Chinese manufacturer Huawei has unveiled what it calls the world’s fastest smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Called the Ascend D Quad, Huawei believes it is faster than the so-called fastest smartphones currently on the market, such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Apple’s latest iPhone 4. However, no one at the moment knows whether this is just hype or reality. Huawei believes it is true simply because it says that it uses its own chipset.

The number of quad core phones being developed is beginning to grow. Huawei’s is the latest, with other companies such as LG and HTC having already taken the plunge.

Specifications of the Ascend D Quad include four central processor unit chip cores plus 16 graphics cores. This latter feature is suggestive of a 64-bit device, which is the reason behind Huawei’s extraordinary claim.

Huawei’s chairman, Richard Yu, said: “Migrating from feature phone to smartphone is the strong trend of the whole industry – but the speed is not so good. And the screen is getting as large as possible – but your hand is not so large. How can you handle it?”

He added: “And a smartphone is not just for voice to make a phone call – people thing the big headache is the battery life.

Whether the handset is the fastest will really only be known for sure when technical analysts get their hands on one to test. However, the company hasn’t stated when it intends to officially release the device.