Huawei seems to be an up and coming smartphone manufacturer, where they have had made quite an impression at the recently concluded CES 2013 last month. Well, they do Android and Windows Phone devices, and it is the latter that we will talk about today. Microsoft and Huawei have been working together for some time now, and the culmination of their concerted efforts has resulted in a new Windows Phone device that was specially designed for Africa, which incidentally, is one of the most rapidly-growing technology markets in the world. The phone has been dubbed The Lion King, nay, I jest, but rather, it is called the Huawei 4Afrika, and will be the first in a series of smart devices that are being custom developed for the continent, and will be part of Microsoft’s sweeping new 4Afrika Initiative.
As you know, Africa is not exactly the most prosperous continent on earth, and many people there still live in poverty without gaining access to the basic needs of life such as food, water and shelter. Well, it is nice to know then that the Huawei 4Afrika handset has taken this into consideration, and will be marketed as an affordable option for students, small businesses, developers, and first-time smartphone owners. Expect the Huawei 4Afrika that runs on Windows Phone 8 to debut later this February in seven countries, and they are Angola, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa, where you can pick up this stylish device in blue, red, black, and white colors.
What kind of hardware can we find underneath the hood? For starters, this is a variant of the Ascend W1 just in case you were wondering why it looks similar from certain aspects, carrying a 4-inch display at 480 x 800 resolution, powered by a dual-core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon processor, carry 4GB of internal memory, as well as the customary front and back cameras for you to capture beautiful moments, all crammed into a 10mm thin chassis. Huawei claims that its integrated power saving technology will allow the Huawei 4Afrika to have a whopping 420 hours of standby time, now how about that?
Press Release
[ Huawei heads to Africa with new Windows Phone 8 device copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Microsoft has partnered up extensively in the past with manufacturers such as Nokia and HTC to help push out Windows Phone 8 devices, and it looks like it might be Samsung’s turn, at least in a larger capacity than what they are doing right now. According to Rikke Rasmussen, head of B2B marketing for Windows Phone, he has revealed that Microsoft and Samsung will be getting down to business and come up with ideas on creating Windows Phone devices that are catered towards business users. As it stands Windows Phone handsets appear to be catered towards the regular user, and expanding towards the business community might be a great way for Windows Phone to gain more ground, especially when you have productivity software such as Microsoft Office running on Windows based computers right now.
The good people over at Digitimes, who has had a track record of rumors which were spotty at best with its fair share of hits and misses, did mention that there is a possibility of Microsoft working on a Windows Phone 8 reference design alongside chipset vendors Qualcomm, with the whole idea behind this move to attract additional smartphone OEMs in China. The new smartphone OEMs will, of course, have to use Windows Phone 8 as the operating system of choice, where these new handsets will target both the entry-level and mid-range smartphone markets not only in China but in other emerging markets to boot.
