Huawei are back with another new device, the second flagship device in their Ascend range, and as with the last one, the Huawei Ascend P7 really pushes the edges of what we’ve come to expect from Smartphones.

I recently read an article about how Italian car maker Alfa is on a push to return to former glory. Gonna be a tough road to travel, I thought. They’re going to need a lot of innovation, the right manufacturing partners and a bucket load of money. Now I don’t know if they have all 3 ingredients. But you know who does? The Chinese. Here comes Huawei.

The Huawei Ascend P7 follows the Ascend P6 (see how that works?) and it comes in at 6.5mm making it the slimmest 4G LTE smartphone currently on the market.

When you hold it in your hand, don’t expect to be blown away with how unique looking or different it is, because it isn’t (the new Nokia 930 however. More on that later in the week). But neither is the Galaxy or the iPhone either. They only have so many places they can go, let’s be honest.

So it’s in features that they’ve had to differentiate themselves from the Korean and American chaff.

What’s most impressive about Huawei as a company is how they take a look at the trends of their consumers and react to them when designing and making a device. It’s kind of like how Harley Davidson sit down with riding clubs and ask the riders what they want to see on the new range.

I don’t like it, but selfies are where it’s at for the moment. And Huawei has recognised and catered to that.

On the front you get an 8MP camera for the highest res selfies on the market. And to drive home the selfie point, they’ve included the ability to take “Groufies”. Sounds cheesy, but it’s quite intelligent if you’re trying to get self-obsessed, wanna-be make-up artist tweens to buy your phone. Think of a panorama selfie. That’s what a groufie is.

On the back the Ascend P7 has a 13MP camera which isn’t anywhere near the best in the market from Nokia. But it’s enough for very decent sized shots and imho is better than the Galaxy camera.

On the rugged side, the Ascend P7 is basically made out of Gorilla Glass, so it’s got a real tough exterior to protect the 6.5mm chassis that houses a 5-inch display, 2GB of RAM, a 1.8GHz Quad Core processor and the latest version of Android.

4G LTE technology abounds which means the ability to share the pictures you take almost as quickly as you take them: 1.2 seconds, even from the lock screen. And for the hipsters? Instagram-like lens. Free. No download.

Honourable and final mention goes to their Emotion UI which is unique to them and is their way of saying: “You’re using a Huawei”. I’ve always said, it’s practically impossible to set yourself apart in the open source Android OS market, but Huawei come about as close to getting it right with their UI as I’ve experienced.

So the Chinese are coming and I’m brushing up on my Mandarin. But everything mentioned above is meaningless if nobody can afford what is without a doubt an iPhone and Galaxy competitor. And it’s here that Huawei are going to win the battle. A retail price of R6 500 for the new Huawei Ascend P7 means that the Chinese are taking as much advantage as they can of their local manufacturing to bring a top-end flagship device at a real middle-of-the-range price bracket.

Get it: R6 500
From: www.Facebook.com/huaweidevicesouthafrica