Huawei Confirms Ascend P7 With Sapphire Display; Says No to Tizen

Huawei's recently unveiled flagship smartphone, the Ascend P7, has been confirmed to receive sapphire screen treatment by a company official. The company also detailed its plans for Tizen and Windows Phone.

Yu Chengdong, Device Chairman of Huawei has teased an image of the Ascend P7 with sapphire screen on his Weibo account tipping that the handset might be revealed at this year's IFA event in early September. The company has already sent invites for a September 4 event.

Chengdong on the Weibo post (as per Gforgames) said, "The company will release the Huawei Ascend P7 in a more exclusive flavour boasting sapphire display." The Huawei executive also shared an image of the smartphone on the post.

Chengdong in an interview had previously admitted that Huawei was testing the Ascend P7 with the premium sapphire display. Additionally, Engadget citing a company representative has claimed that the Ascend P7 with sapphire screen will go on sale via online channels in China initially, with the first batch of units expected in September, and the second by November.

It's worth pointing out that Apple has been also rumoured to use the costly sapphire as a display material on the next generation iPhone. However, it is yet to be seen whether Apple's iPhone device sporting sapphire display will be a reality or not next month.

As for specifications, the Ascend P7 comes with 5-inch full-HD display; a quad-core HiSilicon Kirin 910T processor clocked at 1.8GHz; 2GB of RAM; a 13-megapixel rear camera, and and 8-megapixel front-facing camera. It is being speculated that the new Huawei Ascend P7 with sapphire screen will come with the same set of hardware specifications.

As we mentioned earlier, the Chinese handset major has already confirmed its presence at IFA as the company sent invitations for a pre-IFA 2014 event to be held on September 4 in Berlin, Germany. The company is expected to launch the Ascend Mate 3 phablet at the event, alongside a new Honor-branded smartphone.

Additionally, Huawei's head of consumer business group, Richard Yu, in an interview with WSJ, has revealed the company's intentions for Tizen and Windows Phone OS.

(Also see: Huawei CMO on why the company doesn't like Windows Phone)

Yu was quoted saying (via Gigaom), "We have tried using the Windows Phone OS. But it has been difficult to persuade consumers to buy a Windows phone. It wasn't profitable for us. We were losing money for two years on those phones. So for now we've decided to put any releases of new Windows phones on hold. We have worries about Android being the only option, but we have no choice."

On being asked about whether Huawei will make Tizen-based smartphones, Yu noted Tizen has "no chance to be successful." He further revealed that Huawei probably will not launch a Tizen-based smartphone.

Notably, Samsung's first Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Z, which was unveiled earlier this year, was in July postponed indefinitely by the South Korean giant.