Huawei’s Windows Phone 8 Smartphone Ascend W1 To Launch At $250

The Chinese mobile phone titan showcased its first Windows Phone 8 smartphone, the Ascend W1 at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas early in January.

The Windows Phone 8 handset was said to hit store shelves before the end of this quarter.

Huawei positioned the device as an entry-level smartphone, yet promised it will still deliver a powerful feature set and capable performance thanks to the dual-core processor that it packs in. One thing, however, that was not revealed was pricing.

Until now, that is.

The Ascend W1 was recently listed at Vmall for 1,599 Yuan, which amounts to US $250 — a perfectly fine price for a Windows Phone 8 smartphone with this feature set.

A dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor handles processing on the Ascend W1, while an Adreno 305 GPU handles graphics. A 4-inch IPS LCD touchscreen display carries a resolution of 480×800.

The somewhat limited 4GB internal memory can easily be boosted with up to 32GB of memory card storage thanks to a microSD slot. A 10.5 mm thin body houses a 5 megapixel camera on the back with LED flash.

Expected standby time is said to be 470 hours with the included 1950 mAh battery.

Huawei is readying the smartphone for launch in several countries including China, Russia, India and a few European markets. UK telecom giant O2 already announced it will be carrying the W1 on it network in the United Kingdom.

The Ascend W1 is Huawei’s bid to bring Windows Phone 8 to the masses at a very attractive price point, and though it remains to be seen how the smartphone performs in the real world, consumer interest seems quite high.

Which is a good thing as RIM is set to debut BlackBerry 10, with the Canadian company recently announcing that it is considering licensing its platform to third party vendors.

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