Huawei debuts Ascend D quad, ‘the world’s fastest smartphone’

MWC is just getting under way, and Huawei’s kicking off the show with a new flagship smartphone: the Ascend D quad. Part of the company’s new “Diamond” series of handsets, the D quad is powered by a quad-core processor, and Huawei says it’s “the world’s fastest smartphone.” It’s running Android 4.0, with three capacitive buttons below the 4.5-inch, 720p display. The handset runs on Huawei’s new K3V2 quad-core processor, clocked as high as 1.5GHz, and is just 8.9mm thick and weighs 4.6 ounces — it’s not LTE compatible yet, but Huawei said it will be this year. There’s an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing shooter — the former shoots 1080p video. Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound is integrated, along with earSmart technology that does some pretty remarkable things with noise cancellation. There’s an 1800mAh battery keeping everything going, and given the sheer power inside this phone it’ll need all the battery it can get — though Huawei claims its new processor tech should make your phone considerably longer-lasting.

That K3 processor is the real hook here. Huawei claims the Ascend D quad is 49 percent faster than “the other fastest smartphones in the world,” and though we’re not sure what those phones are, it’s a pretty bold claim. Reps focused on everything from the Dialer to the Gallery to rooting, saying over and over that the Ascend D quad is as fast as it gets. Throughout the company’s announcement, various features of the D quad were compared to the iPhone 4S, Galaxy Nexus, and other flagship phones, none of which could measure up — Huawei’s swinging for the fences with this device.

The D quad is the flagship phone in the new Ascend D series, but Huawei announced two other models as well — the Ascend D quad XL, with a huge 2500mAh battery, and the Ascend D1, a dual-core version of the D quad. No word on pricing or availability other than that it will be “for global markets,” but we’re definitely intrigued to get a closer look at this handset.