The Huawei Ascend is an entry level Android phone in the
same class with Samsung Galaxy Pocket, LG Optimus, Huawei Gaga and Alcatel OT-918,
all available in Kenya. It’s expected to replace the Huawei IDEOS.
The phone looks good and is going for KSh. 8,499 with free airtime,
SMS and data thrown in. Consider the reasonable set of
specifications packed into it and you've a serious bargain. Though sold exclusively by Safaricom, it’s not
network locked.
The Ascend comes with
Android 2.3 Gingerbread The 800Mhz processor makes it quite fast for its class but is slowed down by too many
applications.
The 2.8 inch touchscreen is
capacitive, not resistive as that of the IDEOS. Add the Huawei User Interface (UI)
and the experience goes to a new level. This means that you get a better,
faster and pleasant response. It is however lagging behind if you were to
compare it with say, Samsung galaxy or any of the newer HTC models.
The low power processor and
the power saving nature of Android 2.3 gives
more life to the 1050mAh battery. I didn’t use it for more than a day but I
expect the performance to be better than that of the IDEOS.
The 3.2 MP camera is quite
fast and produces clear images but having no flash, indoor and night pictures
can only be described as fair. Video recording is quite smooth.
It has 512 MB of internal
storage and a Micro SD slot expandable to 32 GB.
You can view Word, Exel and
PowerPoint files on the Documents To Go app.
The Huawei Ascend has a
custom ROM, a customized safaricom menu, to put it simply. It’s actually very
nice, and I am sure most people will like it and find it useful. I don’t like
custom ROMs, but that’s just me.
This phone heats up the
competition in the entry level smart phone market especially now that the
Huawei brand has proved to be in the same league with elder brothers Nokia,
Samsung, et al.
Huawei Ascend Y100
specifications
- Talk
time (hours) up to 315 mins (3G)
- Standby
time (days) 514 hours
- Size-
106 x 56 x 10.9mm
- Weight
100g
- Screen-
2.8 inch capacitive touchscreen
- 512BM
internal memory
- microSD
slot- up to 32GB
- Android
2.3 Gingerbread
- 2MP
camera
- 30fps
video capture
- Music
player handles: MP3, AAC, AMR-NB, MIDI, OGG and WAV
- FM
Radio
- Data
Connectivity: HSDPA, WLAN 2.4 and b/g/n 3G
- Band
type: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS 900/2100
- Bluetooth
2.1
- GPS