We already know that Mobile World Congress is going to play host to a bevy of Tegra 3-powered quad-core phones, but now we're hearing rumors that Huawei is looking to spoil Nvidia's party in Barcelona by launching its own quad-core chip. Details are light, but the claim we're hearing is that the Chinese manufacturer's processor could be up to twice as fast as the Tegra 3 and include optimized power management features. It's not clear whether Huawei designed the chip and outsourced the production, or if they brought chip production in-house. Either one seems like quite a large feat, so large that if it's true, we'll be extremely curious to see how the company pulled it off.

Huawei started making a play to break out of the low-end smartphone market at CES when it announced the Ascend P1 S. Soon after that, we heard about a rumored "Diamond Series" high-end smartphone that would be announced at MWC. The new quad-core processor could factor into these phones, but we won't know for sure until February 26th when Huawei hosts its MWC press event.