagship model, it has very impressive specifications. The crowning feature is a large 4.5in screen with a resolution of 1280x720. This IPS+ display has a pixels per inch (ppi) rating of 326ppi, equal with the far more expensive iPhone 4S (326ppi) and superior to the Galaxy S III (306ppi) and the HTC One X (312ppi). This pixels per inch rating means the Ascend D1 should display a very high level of detail, significantly bettering many rivals in its price class.

The Huawei Ascend D1 is almost identical to the Ascend D Quad, with the exception of the processor. The D quad is powered by Huawei's own 1.5GHz K3 V2 quad-core processor, while the D1 uses TI's OMAP 4460 chip — a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU. The quad-core processor is technically superior and is likely to benefit gaming first and foremost, but we'd be surprised if casual users would be able to notice a difference during everyday tasks. In other words, don't discount the Ascend D1 just because it has a dual-core processor.

Internals aside, the Ascend D1 measures just 8.9mm thick. It's certainly not as thin as the company's stylish Ascend P1 S (6.68mm) or even the recently released Ascend P1 (7.7mm) but it's comparable to many flagship Android phones on the market.

Other features of the Huawei Ascend D1 include an 8-megapixel rear camera that doubles as a full HD 1080p video recorder and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera that can record 720p HD video.

The Huawei Ascend D1 will come with Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system out of the box. It is unknown if the Ascend D1 will eventually be updated to the latest 4.1 Jelly Bean version of Android.

Huawei hasn't announced if or when the Ascend D1 smartphone will be launched in Australia. If the company does intend on launching it Down Under, it would certainly need to attract one of the big carriers to sell it, unlike the Ascend P1, which is only sold outright through retail stores.

Note: The below video features the Ascend D Quad, which is identical to the Ascend D1 aside from the processor:

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