Huawei Prepping Budget Ascend Y200 For the U.S. Later This Year

Android 2.3.x Gingerbread raises a couple of eyebrows in our times especially if it is powering a newly launched device. However, if that devices is made by Huawei and it is codenamed "Y" -- which means "Youth" aka entry-level aka budget -- it might get away with it. 

The Huawei Ascend Y200 is probably going to land in the U.S. shortly -- in a few months -- bringing its 3.5-inch touch screen, 1GHz processor, and 3.2-megapixel camera with no flash to the American market. Huawei's executive vice president of products, James Jiang, told Cnet that the device will be available in the coming months, though there were no specific details handed out in terms of carrier, availability and price (expect it to be cheap though). 

Huawei 10-inch MediaPad hands-on (video)

Sadly, when this gorgeous slab of glass and silicon was unveiled at MWC, Huawei wouldn't let us put our greasy hands on it -- and with good reason, the spectacular panel on the MediaPad 10 is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. But, we're happy to report that the company trotted out the goods for Pepcom's event at CTIA. We took the device for a pretty thorough spin and, despite being saddled with software still in the development stage, came away thoroughly impressed. The 10-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS display is one of the most gorgeous screens to ever grace a tablet. Sure, it's not quite "new" iPad levels of pixel density, but it certainly puts most of its potential competitors to shame. The primarily aluminum body feels great in the hand, striking a great balance between weight and a premium feel. At only 8.8mm thin it's no surprise that it comes in at just 13 ounces (roughly), all while packing a 6,600 mAh battery.

The in-house developed 1.5Ghz quad-core K3 Balong CPU inside is given a pretty decent workout by the rough built of Ice Cream Sandwich on board, that was mostly stock but had the sporadic OEM flourish such as different icons and keyboard. Most actions, such as playing back HD video and launching the browser were smooth enough, but we did notice the occasional stutter and pause. We took some time to put it through a few of our standard issue benchmarks, and turned up some mixed results. The 2,696.7ms it took to chug through the SunSpider benchmark left us standing around awkwardly at the Huawei table, while the 2,737 on Quadrant and 30.1 fps in NenaMark 2 were respectable, though not mind-blowing. But, again, we'll stress that this is still running a development version of the OS. Check out the gallery below and the video after the break for a full tour.

Huawei Mediapad hands-on

Joseph Volpe contributed to this post.

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Huawei M660: Upcoming Portrait Mode QWERTY Android

Feeling a bit let-down by the Huawei-made T-Mobile Prism? We've just heard about a new Android from the company, and while we can't promise that the hardware will be much better than the Prism's (though it would be difficult for it to be worse), the Huawei M660 has the advantage of a more interesting form factor. 

Instead of a dime-a-dozen full-touch slate, the M660 will be a non-sliding, portrait-orientation QWERTY phone. Regardless of what's under the hood, just the novelty of that design will earn the phone some attention; while it pops-up once in a while, on models like the Motorola XPRT and Titanium, it's definitely one of the rarer Android configurations, with only a few things like clamshell models any harder to come by. 

The M660 just hit the Bluetooth SIG, where it's revealed to be a CDMA device with frequency support that points to MetroPCS. That carrier is a friendly face for Huawei, already offering a handful of its lower-enddevices. With Android 2.3 on-board, the M660 is likely going to be aiming low, as well, but we might just end up with an 800MHz or even 1GHz processor, making the handset quite a bit more attractive than if it was running at 600Mhz. 

We've yet to see any sign about just when the M660 might launch, nor for how much. 

Huawei Announces Global Availability of the Ascend P1

Back in February, at the MWC in Barcelona,Huawei announced the Ascend D1, alongside the Ascend D Quad and Ascend D Quad XL. Later on we heard details about the P1 and the P1 S and the Chinese phone maker is now announcing further details. 

The Ascend P1 is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and packs a dual-core 1.5GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 Cortex-A9 processor, 4.3-inch super AMOLED display with 960x540 resolution eight-megapixel main camera, and Dolby Mobile 3.0 + 5.1 surround sound technology. It is 7.69mm thin and "will be available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Australia through operators and retailers by May 2012, in Latin America from June 2012 and in Europe from summer, with availability in other markets to follow".