Huawei Ascend P6 review: Zen droid slim

Google Now

Google Now gives you a short overview of information it believes is relevant to you right now. It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well. If you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team, Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is playing and will provide you score updates once the game begins.

Google Now

With the help of Android's Voice Actions, which come as part of Jelly Bean, can handle advanced stuff such as sending messages (SMS or email), initiating a voice call, asking for directions, taking a note or opening a site. You can also launch apps, check and manage your calendar and look for nearby places of interest and stuff like movie openings in theaters.

Google Now on the Huawei Ascend P6 gets activated with an upward-swipe from the virtual navigation bar. The gesture now works from the homescreen as well, unlike on the Ascend Mate where you could invoke Google Now only from an app.

Running Google Now

You can either type or talk to it and the app will give you one of its info cards (if available) and read you its contents aloud (you can disable this in the app settings). If there's no card to answer your question, Google Now will simply initiate a Google web search instead.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Ascend P6 is powered by Huawei's own K3V2 chipset. There are four 1.5GHz Cortex A9 cores, a 16-core GPU and 2GB of RAM. The Cortex A9 cores are already a dated piece of tech, but the quad-core setup is still quite capable of keeping Android running smoothly on a 720p screen. The Huawei Ascend Mate and Samsung Galaxy S III, for instance, use similar processors and they still gets the job nicely done without any hiccups.

Starting off with BenchmarkPi and Linpack, the Ascend P6 posted pretty good scores, on par with the Huawei Ascend Mate and the Galaxy S III. Of course, it wasn't able to match the more recent flagships in our database.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  132
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  132
• LG Optimus G Pro
  147
• HTC One
  151
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  169
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  305
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  330
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  347
• Huawei Ascend P6
  348
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  350
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  359
• Meizu MX 4-core
  362
• Nexus 4
  431

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  791
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  788
• LG Optimus G Pro
  743
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Oppo Find 5
  593
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  400
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  214.3
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Meizu MX 4-core
  189.1
• HTC One X+
  177.7
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175.5
• Huawei Ascend P6
  161.4
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  161
• HTC One X
  160.9
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141.5

When it comes to the multiple-core performance, the Huawei Ascend P6 behaved similarly to its quad-core Cortex-A9 powered rivals.

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  3324
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  3227
• LG Optimus G Pro
  3040
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  1894
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  1725
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• Huawei Ascend P6
  1671
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  26275
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  24716
• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• LG Optimus G Pro
  20056
• HTC Butterfly
  19513
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  15714
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Huawei Ascend P6
  13776
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  13621

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  12446
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  12376
• LG Optimus G Pro
  12105
• HTC One
  11746
• Sony Xperia Z
  8075
• HTC One X+
  7632
• LG Optimus G
  7439
• Oppo Find 5
  7111
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  7059
• HTC One X
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  5916
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  5509
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5450
• Huawei Ascend P6
  5287
• Meizu MX 4-core
  5170
• Nexus 4
  4567

We've added some GPU benchmarks for good measure to test out the undisclosed 16-core graphics chip inside the Ascend P6. Since we saw the same GPU in the Ascend Mate, we already knew the GPU isn't anything spectacular, and there were no surprises this time around.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  41
• HTC One
  37
• Oppo Find 5
  32
• Google Nexus 4
  32
• Sony Xperia Z
  31
• Sony Xperia ZL
  31
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Apple iPhone 5
  30
• LG Optimus G Pro
  30
• LG Optimus G
  21
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  17
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• Huawei Ascend P6
  15
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  15
• HTC One X
  11

GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  17.1
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  17.1
• Apple iPad 4
  16.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  16
• Google Nexus 10
  13.9
• LG Optimus G
  13.9
• Sony Xperia Z
  13.5
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  13
• Sony Xperia ZL
  12.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  6.4
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  6.3
• HTC One mini
  5.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  4.9
• Huawei Ascend P6
  4.4

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  59.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  55.5
• LG Optimus G Pro
  54.2
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  33.2
• Huawei Ascend P6
  32.7

The SunSpider benchmark tests JavaScript performance. The two browsers available on the Ascend P6 (the stock one and Chrome) scored totally different results. While Google Chrome scored somewhat similar to what we saw on other phones of quad-core Cortex-A9 generation, the default web browser did embarrassingly bad.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  804
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  810
• Samsung Ativ S
  891
• Apple iPhone 5
  915
• Nokia Lumia 920
  910
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  972
• HTC One X+
  1001
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1011
• Motorola RAZR i XT890
  1059
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  1065
• HTC One
  1124
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1312
• Sony Xperia Z
  1336
• LG Optimus G
  1353
• HTC Butterfly
  1433
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  1741
• Nexus 4
  1971
• Oppo Find 5
  2045
• Huawei Ascend P6
  2400

Vellamo focuses on JavaScript and HTML 5 and the Ascend P6 did close to its quad-core Cortex-A9 rivals.

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  2056
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  1887
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Oppo Find 5
  1658
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  1646
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1468
• Huawei Ascend P6
  1434
• Nexus 4
  1310

We also ran the BrowserMark 2 benchmarks, but the score is nothing to write home about.

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  2555
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  2438
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  2338
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2314
• HTC One
  2262
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2170
• HTC One mini
  2164
• Sony Xperia ZL
  2107
• Sony Xperia Z
  2093
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1801
• Oppo Find 5
  1797
• Nexus 4
  1794
• Nokia Lumia 920
  1774
• Google Nexus 10
  1773
• HTC Butterfly
  1475
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1247
• Huawei Ascend P6
  974