Huawei Ideos U8150: Android 2.2 Phone Personal Opinion and Hands on Review
Android is quite a rage now in Smartphone market. We got to try our hands on Huawei’s Android 2.2 Smartphone – Ideos launched recently in India. People who always want a Phone easy on pocket with average features and that too Android, then Ideos is best bargain.
Android 2.2 Phone under 10K, 2.8 inch capacitive touchscreen with fair display clarity, Average Photo and Video capturing quality, 3G, WiFi and colorful back covers could be some tags to define what Huawei Ideos is all about. Let’s go in detail about each aspect of the device.
Display and Touchscreen
2.8 inches with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels which is not that enough. TFT Screen, though has wide angle viewing but it is difficult to operate in bright sunlight.
Touchscreen response is fair; You may have to press instead of just tapping and things become worst while scrolling. But, there is a good thing that you can move on screen with help of 4 way joystick button. May be Huawei was aware of this so, they introduced both touch and buttons.
Interface
Don’t know whether Huawei developed their own User Interface but it looked like Android Stock User Interface. On Homescreen, Widgets can be added just by keeping tapped at one point. App shortcuts can be added to homescreen by keeping tapped on icon in drawer and deleted by swiping them to bottom of screen.
Gallery view however is not that attractive but simple and importantly, you CANNOT browse photos by sliding finger to see next.
Web Browsing and Maps becomes mess without Pinch Zoom support.
Keyboard Touch input while in portrait mode is quite difficult owing to small screen but landscape one works just fine.
Supports Live Wallpapers out of the box which is quite uncommon for phones in this range.
Camera and Photo Quality
This is absolutely not Camera eccentric phone. 3.2 MP Rear Camera without Flash is capable of capturing stills in daylight in average quality. Some of stills are given below. Click to get full view of them.
Click for Other Stills- 1, 2, 3
Video quality is just OK for viewing on small mobile screen itself. Though I recorded some clips but then concluded not to take efforts by uploading them owing to poor quality with blurs.
Media Player and Sound
Android 2.2 Music Player has a nice interface with Playlist / Artist / Albums on separate tabs. Has one speaker just besides Camera on which I didn’t go in deep but was fine. Even the headset sound quality is good.
Video Player doesn’t play HD videos and the device doesn’t have DivX support.
Application Software
Comes integrated with Document to go app for viewing and editing MS office Word / Excel sheets and PowerPoint presentations. Apart from default Google apps, Twitter, Facebook were also included.
When you have Android Market, Number of Apps given by manufacturer doesn’t matter as you have reach to huge database of millions of Android apps.
Connectivity and Web Browser
It has Wi Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, A-GPS and 3G. Web browser though doesn’t support Pinch zoom but has Flash support which is another plus point.
Battery
It has a standard 1200 mAh battery and like any other Android device, Batter draining problem persists. In standby mode, it lasted for 16-18 hours.
Internal memory is 132 MB and expandable upto 32GB via microSD.
Conclusion
Not at all for Advanced user but an Average Joe will be happy and satisfied to get a good deal. Also, it is a good choice if you are looking for an Android 2.2 smartphone under 10K with standard features. It is anytime better than Galaxy 5 and Galaxy 3 which lacks Flash and Live wallpapers support in same range.
