The Hauwei Ascend P6 has been officially announced as the world's thinnest smartphone and it will be available from July in select markets.

Huawei CEO Richard Yu confirmed that the Ascend P6 would be on sale in 19 countries by the end of July, including the UK, Australia, China, Italy and Spain.

Those of you luckily enough to be in China will be able to pick up the Huawei Ascend P6 from today - with the smartphone sporting a recommended retail price of €449 SIM-free (that's around £380, $600, AU$635) - making it considerably cheaper than rival flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy S4, iPhone 5, and HTC One.

Triple figures in sight

There's currently no word on the US and other countries, but Huawei has confirmed that during August of this year the Ascend P6 will roll out to a total of 100 global markets, so expect this slender piece of metal to be popping up all over the shop.

If you don't fancy shelling out for the handset up front you can expect the Huawei Ascend P6 to be available for free on contracts between €21 and €26 per month - so around the £25 mark if you're in the UK.

The Ascend P6 measure just 6.18mm in depth making it super slender, and it manages to pack in a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 8MP rear camera and 5MP front camera into its wafer thin frame.

• Find out what we made of the handset in our Huawei Ascend P6 review

Huawei's CEO told has told TechRadar that it could offer stock Android with its new Ascend P6, but doesn't think it would benefit consumers.

With the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One both being offered with a stripped down, native Android experience, we asked Huawei's Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu whether Huawei would follow suit for the world's slimmest smartphone, offering an option that removes its own custom skin on top of Android 4.2 that is currently running on the P6.

"We can provide an original Android OS, but we find people like our Emotion UI more as it's more simple and easy to use. It's also more interesting [than stock android] as well as more customisable, allowing us to connect more easily to people's emotions."

When asked if Huawei would consider allowing it as an option, Yu reiterated that Huawei had looked as such an option, but said "more people like Emotion UI – our consumer surveys have told us this, that they like this kind of functionality.

We've improved Android

"We've made several hundred improvements to the Android OS, we can bring a lot of value to customers, such as improving background running, [the way the phones] use data and battery consumption.

"Apple make simple, easy to use products that are very successful – even kids can use and iPhone and iPad. We are leaning from them; we try to improve our Android OS but our competitors never sleep, so we have to keep improving to do better than them."

The debate over whether phone manufacturers should be offering a stripped-down native version of Google's Android phone rages on, and will only grow in volume from the small portion of smartphone fans that prefer the choice to remove device-native user interfaces, such as Huawei's Emotion UI.

Given the relatively low market share Huawei currently enjoys, it would also be a boon for the company to be one of the few to offer the 'Nexus' native Android experience, not least because the hardware alone would attract a number of users.

However, Yu's point is strong: Huawei has made a phone to cater for those that want a powerful experience, as well as stamping the company's brand onto the market through the UI.

Whether many will like the loss of the app tray is another question for debate, but there's no doubt that adding the option for stock Android on the phone would add another layer of complexity to a phone that is being sold as 'accessible'.

Huawei has launched its new flagship 'design-oriented' phone, with top-end specs crammed into a tiny frame.

Unlike the Ascend P2, this phone is design-led, but with a decent spec list second. It comes with a 1.5GHz quad core processor with 2GB RAM.

Like most Huawei devices, the Ascend P6 has been leaked all over the shop – but it appears to be worth it, with the brushed metal device sporting a 5MP camera on the front of the phone, for even clearer duck-pout shots.

Good for the face

The rear packs an 8MP option, which is less impressive (although does have an f2.0 aperture, which will give good low-light performance), as is the 4.7-inch 1280 x 720 screen, although Huawei has stepped up its game recently with improving the clarity of its displays, with in-cell LCD technology on offer.

It's also running the latest version of Android in the shape of 4.2.2, as well as 8GB of internal storage, supplemented by a microSD card slot.

Confusingly there's no 4G capability on offer with this handset either, so it's only DC-HSPA on offer for 3.9G (or whatever stupid number they're giving it these days) connectivity.

Android has been skinned somewhat – and some may not like the new Emotion UI. It's a simplified version, but takes away things like the app tray, which any user of Android will be used to – but at least there's Dolby Digital Plus in the mix, which mitigates the slightly lower 2000mAh battery.

Automated something Reception something

Huawei wants us to believe that its 'unique Automated Discontinuous Reception (ADRX) and Quick Power Control (QPC) battery optimization and power saving technology improves performance by more than 30%'… a theory we've yet to see proven.

The phone will be available in white, black or pink (for the men who care about their skin. Not the ladies. That would be sexist), and will be coming to 'Western Europe' in July through most of the networks – although not EE, obviously.

There's no word on price as yet, but we're expecting this to come in significantly cheaper than the likes of the Galaxy S4 and HTC One when it lands next month.

HTC One owners may be concerned by the lack of word on Android 4.2 coming to the phone, but HTC has confirmed that an update is on its way – so hold tight.

While HTC hasn't given the Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean upgrade a specific release date, it told Engadget that it's still very much on its way.

The update was thought to be coming in mid-June, though HTC has been rather quiet on the matter, and without 4.2 making an appearance it's left a lot of users scratching their heads.

Three UK tweeted at one such user, telling them that HTC had "pulled the 4.2.2 release" but said it didn't have any idea as to what the schedule might be going forward.

We One-t our update

We assume that the update just needed a bit of last minute tweaking, and could even have had something to do with Three's network. Who knows?

We contacted HTC to ask if there was further clarification on the matter, and will update as soon as we hear more.

The original HTC Desire is one of an exclusive coterie of phones that have achieved the highest honour a phone can enjoy: a five star TechRadar review.

We don't think the HTC Desire 200 will quite manage to reach the same heady heights as its forefather, but for a budget phone, its specs are not too shabby.

We're looking at a 1GHz Snapdragon S1 processor with 512MB of DDR1 and 4GB of onboard storage (expandable with microSD).

Audio smarts

HTC is pushing the handset's audio smarts, boasting Beats Audio and bundling "our highest quality in-ear headset" with the handset.

The HTC Desire 200 also comes with a 5MP camera which HTC says is super intuitive to use, and runs HTC Sense over Android (although HTC hasn't deigned to tell us which iteration).

Wonderfully, HTC has provided an illustration of the handset's size, pegging it at 'a bit bigger than a credit card':

No word yet from HTC on availability or pricing - but for something this small and with these level of specs, we're thinking HTC should channel Flo-rida and go low low low low low low low.