Huawei U8230 Android phone officially launched at CommunicAsia
By Nilay Patel 
posted Jun 16th 2009 11:03AM
posted Jun 16th 2009 11:03AM
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First Android phone released that looks decent, no QWERTY thou....
Agreed. This would be the first device to make me consider using an Android phone, if it ever comes Stateside.
I'm SO glad they went away from the iPhone clone look saw in the first rendition. Good on them.
wow, that looks nice. about time people realized conan is better than leno.
I see what u did there
"Considering the only set that's really out there is the notoriously battery-poor G1, that's not such a radical claim"
Perhaps in the US, not in the world.
Yah, Nilay is not too capable of understanding this concept of outside the US.
Yep what's up with this statement? HTC Magic comes to mind... there are probably other Android phones out there too.
really? couldn't tell. But ok the Magic is out? didn't know that. What else?
1) It looked significantly better in the renders (why is the screen suddenly smaller)
2) No qwerty = Not for me.
PS - It's going to be HOT.
If this has a media processor and some kick ass specs, I'd ditch my G1 and its physical keyboard for the upgrade.
A physical keyboard is definitely nice, but unless you're writing novels, not a necessity IMO.
The phone looks gorgeous.
want!
look good to me lets hope is true
i would buy this over the iphone
Yeah. You just hate Apple 'cause iPhone RULEZ!
I can haz copy and paste, yay!
I'm so tired of touchscreen phone. yawnnnnnnnnnnn
They still sell Nokia 3315s at flea markets, I'm sure.
Although I'm not sure how easy it is to find SF 49ers faceplates and blinking antennas anymore.
Reminds me a bit of a keyboard-less TouchPro 2. Very nice. Assuming that this is a Google-branded Android phone, I'd say it definitely beats the Magic/MyTouch in the looks department. It's not that I dislike the chin; I'm a fan of the Dream and upcoming HTC Hero. I just think the Magic looks sloppy.
The Magic is quite possibly the nicest looking phone on the market right now.
I personally think that the Magic may appear to look not-so-elegant as compared to the HTC Hero, but I guess there's a trade-off between looks and ergonomics. Having felt the actual device, the Magic feels really nice and fitting in the hand, and the Hero appears to be far thinner and 'sharper' at the chin making it less comfortable, but I guess that's just my personal preference.
I haven't seen a Hero in person, but in pictures it definitely looks hideous. The software UI looks awesome, but the hardware itself is angular in all the wrong ways.
this + qwerty keyboard = perfection!
That is if it has all the wireless connections one would expect from a smartphone, wifi, bluetooth, HSDPA/UPA etc.
Awesome, I just mentioned this phone yesterday.
Although I like the first renditions better, this still looks like a nice phone. With Cupcake, I can live without the physical keyboard. Can't wait to hear more details.
Where's the Home button? I see Menu and Back, but without a Home button this phone isn't going to be compatible with a lot of apps. Of course, you won't know which apps those are until you launch them and find out that you have to reboot your phone to get back out of them again.
it's right next to the trackball.
I see "Menu" on the left and "Back" on the right.
Of course, it is technically possible to configure Android to use the End button to return to the home screen instead of sleeping the phone, so if there's a separate Sleep button then maybe they're taking that route. Still not perfect, because you'd lose the Alt+Tab style application switching that you get by long pressing on the Home button, but at least it would be compatible with everything.
You know there could be buttons on the side also. Or the top.
You know there could be buttons on the side. Or the top.
That would be great with Symbian and not with that limited toy OS. There's hope since Huawei is Symbian Foundation member.
Symbian and WinMo are awesome as long as you're more worried about raw functionality than you are about your phone not sucking.
BUT?!?!!??!?!!?!?!?1??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?
will it blend?
Why don't you throw in a "first" too, while you're at it?
The samsung i7500/Galaxy has a 1500mAH battery. launching any day now at O2 Germany.
I like the design of the phone looks really nice and Android is the shit. I hope it has a 3.5mm headphone jack and good specs.
IMHO it looks better than the Samsung i7500.
Depending in the price and specs, I might get this instead of the Samsung i7500.
Make that two of us. This phone is absolutely gorgeous.
Give me this phone. Give it to me with Sprint service. Give it to me for $199 (WITH NO REBATE!!) and I'll gladly sign up for another two years and may even give a part of my liver.
Chance Stevens
If its specs are as good as its looks in addition to being loaded with android.. beware iPhone.. beware..
blurb says it runs the chrome browser. what?
A Google rep once referred to the Android browser as "Chrome Lite" off-hand in a conversation, referring to the fact that they were both based on webkit, and a lot of places have adopted that name as official for some reason.
oh that's a shame, a full featured chrome browser would have made me crap myself.
I want this phone sooooooooooooooooo badly!!!!!!
WOW this phone looks HOTT!!!
With the new CyanogenMod Cupcake software my G1 no longer has a notoriously short battery life, in fact I can get almost 3 days out of 1 charge with the original battery!
usually im a physcial kayboard kinda guy but thats because android was only offered on 3.2 inch screens for the most part,but being as this has a 3.5" screen and how good im getting at the virtual keyboard typing in the G1's touch screen, I think with that screen real estate and those looks I could very esaily make the switch to all touch, especially since the HTC t9 And compact qwerty (suretype) are easily portable to google keyboard driven phones... Hopefully the Internal are nice..
As far as specs Id like to see:
600mhz processor
at least 8gb of internal storage Plus Sd card expansion
3.5mm headphone jack
GPS
WIFI
Tmobile 3g
Auto focus on the 3.2mp cam
512mb ram/rom
im prob buying this regardless if it rocks tmobile 3g but in any case I would like to see the above specs..
Finally a decent (good) looking android phone. Screw you HTC.
Why don't they just release the phone?
It has been so long, G1 is the only android phone on market.
True But there is at least three android's coming to tmobile by the fall, the mytouch go, the bigfoot, and the galxay, all of them look awesome.
I don't have a personal experience upon which to base a judgment, but I'd be curious to hear feedback from this excerpt from the April 2, 2009 issue of The Economist:
In Britain Huawei, a Chinese firm, is one of the main contractors in an...effort to upgrade the telephone system. Huawei’s boss is a former Chinese army officer, and Britain’s spies fret that network equipment that will be used by firms, households and government departments could come with hidden “backdoors” that would let Chinese snoopers evade easy detection. In 2008 America’s Congress blocked Huawei’s plans to buy 3com, another computer-equipment firm, citing similar security worries.