Huawei Ascend D quad XL

Huawei has announced the price of its Huawei Ascend D quad XL. Announced in February 2012, it has taken some time for this phone to hit the market, and I still do have to wait for reviews to find out just how good it is. 

But in terms of specifications and price, it is my favorite right now. First, price. The suggested retail price for this is just Php18,900. Basically, it competes head to head with the 5-inch quad core powered Lenovo K860. 

Huawei Ascend D quad XL has a 1.4 GHz quad core processor on a, designed by 
Huawei, K3V2 chipset. The fact that is has a in-house designed chipset is pretty impressive, since only two smartphone manufacturers design their chipsets in-house: Apple and Samsung. In terms of performance it is right up there with Samsung quad core Exynos chipset. Basically, its a fast as you need, and performs really well in the graphics intensive tasks. 

It comes with a 
4.5″ IPS+ LCD display with a HD (720×1280) resolution. This makes for a sharp  326ppi. And as a pet peeve, well is my favorite size. I am a fairly big person at six feet in height, but sometimes I feel like some of the new phones are getting a bit big. Smartphones with 4.5 inch HD aspect ratio displays are big enough, and small enough for me to manipulate comfortable with one hand. In more quantifiable terms, this phone is all of 64 mm wide, as compared to the 68-70 mm girth of its 4.7 and 4.8-inch rivals. 

The other thing I really like is that it comes with a 2600 mAh battery and still comes in at a reasonable 150 grams in weight. Unless the 
Huawei K3V2 is a battery hog, this should make for good battery life. The battery is user replaceable.

Internal storage is just 8 GB, bit you do have a microSD card slot so that it not an issues. It has a 8 MP primary camera and a 1.3 MP camera. The primary camera can capture 1080p video, and the secondary camera is good for 720p video. By all accounts the camera image quality and video capture is just average, but really I do expect more at this price. The only spoiler in the package is the absence of LTE, but again, at this price you don't expect to get that.

The phone runs Android 4.0.4, Ice Cream Sandwich, but I have run Jelly Bean, and really don't find it all much better. The Huawei Ascend D quad XL does come with its own custom UI, which I have no had a chance to try, but if you don't like it, it is no big deal. You have the option to revert to a pretty much vanilla Android interface. 

A reasonably large and sharp HD display in a narrow case, a large user replaceable battery and quad core power at a mid-level price. 

The Huawei Ascend D quad XL closes competitor is the Lenovo K860 which has similar specifications. The 5-inch Lenovo K860 is a massive phone, a bit too big for a primary phone for me.

Competition is also provided by the the Google Nexus 4. In terms of SRP, the Huawei Ascend D quad XL is 6K cheaper. In street price the difference is about 5K. The Huawei Ascend D quad XL does come with less internal storage, but it is user expandable. It also comes with a user replaceable battery, which is important for me since I keep phones for two years. I replaced the battery of my current phone after 15 months. It is cheaper and has features which I wise the Nexus 4 had. 

It would be really nice to be able to try one, but just comparing the Huawei Ascend D quad XL and Google Nexus 4 side by side, I love the more compact dimensions of the Huawei Ascend D quad XL. It is all of 4.9 mm shorter and 4.7 mm narrower. 

Me, I am inclined to wait for my retention to come up and pick up a LTE phone on retention from Smart, but that is six months away. If my phone died tomorrow, I think I would pick up a Huawei Ascend D quad XL. Right size and nicely priced.