Huawei Blaze will tip up this month

CHINESE ELECTRONICS MAKER Huawei's first own branded phone in the UK, called the Blaze, will be available from Phones 4u on 30 September.

The firm will be entering the smartphone market under the Huawei brand name for the first time with the Blaze, not to be confused with ZTE's Blade. The handset will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread and come with a price of £99 on pay as you go.

Huawei had previously launched phones in the UK using the Ideos brand, which it is using to launch the Blaze in other markets.

"We're trying to establish the brand, almost from scratch," said Mark Mitchinson, EVP at Huawei UK, who previously worked for Samsung and Nokia. He added that Huawei will compete with "anyone involved in Android".

The Blaze will feature a curved 3.2in capacitive touchscreen, a 600MHz processor and a 3.2MP camera. It will have 256MB of RAM and 512MB of internal storage, plus WiFi and Bluetooth.

Scott Hooton, trading director at Phones 4u said, "The Huawei Blaze is not only a great looking, high specification smartphone, powered by the latest Android system, and crammed with great features."

The Blaze will be 11.5mm thick, weigh 115g and come in black, white and pink colours. Huawei aims to boost its handset sales to $20bn in five years from $6bn this year. µ