October last year, Huawei & Smart launched the Ascend G610 locally – well equipped with a 5-inch qHD display, a quad-core CPU, 1GB RAM & everything you’d expect from a phone with a price tag below Php10k. Is it worth signing up for? Read on our quick review to find out.
The whole build of the Huawei Ascend G610 is amazing to start with. On the black version, it’s matte and it feels good to touch. The design is the opposite of boxy, and that makes it ergonomic to hold as it falls just right on your palm. Despite the size, everything feels solid & nice to hold.
The left side of the phone is clean while on the right you’ll find the volume rocker & the power button while on the top & bottom are the audio & micro USB ports. There’s also an LED notification light fronting the phone along with the essentials which is nice to have.
Like we’ve said, the 5-inch display size of the phone doesn’t feel that big anymore with today’s standards. Unlike phones in this price range however, it’s running on a qHD resolution instead of 720p. It still looks good in our opinion, sharp & vibrant. Viewing angles were okay too, but for spec heads and pixel junkies, this might be far too lacking especially for the phone’s given price point.
Maneuvering through the phone’s UI is a breeze, as already expected from a quad-core CPU & 1GB RAM. There were no lags & stutters all around. Huawei has also employed a new skin on top of Android which sets it apart from the crowd, and glad to say it doesn’t slow the device down. There are cases though where I had to wake up the device from sleep and it all goes unresponsive from thereon out. Weird and kind of annoying, especially if it occurs very frequently.
The phone runs on Android 4.2.1 Jellybean with Emotion UI 1.6. It all now depends on your taste if you’re going to like the cartoony icons & the colorful design elements, but overall, it’s not a mess to be honest. It doesn’t employ an app drawer to start, and the UI looks pretty bright for this version of Android. In our opinion, design-wise, it isn’t very consistent, but it does live up in navigation.
The cameras on the Ascend G610 are very average for the most part. The rear camera is not the sucky 5 megapixel kind found on lower end phones as it does manage to perform up to a certain point in low light, but it won’t get you too far. We’ve seen a lot of better cameras in the price point, and we’ve seen better software too, so I guess the phone somewhat creates a shortcoming.
Speakers, on the side note, are small and easy to cover. They are loud in a way, but far from the best in sound quality.
Based on our use, the battery of the Huawei Ascend G610 lasts quite a long time. It goes on for lots of days on standby & WiFi and it only depletes by a little amount with an hour or so of social networking & the internet.
Huawei Ascend G610 specs:
5.0-inch IPS LCD display @ 540×960 pixels, 220ppi
Mediatek MT6589M 1.2GHz quad-core processor
PowerVR SGX 544MP
1GB RAM
4GB internal storage
up to 32GB via microSD
Dual-SIM, dual-standby
5MP rear camera
VGA front-facing camera
3G/HSPA 7.2Mbps
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA
Bluetooth 3.0
GPS
FM radio tuner
Android 4.2 Jellybean
Li-Ion 2,150mAh battery
142 x 73.6 x 9.9mm
To summarize, the Huawei Ascend G610 is a good phone, but certainly not with its price tag of Php8,000 with Smart or free with their All-In Plan 800. You can get a lot of better spec’d alternatives right now on the market instead of this, but if you’re truly after Huawei’s craftmanship, this one can still manage.
What we liked about it:
- Good build quality
- Above average battery life
What we didn’t like about it:
- A lot of better spec’d alternatives out in the market for the price
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