Huawei unleashes Ascend D Quad line: claims world's fastest smartphone

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Mobile World Congress kicks off with a bang as Huawei unveiled its first quad-core, ICS handset, called the Ascend D Quad.

Richard Yu, Chairman of Huawei devices, introducing the Ascend D Quad at Mobile World Congress 2012.

(Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon)

Surprise, surprise. It turns out the first quad-core smartphones to be announced at Mobile World Congress aren't powered by nVidia's vaunted Tegra 3 chip. Instead the D Quad line will feature quad-core silicon specially-made by Huawei called the K3V2.

The Huawei Ascend D Quad, an Android 4.0 quad processor, smartphone was introduced at Mobile World Congress 2012. Huawei claims it's the fastest smartphone around.

(Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon)

Huawei Chairman Richard Yu took the stage at the MWC tradeshow in Barcelona to tout the Huawei's flagship model, the Ascend D Quad's impressive abilities. Other internal hardware includes a big 4.5-inch 720p HD screen, Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio, plus both 8 megapixel rear and 1.3 megapixel front-facing cameras.

Other handsets in the line include the Ascend quad XL and Ascend D1. The quad XL will have a massive 2,500 mAh battery, but the same specs as the D Quad. The D1 on the other hand will be powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU and 1,670 mAh battery.

Sadly, the GSM devices won't be 4G at launch but Huawei plans to add a fast data connection by Q3 or Q4 this year. What the all three phones will have is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Powered by an 1,800 mAh battery, Mr Yu also made the claim that the Ascend Quad D will provide 30% more run time compared to average mobile devices. Yu said the Ascend D Quad is much faster too, 20 to 30 percent in fact, than the Tegra 3. That's a bold statement. We'll have to wait a while before testing this boast since the phone is expected to ship in April. No price yet but the Ascend Quad D will be sold globally in Europe, North and South America, plus the Middle East.