Huawei launches Ascend P7 smartphone; is really thin at 6.5mm

China's Huawei Technologies launched its second smartphone, the Ascend P7, as part of its effort to crack the upper tier of the mobile market where Apple and Samsung still rule. The mobile - billed as the world's slimmest phone at 6.5 mm thick - will go on sale in 31 markets, for Rs 37,800 ($630). It will not be sold in the United States.

Ascend P7 is impressively thin at 6.5 mm. It is also pretty light at 124 grams. Ascend P7 features a 5-inch 1080p display with Gorilla Glass 3. It is powered by Huawei's very own HiSilicon Krin 910T chipset, which features a 1.8 GHz Quad-core Cortex-A8 CPU and Mali 450 GPU. There's 2 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage with microSD expansion up to 32 GB. A 2500 mAh battery is incorporated in the device and Huawei claims it to be capable of enduring 404 hours of 4G stand-by time and 14 hours of talk time.

There's a 13 MP camera with Sony BSI sensor, LED flash on the rear. The camera is capable of shooting 1080p videos. The front is even more interesting. There's an 8 MP camera with Sony BSI sensor and 5-piece lens. IMAGESmart 2.0 software is on-board for the front facing camera, which brings 10 level auto-facial enhancement and wide-angle photo capture. There's one more feature, which should make sure it gets the crown for the best selfie phone; "Groufie". Groufie lets you take some group selfies. The Groufie shooting mode lets you take panoramic group selfies.

Huawei Ascend P7 comes with Emotion 2.3 UI on top of Android 4.4.2 KitKat. The customised interface brings some useful features like a permission manager, a new Do not disturb mode and also a new power saver. The connectivity is well covered with LTE support, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11n, microUSB 2.0 and NFC.