Way back in June 2012, Microsoft announced that Chinese-based Huawei would be among its four hardware partners for Windows Phone 8. However, Huawei"s smartphone, the Ascend W1, was released first in other parts of the world outside the U.S.. Today, the company announced that will change later this month with a launch of that smartphone here in this country.
Huawei"s press release states that the smartphone, with a slight name change to the Huawei W1 (dropping the Ascend title) will go on sale later this month at Walmart"s online store and in some of its retail store locations in the U.S. The smartphone has a 1.2 Ghz dual core processor, a four inch IPS screen with Gorilla Glass, 512MB of memory, 4 GB of on board storage, a microSD slot for adding more storage and a five megapixel rear camera.
Pricing and an exact release date for the Huawei W1"s U.S. launch has yet to be revealed but it is supposed to be "competitively priced" with an unlimited 30 day no-contract plan. However, the company will begin a contest on May 15th that will let some people win the smartphone, along with tickets to the Jonas Brothers music tour, which is being sponsored this year by Huawei.
Source: Huawei | Image via Huawei