Huawei’s attempt to give the user a device that is powerful, and also cost effective
Reviewed by ReadMe.lk
We covered Huawei’s G Play Mini AKA the Honor 4C. Today we’ll be looking at the Huawei Y5. Priced at Rs. 11,999, the device is also referred to as the Huawei Bee and is available at all Singer outlets island wide
The phone comes in a cardboard box which includes the basics you would find with a smartphone (charging cable, dock, earphones). The charging cable also doubles as a standard micro USB cable for charging and data transfer. Pretty standard packaging actually.
Measuring 134.3 x 66.7 x 10 mm, the device weighs around 140g, not too heavy, not too light either.
The top of the device houses the 3.5mm audio connector and the front houses the front camera (5mp), ear piece and ambient light sensor. The bottom consists of hardware navigation (Back, Home, and Recents), microphone and the microUSB port. The power button and volume rocker are both housed on the right side of the device whilst the camera is located at the back of the device.
The Build Quality – Treading familiar waters
The screen is a 4.5” screen with a resolution of 480*800 and 218 ppi pixel density. Network and connectivity-wise, you get dual MicroSIM support with 3G support (but no LTE), WiFi and Bluetooth. The device also has 4/8GB of onboard storage with upto 32GB supported via a microSD card.
Powering up the phone, you are greeted with Huawei’s standard loading animation which also loads pretty fast.
Again the somewhat low pixel density doesn’t seem to negatively impact the display and text was clear and readable at both full brightness and at automatic brightness.. Photos and video playback quite clear with video playback, especially from the camera quite clear. Touch response it very good and the screen even has multi touch for upto four fingers.
The device ships with Huawei’s basic apps which include Kingsoft Office, weather, a flashlight, a mirror app and even a magnifier. In addition, the standard Google apps are also installed which include Google Play Music, Hangouts, Gmail, Drive etc.
As far as entertainment goes, the Y5 includes an FM Radio and a media player capable of handling mp3, mp4 and flac files. The music player is ye average player. It looks good and gets the job done. Sound quality wise, you have Dolby DTS included to make your audio sound that much better. It actually does work and I found myself bopping my head along to my favorite songs instead of writing this review. The loudspeaker gets the job done nicely. It’s not overly loud, but just loud enough to notify you of incoming calls or messages.
Real World Performance
The core element of any smartphone is of course determined by what it has running under the hood. With that regard, the Y5 has a quad core cpu and 1GB of RAM to help you get through the days wages.
The device performs nicely with EmotionUI3 and Homescreen switching is very smooth and fluid. Navigating within the app drawer is equally fast. Switching through too many apps at a stretch tends to make the device lag but that’s to be expected.
The Y5i is equipped with an 8MP camera with an LED flash. Photo quality is decent but not so good at night or in low light conditions but then again, that is the bane of most smartphone camera. The camera has a HDR mode and even an object tracker where when focused, the camera will track an object wherever it moves. It also has best picture mode (where a rapid succession of images are captured and the best one can be saved by the user) and also a Panorama and Watermark mode as well. With regard to video, you can record 720p video with stereo sound. Videos are clear and again depend on the lighting condition but the inbuilt flash helps shed some light on things (pun intended).
Getting Down And Dirty
Antutu is our go to benchmark for smartphones. The entire test took around 5 minutes to complete. With a score of 17881, the device is on par with more or less all mid-range devices in this price range. A 1730mAh battery would not actually be able to last the day given the veracity of today’s apps and how they eat up memory and battery. As we stated in earlier reviews, the actual usage depends on factors such as screen on time, network signal quality and how much you actually use the phone and its apps.
Final Thoughts
The Y5 is Huawei’s attempt to give the user a device that is powerful, and also cost effective. At this price range, it competes with the likes of brands such as Microsoft with their new Lumia and even Intex and Micromax which are gaining popularity amongst those looking for a really affordable smartphone.
