Hands on: Huawei Ascend Y300 review

 

For

• Decent specs
• Well built
• Jelly Bean

Against

• Not always slick
• Slow camera app

Another affordable handset sneaks out of Huawei

We're currently putting the Huawei Y300 through its paces, so stay tuned to see what we think. In the meantime, check out our updated gallery of images to see if this budget marvel has the power for you.
We're not quite sure why some handsets don't get a proper announcement when they are in front of the world's press, but the Huawei Ascend Y300 is another handset from the Chinese manufacturer that is quietly residing on its booth.
This handset is incredibly similar to the Ascend G330 in terms of specification, but it sports a slightly different design, battery boost, a newer version of Android and a fresh overlay.

The Ascend Y300 release date is set for April/May and while no price was available we reckon it will land around the £100 (around $150/AU$147) mark.
In terms of style, the Ascend Y300 borrows its look from its bigger brother, the Huawei Ascend G510, sporting an assuming generic smartphone design.

It's not the slimmest of handsets, at 11.2mm (0.4 inches), but the Y300 sits comfortably in the hand and its 124.5 x 63.8mm (4.9 x 2.5 inch) frame is made easier to hold thanks to the slightly curved and textured back.
Like the waterproof Ascend G350, the Ascend Y300 comes with a 4-inch WVGA IPS display, which is a little brighter than its water-resistant brother.

On screen you'll find version 4.1.1 of Android Jelly Bean and the same Emotion UI overlay that graces the flagship Ascend P2, as well as the mid-range Ascend G510.
This user interface does away with the app list altogether, providing you with only the home screens to manage your apps from, in a bid to make Android an easier platform for first time users.

Luckily you can easily create folders by dragging and dropping one app onto another, which means you won't have to use all nine home screens and waste time skipping between them to find what you want.
There's also a range of themes to choose from, which change the icon style, wallpaper, font and colour scheme to give you a look that suits you.

Adding to the personalisation options even more, Huawei has added a master widget that enables you to pop several widgets of varying sizes into one larger container - a design that reminds us slightly of the Live tiles on Windows Phone 8.
Jelly Bean runs pretty smoothly on the Ascend Y300, and we managed to navigate around and jump between apps with relative ease, although the missing app list key at the bottom of the screen did catch us out a couple of times.

There's a 1GHz dual-core processor running the show, so...

Read the rest of this post and see the early verdict --->  

Share on Google Plus

About Unknown