The first Windows Phone 8 devices were all intentionally high-end to show off the capabilities of the operating system in the best possible light. But with Huawei Ascend W1 joining Nokia's Lumia 620 and soon 520 a whole new wave of budget Windows Phone 8 handsets looks set to hit us

Features and performance

The dual-core 1.2GHz processor is backed by just 512MB RAM, which is beginning to look just a wee bit underpowered in this price bracket. Still, it delivered an An Tutu performance benchmark rating of 8,282, which isn't bad at all for a dual-core handset, though it trails some other recent dual-core handsets like the HTC One SV and Acer Cloud Mobile S500

The five-megapixel camera comes with autofocus and an LED flash, as well as geo-tagging, touch focus and face detection. There's a dedicated camera shutter button on the side, which you can use if you prefer, but you can also take a snap simply by touching the screen.

Picture quality was a bit of a disappointment however -- it struggled under less-than-ideal light conditions and pictures often seemed noisier and granier than they really needed to be.

The smartphone will run on the latest Microsoft Windows 8 OS and thus joins the league of a few smartphones from HTC, Nokia and Samsung that are also running on Windows 8 OS.

The hopes of Huawei are high regarding this launch in the U.S. and the company expects that it will boost its overall sales. The company is relying on the upcoming smartphone to leverage its overall market share in the smartphone segment.

Huawei already enjoys huge popularity in the Chinese market and this foray into the American consumer market will certainly bolster the growth of the company in the global market.