| Kippreport.com

World’s fastest smartphone unveiled…but is it cool?

February 27, 2012 3:07 by Precious de Leon

Speed, long-battery life, high quality visual and audio capabilities and a compact, lightweight handset: these are the features that Huawei says people are demanding from smartphones—or at least that’s what company Chairman Richard Yu, as reported on Emirates 24/7.

And the company is poised to deliver all of these features conveniently in one phone.

Here’s the phone:

The un-priced Ascend D1 quad is touted as the world’s fastest smartphone, with its Android 4.0 operating system and K3V2 quad-core 1.2GHz/1.5GHz processor.

Yes, but does it look cool? Plus, will my friends be jealous whenever I whip this baby out? These are the burning questions consumers will be facing when the phone becomes available in the UAE in April this year.

Let’s be clear here. There’s no question that Huawei will be giving the public quality product here. But with dozens of handsets launched at the World Mobile Congress held in Barcelona this month, the battle won’t be so much in the hardware/aesthetics but in the software capabilities and, more importantly, in reaching critical marketing mass.

The reality is that while analysts, journalists and tech geeks can tell a Samsung Galaxy from an HTC One handset, most consumers will continue to struggle to tell these phones apart.

Now let’s set aside the debate on technologies progression towards homogenous design and look at what happens when consumers don’t have the aesthetics to base their personal preference. We’d bet our money, the average Abdullah would go for what everyone else has got—it’s just cooler (simpler and more convenient) that way. Why would he, for example, buy a Fujitsu phone that nobody will immediately recognise when he can buy an iPhone 4s or Samsung Galaxy?

As BBC’s Tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones writes, “the biggest story is not about the launch of new handsets or new services. It’s the fight for third place in the war of the smartphone operating systems.” (For the uninitiated the first and second place is an ongoing between Android and Apple. Third place could either go to Nokia’s Windows Phone system or Blackberry’s RIM.)

Softwares aside thought, it’s all in the marketing, methinks. It’s a little disheartening to some of us tech geeks, for sure. But it is entirely possible to see that to make or break a brand you’ll need the consensus of the public most of who are still coming to grips with the differences between an Apple, Android and Symbian OS.

So with the hardware becoming homogenous and the software still a little too tech for the Average Aliyah, then the difference will be in the cool factor. So while I believe that technology companies should continue to innovate and introduce the best possible technology to the public…for now, being the fastest smartphone doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’d be the most desired smartphone; unless of course you find a way to make your brand cool. *image from androidheadlines.com

Tags: Android, Apple, Ascend, BlackBerry, Huawei, iphone, mobile, nokia, phones, Samsung, smartphone, telco