14 DAY TRIAL // Chinese company Huawei and Indian carrier Airtel have just announced they have teamed up to offer customers the new Ascend P1 LTE superphone.
The top-tier Android smartphone will be available on Airtel’s 4G network at some point this year, for a price that will be unveiled closer to launch.
Although the carrier has yet to announce a timeline for the Ascend P1 LTE release, we expect it to become available at Airtel within the next few weeks.
Aside from the improved battery and LTE support, the Ascend P1 LTE does not come with anything new in terms of hardware and software configuration in comparison with the standard Huawei Ascend P1 smartphone.
The smartphone has been confirmed to come with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform out of the box, but the Chinese handset maker is likely to offer a Jelly Bean update in the following months.
What’s really weird is the fact that the Ascend P1 LTE was initially launched with a 1.5 GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460 processor, accompanied by a PowerVR SGX540 GPU.
However, Airtel’s Ascend P1 LTE comes equipped with a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz and an Adreno 225 graphics processing unit.
Furthermore, the phone is equipped with 1GB of RAM and 4GB ROM, which can be further expanded up to 32GB via microSD memory card.
Last but not least, the Ascend P1 LTE boasts a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD display, with Corning Gorilla Glass 2 coating and 540 x 960 pixels resolution. An 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording is included as well.
“We are excited to collaborate with Bharti Airtel and Huawei to announce the first multi-mode LTE-TDD smartphone in India. With this significant milestone, consumers in India will have the choice of enjoying high-speed mobile broadband experience using an LTE smartphone. Qualcomm Technologies continues to work with its partners to bring world-class technologies to India,” said Dr. Avneesh Agrawal, senior vice president and president of Qualcomm India and South Asia.