Huawei Ascend Y100 review

Huawei Ascend Y100

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