Huawei Ascend W2 shows up prematurely, packs color-matching backlit soft keys (hands-on)

Huawei Ascend W2 shows up prematurely, packs colormatching backlit soft keys handson

After the official product shot leaked in late May, we knew it wouldn't be long before Huawei's Ascend W2 makes an official appearance. Well, today's the day, but as the company's second-ever Windows Phone device, the W2's appearance at Mobile Asia Expo was surprisingly low key. According to the spec sheet at Huawei's booth, this affordable phone comes with a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 display (looked like IPS to us) and a 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8230 SoC (same as the W1 but faster) with 512MB RAM. There's 8GB of built-in storage along with microSD expansion -- the slot is located next to the removable 1,700mAh battery plus full-size SIM slot, all underneath the red or yellow back cover.

Even though Huawei doesn't hide the fact that the W2 is a low-cost device, it's actually not too shabby. Most notably, the three usual soft keys are color backlit and will match your desired theme in Windows Phone 8. As a bonus, the touchscreen has a glove mode -- as featured on several other more recent Huawei phones -- for the cold winter days. There's still no price or date announced just yet, but since this particular model packs a TD-SCDMA radio for China Mobile, folks outside China will have to wait for the WCDMA variant. For now, we have a hands-on video for you after the break.

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Huawei Windows Phone appears in render, said to be the Ascend W2

Huawei Windows Phone appears in render, could be the Ascend W2

It feels almost unfaithful to the Ascend W1 to be looking at a potential sequel already, but that's what evleaks claims this is. How he got the image we have no idea, and neither do we have any price or specs to go with it -- it's just this lone render of a Huawei handset running Windows Phone 8 in Chinese. There was actually a previous leak back in April (shown after the break), which also purported to be the Ascend W2 and which did come with some detail: a 720p 4.3-inch display, Snapdragon S4 chip, 8MP rear camera and 1GB RAM for $289. However, today's picture fails to match up with the earlier one in a number of respects, not least in the shape of the bottom edge and in the position of the front camera / sensor opening next to the earpiece, which means the only certainty here is that they can't both be right.

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Source: evleaks (Twitter)