Huawei

We knew the Huawei Ascend W1 Windows Phone was destined to Wal-Mart and now are seeing signs that the Windows Phone 8 device has arrived.

Listed for $229.88, the Huawei was spotted at the local Wal-Mart in Foley, Alabama (down near the coast). The no-contract purchase is restricted to the $45/30-day Unlimited Nationwide data, text and talk Smart Talk plan.

Huawei is throwing their hat into the US Windows Phone 8 market with their W1 smartphone, known in other parts of the world as the Ascend W1. The snazzy W1 will be coming to Walmarts across the country as a pre-paid, no-contract offering that will be priced "competitively," though no exact numbers were revealed.

Huawei’s Michael Chuang said in a statement. “The Huawei W1 brings consumers a truly compelling alternative to what’s currently in the marketplace."

The guys behind popular Chinese app Love Wallpaper HD has dug out traces of several interesting devices out of their server log. Among the traces left by various handsets, the following oddities were caught:

• Huawei H889L
• Samsung SCH-I930
• Nokia RM-860_nam_usa_100
• Nokia RM-877_nam_att_205

As to what exactly these devices are, we can only make wild guesses. Huawei isn't working on a lot of Windows Phone devices, so that one should be fairly easy. Most likely H889L will be the rumored Ascend W2. As to Samsung, we know the Ativ S is codenamed GT-I8705, and Aive Odyssey SGH-T900M. Therefore SCH-I930 should be a whole new device, instead of some new variation of existing ones.

Huawei hasn’t exactly set the Windows Phone world on fire with a higher end device. Sure the W1 is a nice budget phone for those just getting into the smartphone game, but most people reading this site would probably prefer something a little more impressive. Today the specs of the Ascend W2 from Huawei leaked online, showing off a device more in line with the Lumia 920s and Ativ S devices of the world.

Today, Huawei announced the new Ascend P2 Android smartphone. We won’t go into too much detail, for that you have Android Central. But we will say that Huawei, in terms of hardware, are starting to do some impressive things.

That Android device features numerous “firsts” including the first Cat4 LTE phone, a 2422mAh battery, and some advanced power saving features that on paper sound exciting. Their new display also uses Super Sensitive Touch (probably licensed from Synaptics, Nokia didn’t invent it) making them the first Android phone with that technology.  Whether or not it is good as an actual phone remains to be seen.

Huawei's Ascend W1 is believed to be heading to Germany this month, with reports over on WPArea suggesting the Windows Phone could be released as soon as next week (with retailer Conrad stating such a date). As a Windows Phone 8 solution, the W1 would offer German consumers a new option, one which would be aggressively priced against competition.

As one of the launching OEM partners of Microsoft, Huawei is terribly late with their Windows Phone products. It took them awful lot of time to bring Ascend W1 to the market. The device is barely unique by any means so far. But if the picture above is to be trusted, things might start to turn in Huawei's favor.

Here at CES 2013, Windows Phone news is few and far between (though no worries, we have some stories coming up in the next day or two). We’ve already seen quite a bit of the Huawei Ascend W1 which was informally announced here at the convention.

Today we got a chance to play with some of the other colors besides black for the entry-level phone. The W1, following Nokia and HTC, comes in White, Black (soft-touch), Cyan and Red and we have to admit the color scheme continues to work with those themes on board (there is a “dreamy blue” custom Accent color as well).

Though the 4” device with 1.2Ghz dual core CPUs won’t be for everyone it’s not a bad low-end phone at all (though Windows Phone 8 stutters a tad with 512MB of RAM).