The Huawei Ascend G 300 is a great budget Android handset for those who don’t want a lengthy expensive contract, or not even a contract at all. We take it through its paces to see what’s what.
The initial thing is the feel of the device, it feels nice and solid with its Gorilla Glass and makes it feel less cheap and much more like the expensive £500 phones. Unlike many cheap Chinese products, it doesn’t creak or feel cheaply made either. The only bit of the build I don’t like is the plastic white bits on the top and bottom which just feel odd.
The phone is running Gingerbread, and it feels fairly okay. It does have some customizations, some more ghastly than others but there is no major structural changes in the way HTC sense does. Anyway, before we stick completely with the stock software, here’s the AnTuTu Benchmark for this device on Vodafone UK
The launcher feels quite tacky, and I wish they had just went for a stock version but they didn’t. It has a very unusual app drawer, which has a home button it it (yet the capacitive button is less than 2cm away) and a customize button to let you re-arrange and hide apps. Also, it has a Folders implementation which copies iOS quite a bit but less flashy. Also, there is an attempted 3D-ness to the launcher which looks really rubbish.
However, if you don’t like this you can easily change the launcher then the only UI customization that is apparent is a very slight attempt at a theme.
The camera feels okay, however the camera tends to blur at the very last moment which may be down to the speed is appears to take the photo. Here are some photos which were taken with the camera on the phone:
However, for most people the camera is more than enough so that is not a problem for the target market. Also, they don’t appear to be as good quality as you would expect.
As expected, you do get pre-installed stuff from Vodafone, which is a little annoying but it is something that happens and for some it will be useful with the widget, but for me I found the widgets breaking by just not doing the right thing.
The Energy saver built-in is really useful as it acts like an app like Juice Defender, but built-in and simple toggle-on or off.
Design wise, Huawei have attempted to redesign things to fit the whole squares in the launcher, but it doesn’t fit at all with the Android guidelines, making either their icons or every other apps’ icons stick out which is a little annoying, and I would have rather them left them as-is.
Conclusion
3 stars. The phone itself is fairly good, especially for its price of £100 (+£10 topup) here in the UK off-contract, however I would rather Huawei left Android pretty much bare-bones and possibly even seeing an ICS upgrade which could just include the “Energy Saver” which is a nice improvement.
Our Rating 3/5:
The Huawei Ascend G 300 is available for £100 from Vodafone UK
