Huawei Ascend P6
Introduction
The Huawei Ascend P6 is an extremely slim well-built handset with a glass front panel, a metal band around the sides and a brushed metal backplate. It has a square edge at the top and a rounded edge at the bottom and comes in Black White and Pink.
Design & Build
The handset measures 132.7 x 65.5 x 6.2mm and weighs 120g. On the front are a 5MP camera and a high quality 4.7” LCD display. On the right hand edge are the power and volume controls and SIM and microSD trays. At the bottom on the left is the headphone jack hidden behind a removable pin which is used to open the SIM and microSD card trays, the microUSB port is at the top. On the back of the handset is an 8MP camera and flash with a small speaker in the bottom left hand corner. It runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 with Huawei own Emoticon UI and a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 8GB of internal storage expandable up to 64GB and 2GB of RAM.
The capacitive control keys are built into the UI and remain hidden from view when not required and there is a selection of home screen themes to choose from and customise. The Profile App lets you adjust volume, brightness, vibration level and more. Motion Control lets you flip the phone to mute, auto answer a call when you put the phone to your ear and use the phone with gloves on.
Notifications such as incoming messages, app updates and system requests are accessed through a drag-down menu at the top of the homescreen. Just tap to open Individual items or dismiss with a swipe and you can reply to emails from within the notification bar. You can have up to 9 icons on each home screen and keep up to 5 apps permanently docked along the bottom of the screen for quick access.
Camera & Video
The 8MP rear facing camera takes decent photos and comes with a variety of shooting options including Single, Smart, Beauty, HDR, Panorama along with advanced options ISO, white balance, exposure, saturation, contrast and brightness and you can choose from standard auto focus or touch-to-focus. The 5MP front facing camera has Huawei’s facial enhancement software, and a two-second countdown timer.
The Ascend P6 is capable of 1080p video recording from its rear-facing camera and options include image stabilization, HDR Video and auto focus object tracking.
Battery & Connectivity
The 2000mAh battery will last a whole day and there is an option to select Normal, Smart and Endurance battery modes to help prolong battery life.
Connectivity includes Wi-Fi, GPS, HSPA+, DLNA and Bluetooth and a portable Wi-Fi hotspot utility and you can charge and hook up to your computer via the microUSB slot on top of the phone.
Keyboard
There is a choice of keyboards – the stock Android Jelly Bean keyboard and a custom keyboard. The Jelly Bean version has voice-input and smart prediction capabilities and the custom keyboard offers a constantly updating choice of possible words based on your inputs.
Contacts, Calling, Messaging & Email
The Contact App contains three main tabs for accessing a list of all your contacts, groups and favourites. An individual contact listing brings up all the information on that person and by tapping the message or phone icon brings up a choice of messaging or calling apps through which you can chat with your contact.
In the Calling App there is a bright green call button and a large dial pad along with shortcuts to the contacts app. The top part of the screen contains your most recent calls so you can call again with a tap.
The Messaging App gives a clear conversation view with speech bubbles that alternate between the left and right hand side of the screen, as well as between white and green, depending on who is talking and you can zoom in and out to make the text bigger or smaller. There is a permanent phone icon at the top of the screen so that you can phone the current message recipient.
There is the standard Gmail App and a slide-out folder navigation menu along with a new system that tags each email with the profile pictures of all the contacts involved along with a standard email app that enables you to pull in any other email POP3 or IMAP accounts you might have.
Music
There is Huawei’s own music app and Dolby Digital Plus sound enhancement system along with Google Music complete with lock screen and notification bar control shortcuts, MP3 store and cloud music player all in one.
Maps and Apps
Google Maps is on board along with Google+ YouTube, and the new Hangouts IM App and you can download Google Drive and Google Keep which offers free cloud storage and cloud note-taking. You also get access to Bitcasa which offers 20GB of free cloud storage for your files.
Verdict
The Huawei Ascend P6 is a beautifully designed and constructed handset that feels really good in the hand.