Huawei Ascend P6: Skinny smartphone that's not just bare bones

Just who the heck does Huawei think it is? Surely it is the purveyor of budget Android tat and carrier-branded dreck? I’m loathe to use the word "landfill" because some of its newer cheap handsets, like the 4.5-inch Ascend GS510, aren’t actually that bad and I’d certainly take one in preference to an appless, gutless, webcam-less small-screen WinPho 8-er like the Nokia Lumia 520.
But Huawei’s new devices, including the Ascend Mate and Ascend P6, have ambitions well beyond the budget arena. Maybe not ambitions to beat the likes of the iPhone 5, the HTC One or Samsung’s Galaxy S4 but enough to not be embarrassed in their company. Ambition enough to play Spurs or Everton to the big boys’ Man United, Man City and Chelsea.

Of course, price still plays a factor. On a monthly contract, the HUAWEI P6 will set you back a good few quid less than a Galaxy S4 or an iPhone 5, and if you buy one outright for £340 you'll save several hundred knicker. So: cheap the P6 is, but is it nasty too? The answer to that is a pretty emphatic ‘no’.

To start with, it's the thinnest smartphone you can currently get your grubby mitts on and that is despite it packing a 2000mAh battery. It’s juts 6.2mm. It also has a 4.7-inch screen, a 1.5GHz quad core processor and 2GB of RAM. That’s a very decent spec for the price.
That said, there’s only 8GB of storage, of which just under 5GB is free for file and app storage after the system has gorged itself. A Micro SD slot will let you add another 32GB worth of space which gives the P6 a big advantage over its closest rival: the LG-made Nexus 4.

Granted the screen only has a resolution of 1280 x 720 – though that still gives it a pixel density of 312dpi, only just shy of the iPhone 5’s 326dpi – but it is a very fine IPS+ LCD affair: bright and colourful with very robust viewing angles. Its outer layer is made from Gorilla Glass 2 and you can use it while wearing gloves.

While the front of the 120g P6 is made of glass, the back and sides are made of some sort of metal. That makes it impressively solid for such a slender device. If it’s not quite as rigid as the HTC One it still feels a darned sight more robust than the plastic Galaxy S4. If I had to name some quantifiably better made handsets, the list would only run to the HTC One, Lumia 925 and the iPhone 5.