Huawei Ascend P7 launched with new Emotion UI and 8-megapixel front-facing camera

Huawei on Wednesday launched its Ascend P7, a new flagship Android model , as part of its effort to crack the upper tier of the mobile market where Apple and Samsung still rule.

The mobile described as the  world's slimmest phone with 6.5 mm thick - will go on sale  starting this month for EUR 449 ($630 Rs. 37,800) in 31 markets, including Britain, Germany and China, without service contract. The mobile will not make its way to United States for sale. 

According to chairman of Huawei Devices and chief executive of the company's Consumer Business Group , Richard Yu - Huawei will expand beyond that later, including to the US. "We will sell this worldwide," said Yu at the event where the smartphone is launched.

The phone, which runs Google's Android mobile operating system, is a successor to the company's P6.

Huawei has launched this mobile to compete with other top-end phones with Google's Android OS, including the Samsung Galaxy S5, the HTC One M8, and the Sony Xperia Z2.It's also a rival to phones using other mobile operating systems such as the Lumia 1020, a Windows Phone device that Microsoft sells now that it has acquired Nokia's phone business, and of course the iPhone 5S from Apple.

According to analyst firm IDC- Huawei held the third position with 4.9 percent of the market share in the worldwise smartphone market after Apple (15.5 percent) and Samsung (30.2 percent). most of the market share comes from the domestic China market.

Huawei doubled its global brand awareness to 52 percent and has risen to third in the smartphone market, but "we won't stop there," Yu said. "We want to become better and better and better. We will invest so many resources on the product, the innovation, on R&D, the marketing -- everything. We are improving our service and our quality."

the company is looking for the achieving the taget of 10 million sale of its flagship phone compared to the the 4 million sold to date for the P6. Company is also planning to spend $300 million to imporve the brand image by global marketing.

The smarpthone is equipped with many competitive specs to compete with its rivals - 

a 5-inch 1,920x1,080 display, 4G LTE networking,a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.8GHz quad-core processor, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, and a Gorilla Glass 3 housing on both its front and back. It's built in the inevitable slab shape, has a trim thickness of 6.5mm, and runs Android modified with Huawei's Emotion interface.

The Huawei Ascend P7 is compatible with high-speed 4G mobile networks that have been rolled out by telecom operators in much of Asia and Western Europe. China and parts of Latin America are building such 4G networks, which allow for at least five times faster web surfing, this year and next.

The EUR 449 price tag for the P7 makes it cheaper than Apple's iPhone 5s, which starts at EUR 699 in Germany and EUR 709 in France. Samsung's Galaxy S5 costs between EUR 580 and EUR 680 in major European markets.

KEY SPECIFICATIONS:

Display : 5.00-inch
Processor : 1.8GHz
Front Camera : 8-megapixel
Resolution : 1080x1920 pixels
RAM : 2GB
OS : Android 4.4
Storage : 16GB
Rear Camera : 13-megapixel
Battery capacity : 2500mAh