Chinese phone manufacturer, Huawei announced their new flaghsip smartphone from London yesterday. The Ascend P6 enters the fray somewhere above the Ascend P2, the Ascend P6 has the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5 squarely in it’s sites. Brave, but then they do have a price-point of R5 000 to scream about.

The Huawei Ascend P6 is, at 6.18mm, the world’s slimmest phone and they’re using a 3-pronged attack to announce their comeback into the consumer market space. And a comeback it shall be since they have promised new consumer devices coming again in July and August.

Huawei have focused on a good looking exterior, trying to balance the phone between it’s tech elements and it’s human user. In a profound piece of marketing fluff, they say they’ve created the Ascend P6 after the element which it replaces, paper. And they’ve got it right with a stunningly smooth body, a 4.7-inch 720p display being run by a 1.5GHz quad-core processor. The Ascend P6 is for the image-conscious, fashion user where the Ascend P2 is for the spec-savvy, tech junkie.

Inside helps outside with Huawei’s Emotion UI, a new customisable take on Android JellyBean that they say improves Googles go at it by over 300 enhancements. MeWidget takes everything “you” and puts it on your desktop and there are over 100 themes on the phone to choose from with a further 1000 online to download.

The third pillar they’re resting the Ascend P6 on is it’s camera abilities and with an 8MP rear and 5MP front-facing camera, they have reason to be excited. Our brief play with the camera at the launch left us impressed, although not conivned it’s enough to steal any accolades from Samsung and certainly not from the Nokia Lumia’s of the world.

Despite this, they did flex some camera muscle with this demo of an algorithm, using the camera to solve a rubics cube via K-Nex machine.

And also, some clever self portrait capabilities.

So there’s a new player (again) in the mobile space then? Certainly. They’ve got the price point dead on, although that could be because the specs and brand equity don’t quite stack up to the phones they’d like to be competing with. In the end it’ll come down to how much they put into marketing their new device, something they believe isn’t as important as keeping the price low and getting it into the hands of the consumers. Time will tell. Full review coming soon.

Full Specs:
Thickness – 6.18 millimeters
Weight – 120 grams
Screen – 4.7-inch 720p display
Processor – 1.5GHz quad-core processor
Cameras – 8-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel front-facing camera
Storage – 2GB of RAM, 8GB internal storage and Micro-SD expandable
OS – Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Huawei’s Emotion UI