Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has just launched its Ascend P7, a new flagship Android model that will take on Samsung's Galaxy S5 and other Android smartphones in the lucrative but slow growth high-end market.

Based in Shenzhen, China, Huawei is the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker.

Launched at the "Huawei Ascend P7 global launch" in Paris on Wednesday, the Ascend P7 will compete against top-end phones running Google's Android operating system. These include the Samsung Galaxy S5, the HTC One M8 and the Sony Xperia Z2. The Ascend P7 is a successor to the Ascend P6.

"We will sell this worldwide," said Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei Devices and CEO of the company's Consumer Business Group.

The Ascend P7 specs are competitive against the rest of the field. The new Huawei flagship sports a 5-inch 1,920 x1,080 display; a 1.8GHz quad-core processor; 4G LTE networking with dual antennas to improve reception;  a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera; an 8-megapixel front-facing camera and a Gorilla Glass 3 housing on both its front and back.

It runs Android modified with Huawei's Emotion interface and has a thickness of 6.5 mm. The chip is a HiSilicon Kirin 910T processor and the phone has a 2,500mAh battery.

The phone will be cool, both literally and figuratively. By distributing heat throughout its body, the Ascend P7 runs 7 degrees Celsius lower and is, therefore, more cooler and comfortable to hold.

The pixel density is 445 pixels per inch compared to the 432ppi on the Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5S's 326ppi. The 13-megapixel resolution rear-facing camera is run by a higher-end image-processing chip that can handle low-light conditions with sensitivity settings reaching ISO 3,600.

The phone's 8-megapixel front-facing camera is designed to produce better self-portraits, especially high quality selfies. That's larger than the iPhone 5S's 1.2-megapixel camera and Galaxy S5's 2-megapixel camera.

Huawei also built in a five-lens system for better clarity and lower chromatic aberration. That means Huawei can take front-facing camera photos a step further. It is promoting "groufies," group self-portraits, including those with a panoramic mode.

In the first quarter of 2014, Huawei was No. 3 spot in the worldwide smartphone market. The 13.7 million phones shipped by Huawei accounted for 4.9 percent of the market compared to No. 2 Apple with 15.5 percent of the market and No. 1 Samsung with 30.2 percent.

Huawei, however, is growing faster than either of its rivals. Its shipments jumped 47 percent from the year-earlier quarter compared to Apple's 16.8 percent growth and Samsung's 22 percent growth.