Asia has always
dominated the micro electronics sector... with one notable exception. Although most
of our gadgets might be assembled in China, the super power itself did not for
a long time possess any great international brands... until now. Already
causing a storm at home for producing affordable tech, Huawei are now starting
to make a name for themselves in the UK. And so we had a play with their latest
low-end phone, the Ascend Y550.
It's not often you
can pick up a sim-free smartphone for under £70, or indeed one on a 4G contract
for just a tenner a month, so certainly the Huawei Ascend Y550 already has a
lot going for it. The Chinese company has made a sturdy wee thing here,
boasting a 4.5 inch touchscreen, Android 4.4 (although more on that later) and
a gig of RAM. The handset itself reminded our hands and minds of the old iPhone
3G, with a chubby outer curve and rounded back. You get a 5MP camera on the
back, and a not-at-all-bad 2MP version on the front.
The Huawei Ascend
Y550 feels very robust and firmly made, despite that low price tag. We're
pretty certain it could survive a knock or two, even without a case, so its' a definite
winner for parents getting their kids their first phone, maybe?
And it is first time
smartphone owners that the Huawei Ascend Y550 has probably been made for, as
the Andriod overlay that Huawei seem to favour, the Emotion UI, completely does
away with the app drawer, meaning all your apps sit right there on the home screen,
ala the iPhone. There is also a Simple UI theme which does away with all but
the most essential apps, and looks quite like the Windows Phone interface.
Again, this would help first-timers, but die-hard fans of Android would
probably find it limiting.
The Huawei Ascend
Y550 features a 1.2GHz quad-core processor which, although impressive for a
phone at this price, might struggle with large and complex apps. We played a
few solid rounds of Star Wars: Galactic Defense, and when lots of things were
kicking off onscreen the phone had a tendency to freeze and quit the app. But,
once again, for the casual user who just needs to call, text and browse the
internet (over 4G, we might add) there will be no problems.
The screen isn't fantastic,
weighting in with a resolution of 854 x 480, but you really won't notice that
if all you are doing is normal 'phone' stuff, especially when running the Simple
UI theme. And the camera is absolutely fine for social media uploads and
selfies, and given enough outside light (we found the images a bit patchy when
taken indoors at night) you'll be fine.
But (and this is
such a personal 'but' that you might have to ignore it altogether) the 'back'
button, probably the most used of the Android buttons, is on the left hand
side. This makes it really awkward for a right-handed person (or 90% of the
British population) to reach. Just saying, Huawei.
So at the end of the
day, no matter what you think about the screen resolution, the camera capability,
or the power of the processor, you can pick up this smartphone (which it most definitely
is) right now for £69 sim-free. That is pretty remarkable and a similar effort
from the likes of Samsung or HTC would be more than twice that. So if you need
something cheap but effective for your kids, or if you're looking to break into the world of smartphones for the
very first time, this could be for you.
£69.99 Sim free/from
£10 per month (with free phone) on contract.
