Huawei Ascend W1

Huawei Ascend W1 Huawei wants to mingle in the still new Windows Phone 8 market with its brand new Ascend W1. The manufacturer's debut is successful. The bright IPS screen is a seldom item seen in the EUR 200 price range and contributes largely to that....

You don’t get access to as many apps as you do on Android or iOS handsets, but if you can live with this then you'll find that at £110 on Pay As you Go from O2 it represents exceptionally good value for money.

To conclude, the Huawei Ascend W1 is a strong Windows Phone offering. It has a solid construction, attractive design, great display, decent camera, and a really good battery life. The only real downside we see here is the 512MB RAM as it limits the amount of applications it can run from the Windows Phone Store.

Huawei is a new name on British shores, but the Chinese manufacturer wants to be a big player in smartphones. The Ascend W1 is its new Windows Phone 8 handset, and it's the cheapest phone here by some distance: its SIM-free price of £130 undercuts the...

It may not excel at any of these things, but that's OK. You're not going to buy the Huawei Ascend W1 for power, you're going to buy it for practicality and value for money - and those are the criteria it absolutely wins out on.

As a mid-price gateway to the world of Windows Phone the Huawei Ascend W1 is an efficient, fast and capable way in. But the camera isn't quite up to scratch, the screen could be a bit sharper, and it has its work cut out to distinguish itself from the small but growing range of mid-price Windows rivals such as the Nokia Lumia 620...

Just remember to keep in mind that you'll need to pay a little bit extra for a microSD card at some point in the future, and that Windows Phone 8 still has some work to do, particularly when it comes to the Windows Phone app store.

At £199, Huawei’s Ascend W1 is a respectable entry into the world of budget-friendly Windows Phone 8 devices. It’s stylish and solidly built with fantastic battery life and a compact-but-crisp four-inch screen, but Huawei hasn’t gone the extra mile like...