Huawei C8600 brings Android 2.1 to China
Huawei, the Chinese company behind the SmaKit S7 Android tablet, has just announced the C8600 smartphone in Beijing, being one of the first handsets in the country running Android 2.1 and I believe the first from a Chinese manufacturer. Not much is known about the new device with regards to the technical specifications and final price, but we do know it has a 3.5-inch capacitive touch screen supporting multi-touch, a 1500mAh battery, and a customized home screen interface which Huawei calls the Dynamic Desktop. Where normally in most versions of Android the home screens (usually five) are arranged in a row for the user to scroll through horizontally, Huawei's Dynamic Desktop adds a further two rows of five that can be scrolled vertically giving a total of 15 screens/pages of space.
Early impressions from tech.163.com are positive with some interesting observations regarding the performance as it's said that the C8600 runs Android 2.1 much faster than an upgraded Motorola Droid/Milestone. The Huawei C8600 should hit the Chinese market in May on China Telecom's CDMA2000 network.
I'm not sure what the chances are of seeing this handset outside China, but I'm still very interested to see the hardware, price, and how well it does in the crowded Chinese mobile market. The other thing to keep in mind is that the adoption of Android 2.1 on the C8600 bodes well for its inclusion on the Huawei SmaKit S7 tablet when it ships later this summer. Check out a couple of additional images of the C8600 after the break.
