Huawei's new super-thin P6 smartphone is also perfect for selfies

The thinnest smartphone in the world isn't made by Apple, Samsung, or even HTC. That semi-coveted title now belongs to Huawei, a scrappy and immensely profitable firm from China that is intent on joining the pantheon of tech heavyweights.

Today in London, the company started punching up by taking the wraps off the Ascend P6, a 4.7-inch Android built from sleek aluminum. At just a quarter-inch thick, it kind of looks like the iPhone 5 on a diet, save for its curved bottom-edge.

"Samsung is not at the same level as this product," said Huawei CEO Richard Yu. "We want to compete with the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4, that is our goal."

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In terms of features, the P6 has the standard accoutrements we've come to expect from higher-end phones (save for a puzzling lack of 4G LTE). It has a 720p display, and is powered by a quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz. It runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with the company's "Emotion" interface layered over it. (Huawei asserts its Emotion UI is better than stock Android. Riiiight.) On its backside, the phone is slapped with an 8-megapixel shooter.

But other than its svelte frame, perhaps the P6's defining feature is an indulgent, 5-megapixel front-facing camera. (The iPhone 5's, for comparison's sake, is just 1.9 megapixels.) Indeed, the P6 isn't just the world's slimmest phone — it's also the model most ideally suited, at least on paper, for snapping gratuitous selfies.

Huawei says you'll be able to get your hands on the P6 sometime in August, with an unlocked price of $600 (on contract it will probably be much cheaper). That means you'll have a couple of months to get your best nonchalant look-away nailed before plastering your gorgeous visage all over Instagram.