Huawei, world's third-largest smartphone maker, on Sunday showed off "the fastest smartphone in the world" known as Ascend P2 at the Mobile World Congress 2013.

The Chinese electronics firm along with Samsung kick-started the annual event in Barcelona on Sunday evening. Huawei's flagship Ascend P2 smartphone, a sequel to the Ascend P1, was under speculation for quite some time.

The smartphone comes with a 4.7-inch HD IPS capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels protected by the second generation Corning Gorilla Glass. Other specifications include  a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 13-megapixel auto focus camera with LED Flash and 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera.

On the connectivity front, the smartphone supports 3G with HSPA, WIFI, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC. It packs a 2,420mAh battery which promises good talk time and standby. The smartphone will hit stores by mid 2013.

Ascend P2 claims to be the world's fastest smartphone giving a speed of 150 Mbps. According to the company, the smartphone can download a two-hour high-definition movie in less than five minutes.

"Ascend P2 downloads HD movies in minutes, and loads online videos, web pages, songs or e-Books in seconds," said the company in a statement, AFP reported.

Huawei emerged as the world's third biggest smartphone maker after Samsung and Apple in the last quarter of 2012 , beating other big names like Sony and LG, according to a market share data released by the research firm IDC.

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