Huawei G520, quad-core 4.5-inch phone costs $224

Huawei have managed to change most people's perspective of Chinese phone makers only producing low-cost phones, and are now rivaling more established brands such as Samsung. Huawei haven't forgotten their routes though and for Chinese New Year will launch the Huawei G520.

While the Huawei Ascend D2 and Ascend Mate occupy the high-end phone market, the G520 is aimed at the more affordable scale, while still offering some of its costly brothers features.

At the heart of the Huawei G520 lies a quad-core CPU, but rather than using their own 4-core unit in this phone, Huawei have chosen for the more cost-effective Mediatek Mt6589 cpu clocked at 1.2Ghz.

There is also a good size 4.5-inch IPS display, although it is unclear if it is a 720 Hd unit or a cheaper model.

The rest of the specification though has had to take a bit of a pounding due to the quad-core processor and larger screen. The rear camera is a 5 mega-pixel sensor and not the 8MP units we are used to. And there is only 512MB RAM, while most phones at this price have around 1GB.

Of course the Huawei G520 isn't going to be a legend in the Antutu world, but that quad-core processor will offer plenty of performance, but more importantly be more efficient than a dual-core chip for a similar price.

The Huawei G520 will go on sale in China only from 21st January for 1399 Yuan ($224).