By November 18, 2010

Huawei IDEOS Review

Huawei IDEOS Review I have here the most exciting review device I’ve done to date for tracyandmatt.co.uk; the Huawei IDEOS. This isn’t just any old ordinary release by the company that provided MiFi and pretty much every half decent mobile broadband dongle to date, it is the very first of very many mobile phones to ship with Android 2.2 Froyo! So as you can probably gather already I was ridiculously excited to have been given this review so I hope that I don’t disappoint.

If you really want to know more about this super exciting new handset then read on!

 

 

 

The 10 second review:

  • Product: Huawei IDEOS
  • Price: £169Inc. VAT SIM FREE, contracts unannounced at time of review
  • Summary: A brilliant first Android 2.2 device from Huawei here with some fantastic features I’m sure it will be a mega seller.
  • Best of: Froyo OS, Live wallpapers, very light, good looks, capacitive touchscreen.
  • Worst of: Too small, no multi-touch support, no dedicated camera button.
  • Buy from: www.clove.co.uk

 

What’s in the box?

  • Huawei IDEOS
  • USB Charging adapter
  • USB to MicroUSB Sync/charge cable
  • 3.5mm Headphones/hands free

 

Huawei IDEOS specification:

  • GSM / GPRS / EDGE / UMTS / HSDPA
  • Android 2.2
  • 2.8″ capacitive touchscreen – QVGA (320×240 pixels)
  • 512 ROM / 256 RAM
  • 528 MHz processor
  • 3.2 MP FF camera
  • GPS
  • Accelerometer
  • Proximity sensor
  • Ambient light sensor
  • MicroSD card up to 16GB
  • Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / Micro USB
  • 1200mAh battery
  • Dimensions: 104 × 54.8 × 13.5mm

 

General

On the top of the IDEOS there is the very tiny power/lock button and the 3.5mm headphone Jack for compatible headphones and headsets as shown below

Huawei IDEOS Review

Moving onto the left hand side of the device this belongs to the up/down volume rocker and nothing else to be seen here

Huawei IDEOS Review

 

The right side of the handsets consists of absolutely nothing but a smooth surface.

IMG_1639

 

Right at the bottom of the device is the MicroUSB slot and the microphone for voice calls and speech to text recognition.

IMG_1638

 

On the back is the 3.2 Megapixel camera and right next to this is the loudspeaker and then 2 logos, the with Google logo underneath the camera and then at the bottom of the back cover is the IDEOS logo which is quite nice.

IMG_1643

 

Finally where all of the action happens, the front of the device. At the top is the earpiece and then directly below this is the 2.8 inch 320 x 240 pixels TFT screen and then below this are 4 touch sensitive buttons, from the left there is a back key, menu button, home button and finally the search button. Below the touch buttons are a selection of physical push buttons and they are the call button and call end button at the left and right side of a central d-pad with central push button.

IMG_1633

 

 

 

Review

I will begin by talking about the IDEOS’ build which is actually surprisingly good for the handsets’ price point, the materials don’t really feel cheap at all which is quite obviously a good thing, the exterior of the phone is very smooth and almost feels like the Samsung Galaxy S for smoothness so when the IDEOS is in the palm of your hand it does feel pretty good indeed. Also to be honest the only thing that you should do when thinking about buying this handset is to just look at how beautifully designed it really is, it looks so expensive yet is in today’s climate really cheap when you think that you are getting the above specifications for your money!!

The design of the device is both good and bad, I will start with the bad which are there isn’t a dedicated camera button which I have come to expect with mobile phones these days so this is a slight hindrance as when in camera you have to press a button on screen, another little design floor is the placement of the MicroSD slot which is behind the battery! I personally prefer the slot to be accessible without turning my phone off! But in the case of this phone you are required to remove the battery, this is actually to many Android fans out there going to be an annoyance because of the android OS’s needing a memory card to actually work properly! A slight Fail from Huawei here I’m afraid, but it certainly doesn’t take away from the overall quality of the device.

Although the design isn’t perfect I think that most people will agree that the IDEOS is stunning itself? but as well as the phone being presented beautifully outside of the box it is presented in a really nicely designed box that closely resembles the way that HTC present their handsets in a rectangular sturdy white box with a lovely picture of the handset on the top, I know this might seem like me being a little over the top about a box but I really like it when a manufacturer goes to the effort to make the packaging of their devices look good as well as putting their efforts into the devices themselves, very happy so far Huawei.

IMG_1646

Moving onto the handset set up processes now and I will begin by saying how impressed I am by the latest version of the quite brilliant Android Operating Systems 2.2 Froyo, there are many reasons why I think it’s so good, one of the least important ones is the fact that I am a major Android fan so having said that I will try my best not to ramble for too long about them but for now let’s stick to the set up which is by my pretty high standards really very simple to grasp!

I have tried very hard to make this part of the review as interesting as I possibly can by taking photos of each of the set up screens to show you what it looks like, I’ve done this because of how different Froyo is compared to previous versions of Android, so below are the pictures with a little description of what to do on them.

setup 6 setup 5

setup 4 setup

setup 2 setup 8 setup 3

setup 7

setup 9

 

As you can see in the above the set up process is in 8 easy to understand stages which don’t take any longer than 5 minutes to complete. In stage 1 all you have to do to begin the set up of your new IDEOS is press the green android logo and away you go, at stage 2 there is a quick explanation of what stage 3 will be so you just have to press begin at the bottom right of the screen. At stage 3 of the set up it introduces you to how to open and close the on screen QWERTY keyboard which is good to know especially if you are new to android and touch screens in general. Stage 4 of the set up tells you what to do to set your phone up which literally just means completing stage 5 and your phone is nearly ready to use. Stages 5 and 6 are the most important part of the set up really because this is where you either create or enter your googlemail address, the phone asks you to do this because of the operating system requiring a googlemail account to function fully. The penultimate set up stage is where the phone asks you if you want to back your mobile phone data such as downloads from the android market etc to the Google servers so that if you do need to reset your phone for whatever reason then you can easily retrieve your data back. Finally there’s the time and date set up stage which if I’m honest should be self explanatory, and when you have finished with this stage you are greeted with a congratulatory message basically telling you well done for setting your new phone up and then when you press the finish button at the bottom right of the screen it will take about 30 seconds to then show you the very first home screen of the 5 available and then you are ready to make the IDEOS your own!

Onto the devices home screens and lock screen now and I thought that instead of me going through a really long paragraph about them that I would show you some pictures with a little description with them.

What I will show you first of all is the handsets lock screen which isn’t that much different from other phones with android but it does have a quirkiness that I quite like, to unlock the phone all you have to do is swipe the bar from left to right and to mute the phone you swipe the bar from right to left.

lock screen

As you can also see the lock screen, provides a nice amount of information such as the time, your network status and e network operator that you are currently with

Ok so the IDEOS in many respects has your typical Android layout with 5 fully customizable home screens with what we call the ‘home screen’ in the middle of the 5, as you can see below I have shown the pictures of the home screens going from left to right. The below layouts that I have shown you aren’t as standard I just tweaked them a little to show you a few bits of customization, when you first see the home screens they are somewhat different to what I’ve done below.

home screen 4 home screen 3 home screen 1

 

 

 

 

 

home screen 5 home screen 2

 

Overall I am impressed with Android 2.2 but I am even more impressed that it’s installed on a device of this size and they’ve managed to make it work perfectly! I thoroughly enjoyed my time having a good play around with the customization aspects of android and I’m pretty sure that anyone who buys this phone will too.

 

The layout of the menu is very much the same as any other android device really, what I mean is that the menu has icons and their names and it’s a scrolling mechanism to see everything that is installed on the phone, quite basic really but so effective as all of the icons are colored and in Froyo they seem to be becoming more and more like the iPhone layout which I’m not sure is a good thing really, I’m not saying that the layout is an exact replica but it has similarities which to me personally is both good and bad because I love both operating systems, where android differs from iOS though is the settings section of the menu and the reason that I think it differs is because everything is in a category that anyone can understand like, wireless and networks, security etc whereas on an iPhone yes there are categories but nothing like android has. Below is a picture of the initial menu of the IDEOS.

menu

 

 

 

Android on other handsets has generally impressed greatly when it comes to browsing the web and with the IDEOS although the browser lacks multi-touch support the experience is just as good as any other android device, I think that this is due to the capacitive touch screen which I’m sure all of the people reading this know that when a phone has a capacitive screen then the experiences are generally a lot more enjoyable because of how easy it makes everything. Onto the browser itself now then and will say first of all that the lack of multi-touch is a huge disappointment as you would be excused for expecting that due to the handset having a capacitive touch screen that multi touch should have followed but I think that the device doesn’t have it due to its very low price tag but still it’s one of very few negatives that this little phone has, instead of multi touch the browser has the annoying + and – zoom touch buttons on screen which if I’m being honest don’t work that badly but it isn’t the same as being able to pinch and it zoom for you, now if I was to say that this was the only issue with the web browser and the experience that comes with it what would you say?…well it really is because due to the capacitive touch screen and the way that the browser renders web oases brilliantly it makes the experience really quite enjoyable indeed I found myself spending a couple of hours a day browsing really random websites just so that I could use it. To enter a web address is effortless as all you have to do is either bring the address bar up by pressing search button on the phone or simply scroll to the top and press the search bar there and enter, when an address has been entered and you press go it doesn’t matter if you are on Wi-Fi or 3G (depending on network signal for 3G) the age renders so quickly I was shocked! A website renders in such a way that it actually enables you to read the page without zooming in too far unlike some cheaper handsets, and one other cool feature that the browser has is when you zoom in on a web page the text on the page renders again into readable size, this is quite obviously a great feature.

I’ve provided a few pictures of the browser just to let you have a look at the interface before you decide to buy or not.

browser 2 browser 3

browser 4 browser

A well known fact about the android operating system on handsets is that the calendar always excels in giving consumers exactly what they want by making the interface very simple yet effective, with the IDEOS this common fact does not change at all in fact you would say that the calendar in Froyo is typical of what android operating systems are and that is a very good looking, simple yet effective way of entering appointments, schedules or just general reminders. All of the previously mentioned things are so simple to do that it can literally take seconds to create an agenda that looks professional and will never fail to remind you of your appointments as when it is close to the time of a particular appointment a notification will pop up in the notifications bar at the top of the screen whatever you are doing, the calendar has always been something that I have used in the odd occasion so that simply don’t forget something important but on this handset I found myself entering every appointment or task that needed to be done into the calendar because it is so nice to use. Below you will see a couple of pictures of the calendar interface just so that you can see how nice everything looks.

 

calendar 3 calendar 2 calendar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like the iPhone but can’t afford them? Love the idea of being able to download countless amounts of applications and games but you are wondering which Smartphone type to choose? Well to be honest with you the Android market is the best alternative to having an iPhone for the App store because there are now over 100’000 downloadable applications both paid and free ones. The download process is just as simple as the process on the iPhone as all you have to do is press to view the description of an application that you like the look of and press download and it will straight away go into the downloads list and depending on network signal or whether the phone is connected to Wi-Fi the download won’t take long at all and then you can start using the apps and games straight away, I would recommend an android handset based on the android market alone never mind the quality hardware also so all in all the revamped marketplace is brilliant and below I’ve provided a picture of the interface to show you how nice it really is.

clip_image066

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we go now with basically the thing that I think sets Android apart from other smart phones on the market at the moment, of course I’m talking about email and the reason I think that it sets android apart from most other smart phones is because it is simplicity at its most elegant high level. The IDEOS in my opinion though suffers very slightly because it lacks an e-mail application with good looks but there are the usual 2 email applications with this device and they are Gmail and a simple E-mail app, both of these are pretty much exactly the same apart from the fact that the Gmail client is googlemail only whereas the email app allows for multiple POP3, IMAP etc addresses at the same time, with android being a Google OS every phone that has android requires a googlemail account to be synchronized to allow for access for downloads to the android market and to do this is very simple because when you first set the phone up as mentioned earlier in the review there is a section in the set up that asks you to set up or create a googlemail account, this is a great idea if you ask me because it saves a lot of time when you’ve set the phone up because it allows you to jump straight into the Gmail application and the android market. Below are a couple of photos of the Gmail application to give you an indication of what it’s like.

gmail 2 gmail

As you can in the photos the application isn’t the most exciting in the world but the layout is simple but effective at the same time, what I nearly forgot to mention was that to compose an email is so simple it can be done in just a few easy steps, first you have to press the menu button and a small section of options will pop up and one of them says compose so all you have to do is press this and literally you can press the To: bar which will ask you to choose a contact to send the mail to and then you can type the mail just as you would when writing a text message.

As I did mention that there are 2 email applications on the IDEOS I feel that I should mention that they are absolutely no excessive differences between the simple email app and the Gmail app apart from again the fact that one is specific to one email provider and the other allows for the synchronization of other types of addresses, so everything that I’ve mentioned above is the same for both apps, below though is another couple of pictures that are this time of the email application.

 

 

 

email email 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point I think I will move onto what this little handset has to offer as regards navigation applications, well to be honest it offers up some brilliant tech here! The applications that are pre-installed on the device are, Google Maps, Google Navigation, Places and Latitude the latter 2 applications though are accessible in 2 ways 1 is through the main menu as they both have their own icons on screen and the other way to access them is straight through Google Maps itself as they are built into the app. Onto Google Maps now then, the application that is installed on the IDEOS is exactly the same as on any other android device as it enables you to find your location, postcodes, addresses but also it can plan routes for you with just your postcode and your destination, as I’ve mentioned previously the app is the same on any other android device so if you have indeed used android before then you will be very familiar with how it works and to be honest if you’ve used any other device on the market that has Google maps installed then you are also likely to be familiar with its interface as it is just so simple to use. One thing that I would say though is the application would have been much more enjoyable had the phone had Multi-touch input but nonetheless the Google Maps is still an absolute breeze. There is one particular extra that is free to download from the Android market to further enhance the Google Maps experience and it is one that I would recommend downloading for definite and it’s called, Street View now what this allows the user to do is drop a pin on a location and literally go onto the street as if you were walking down it, so let’s say you hadn’t got a clue where a particular road was in regards where you were you could simple open Google Maps, type the postcode if you know it and then drop the street viewer pin and in theory you should easily find your location. Below is a photo of Google Maps in action to simply show you what it looks like.

maps

 

 

 

Onto what I would call the ‘Add Ons’ to Google Maps now which are called Latitude and Places and both of the applications here are what I would call essentially pointless, and I will begin with talking about why Latitude is a tad pointless and that is because in my personal opinion it could be seen as an invasion of privacy because it basically shows on the map your location and your name obviously when you’ve signed up, but basically anyone within your town, county etc could also join Latitude and find you and know where you live which I for one really don’t like. The idea behind Google Latitude I think is to bring people closer together who maybe haven’t seen each other for a while but to display your location on a public map is something that I would never do because people could easily pose as your friends etc so I think I will stick to Facebook to keep in contact with friends thank you!

Onto the slightly less pointless application now, Places. What this part of Google Maps allows you to do is find your typical locations nearby where you are at any given time so for instance if I really had no idea where a McDonalds was in the middle of Birmingham, I could bring up Places and search fast food (which I had to add a shortcut for myself) and in theory the app should display all nearby fast food establishments which in my short experience with the IDEOS I found that it didn’t really work that well because it for one didn’t find the most obvious of places and also it brought up some places that closed down years ago so I didn’t like it but some people might so I have provided a picture of the initial interface of Places to show you its interface.

navigation

Now I’ve had my little rant I will move onto an application that has impressed me so much I am now ridiculously tempted to buy phone that has it installed, and of course the app I’m talking about is Google Navigation. The version that is installed on this device is apparently only a Beta but when I used it-it felt like the final product because it works so well! I have to be honest and say that the GPS antenna on the IDEOS is brilliant it even works better than my iPhone! The single best feature of Google Navigation is the speak destination section in the initial menu, what this allows you to do is literally say a type of location or exact location that you want to navigate to and the IDEOS didn’t fail once to find my locations!! The application is also so simple to use it has a ‘plug and play’ functionality that I think is missing with other navigation apps on the market today, as you can see in the pictures below the interface is simple, the instruction on how to get to your location are simple and it is just a brilliant application that I would will anyone who hasn’t tried it yet to try it right now!

maps 3 maps 2

A bonus feature within android 2.2 is a note pad! Now when I had my HTC hero I was so gutted not to have this feature because I note take all of the time to remind myself of various things that I know I’m going to forget so to have it in the latest version of the incredibly popular operating system is brilliant for me personally, to create a note is very simple as all you have to do when in the application is press the menu touch button and press add note and the on screen QWERTY keyboard comes up and away you go, this process is very much the same when you want to edit a note as all you have to do is press your already created note and then type away just as you would in a word document on a PC or MAC all in all a very simple addition but one that I found a joy to use.

notes 2 notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I know that when people buy phones these days they aren’t necessarily looking for a music phone or even a phone that simply has a decent music player but I am a consumer that has to have at least decent quality music playback on my phone otherwise it’s not worth having, now I know that probably sounds silly to most people but to me music is a big part of my life, the reason that I mention the above statement is due to the fact that the music player on the IDEOS is definitely decent and possibly a higher than average player but only when you use a very good set of headphones otherwise you might as well not bother listening to it at all! The interface of the music player is much the same as any other android handset really, it displays artwork nicely and also displays album name, track name and artist name to boot which are all a thumbs up from me but for me the best thing about the interface is its sheer simplicity I mean you really couldn’t get much simpler than this if you tried and trust me I’ve had some of the worst MP3 players known to man so when it comes to ease of use I should in theory know what I’m talking about. First of all to be able to play music on an android phone in general you will need a MicroSD card otherwise you really can’t do anything, so once you have music on the memory card all you have to do is open the Music icon from the menu, press the menu button and bring up your library of music and then away you go it is really as simple as that and as I mentioned earlier but forgot to mention also the music player will display the album artwork but only if you possess the artwork yourself.

I unfortunately have to mention the absolutely awful headphones that Huawei have provided with this handset; they are simply rubbish for music playback but OK for everything else! I almost forgot to mention that as well as the full music player application that there is a home screen widget that allows you to play/pause, skip and also a simple press of the song that’s playing will immediately send you back into the full application.

music player 2 music player

 

 

The handsets FM radio when you compare it to other phones around the same price range in the market it isn’t too bad at all, I mean I’m not saying that it’s the best radio application I’ve seen but it is good enough to listen to for sure. The sound through the bundled headphones did leave a lot to be desired when playing music in the music player but through the radio I found them to be not too bad, the radio itself has an auto tuning function which works ok it found a few of the available stations where I am but it completely missed out at least 2 of the most local stations so that was disappointing but what also let me down was the lack of station information that the app gives, it doesn’t tell the user what station it is it just shows it’s frequency so unless you are clues up on radio frequencies you will have very little chance of figuring out what station you’re listening to until the presenter tells you, I know I’ve had a little moan about a couple of things but overall the FM radio isn’t bad.

 

Onto video now and it is unfortunately again as expected with such a small screen that videos neither record or playback any sort of good quality video which is rather disappointing really as I am a guy who generally watches lots of video files on my phone so I was hoping to be able to do that with this handset but I wasn’t able to due to poor playback.

To record a video is very simple as it can all be done in the camera application on the phone and as with any other smart phone there is a little picture of the camera a camcorder functions to switch between with consummate ease, the bad thing though is that you really shouldn’t have bothered changing it to the camcorder function at all because it’s just so poor! However I was sort of expecting the recording to be poor as the phone only has a 3.2 megapixel camera but still it doesn’t even record in full screen! And don’t even get me started on the playback of the awful recordings you might as well just not bother recording anything at all and stick to your full size camcorder.

Onto You tube now and unfortunately this will be bad news to most smart phone users as far as I am aware You Tube is a hugely popular feature for thousands of smart phone users around the world because it’s a fun way of passing the time when you are bored etc but with the IDEOS’ YouTube application because of the screen’s 2.8 inch size and 320 x240 pixels resolution most of the video content doesn’t play in full screen so you will constantly be squinting to be able to see any writing etc within the video, so basically because the handset has such a small and relatively low resolution screen the video playback through you tube isn’t great and for me personally I found it hard to grasp the poorness of playback so hardly used it if I’m honest. Just below this paragraph is an example picture of one of Matt’s unboxing videos playing in the IDEOS’ YouTube application, and also a sample photo of the applications’ initial interface.

 

 

 

video playback

you tube

 

As expected when I read the specs of this device the camera isn’t the greatest since sliced bread but it does its job if you forget your digital camera when you go out somewhere but I wouldn’t recommend it for use all of the time because it just doesn’t cut it to be honest. The camera is quite basic as it doesn’t have any features that make you go WOW but it has your standard white balance, 2.8 x digital zoom but rather than me babble on about how not brilliant the camera is I think I will let you decide for yourself by judging the below photos.

Phone Pic7 Phone Pic2

 

 

As you can see they aren’t the best pictures you will ever see but that’s to be expected of a 3.2 megapixel camera on a small phone like this. The picture of the digital camera was taken with standard settings on so the megapixels were set to 3, and white balance was set to auto. The middle picture was taken with the same megapixel choice but with the white balance on fluorescent mode and the picture to the right of that was set on daylight white balance.

gallery

As well as being able to take photos with this little phone you obviously have to have a way of viewing them at your own leisure and for that there is a pretty nice gallery where users can easily access all of their own photos, album artwork and photos that have been sent via MMS etc all in one place which I find to be quite a nice way of doing things and as you will see at the side of this paragraph, the interface is cool too with various different sections where your photos can be stored and accessed. To get to the gallery is very simple as well because it has its own little menu icon and there’s the option of placing it on your home screen as a shortcut, very nice in my opinion just wish the camera was a little better to be honest!

Onto social networking now and as with every review that I do now I have used both Twitter and Facebook applications to give you an indication of what is available with the IDEOS.

I will begin with the facebook application that is pre installed and I have to say that it impressed me in a big way because it is much the same as the iPhone application in that it allows you to post comments and status updates, find friends and add them, and to also follow other users that have that facility, there is also the customary notifications bar right at the bottom of the page when the application is open and whenever the application is closed the same notifications will instantly pop up in the notifications bar on the home screen. The application for anyone who hasn’t experienced it’s joys before is very simple to use and is a great way of keeping in touch with your friend/family when you are out and about or on holiday because providing you have some sort of internet connectivity i.e. Wi-Fi or 3G then the app will work flawlessly without issues. Below I have provided a picture of the interface to show you how nice it is.

facebook facebook 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twitter now and before I begin I should mention that due to the IDEOS’ smaller screen the official Twitter application which is downloadable from the Android market doesn’t work properly as the screen isn’t large enough to display all of the icons within the application so I was forced to use a pre installed version of a Twitter app called Twidroyd which as you can probably tell I didn’t like very much and I think this is because I’m so used to using larger screens and better applications than this one. The app works much the same as any other Twitter application on any other smart phone but it doesn’t feel right somehow, it feels cheap and as if it belongs on a much worse phone really I mean yes you can tweet, retweet, follow people and people can follow you and all of the usual Twitter things but I could seriously hardly see anything due to the ridiculous shade of blue/turquoise but also the fact that the writing must be in font 0 or something! I have to wear reading glasses and I still found it difficult to read anything so in the end I just went back to my trusty iPhone for comforting sized font and a larger screen. Below you will see a couple of screenshots of the app to show you what I mean.

twidroyd twidroyd 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next I want to tell you about a cool little feature that is on the IDEOS and it’s called ‘news feed’ and it is extremely similar to the weather/news applications that you have possibly seen on HTC smart phones before because what it consists of is a little weather application that finds your location and tells you your local weather forecast for 5 days at a time but also the same application covers a range of news topics from newspapers and websites from across the UK the sections are, Top stories, UK news, Sport and entertainment and all you have to do is swipe your finger to the right to navigate to whichever news section you wish to read and you are ready to read away at some sometimes ridiculous news articles! Also I want to mention the fact that the application updates regularly to bring you the latest news and weather which I found to work really well so all in all a pretty nice addition to an already cool little handset.

 

 

When thinking about buying a mobile phone the first port of call should be whether it can call and text and then whether it does the 2 things well so let’s move onto these features now and find out.

First of all I will talk about the call quality and I will mention that whilst I tested the calls and texting I was using an O2 SIM card so what I say could be different for other networks but I am pretty sure that with the right amount of network strength the results will be much the same. One thing that people including me think about when buying a mobile phone is whether the handset is capable of withstanding a lot of usage for calls and whether the clarity of the calls matches up perfectly to the or ice of the handset itself and I have to say that the call quality of this handset is actually far better than the or price tag suggests, the clarity is nothing short of immense and it is an absolute joy to have a phone call with! I would go as far to say that the IDEOS is far better than every phone I’ve ever owned and just to let you know that I have in fact had more phones than you can shake a stick at so I’ve had a lot of experience with both good and bad call qualities, but with this I am super impressed and I would say that anyone who buys this phone will get more than their money’s worth for sure.

 

Now onto the handsets texting capabilities, it’s not exactly a secret that people are probably in the market to buy themselves a mobile phone more for texting than for calling because even if you were to buy this phone SIM Free from www.clove.co.uk you could get a simplicity tariff with unlimited texts which amounts to around 3000, so for people reading this who are thinking that I’m advertising simplicity tariffs I’m not I can assure you it was merely to point out that even mobile carriers are now understanding that texting is the future of mobile communications, if/when you buy this handset you really won’t be let down by the texting function because to put it bluntly it’s flipping great! The application itself uses a threaded format of displaying your sent and received texts so it looks a lot like iPhone and Blackberry in that sense, but what makes texting so good is the on screen QWERTY keyboard coupled with the capacitive touch screen which by the way is brilliant! For a phone that will set you back just £169 SIM free to get this kind of technology is just superb really, I will mention though that the 2.8″ display is just that bit too small for the on screen keyboard to be useable in portrait mode for anyone with large hands but it doesn’t mean that its poor it just means that some will find it difficult to use. Below I would have provided a photo for you but I thought that seen as though I have already pictured the keyboard that you would get the idea of the interface of texting.

 

The battery life of the IDEOS is expectedly poor on 3G and distinctly average also when it’s on 2G mode only. I estimate that the most battery that I got out of the phone on 3G when using it highly was around half a day then I had to charge it and on 2G I got just over a day and that is with keeping it on overnight too so it’s not too bad, the one thing that you need to realize with this type of handset is that when you use it a lot the battery will die considerably faster than with any other type of phone (excluding iPhone of course as they lose battery so frequently that owners have to reserve a plug specifically to charge them) but when used sensibly meaning don’t play games, browse the net for long periods of time them the battery life will last a lot longer so I guess my advice is be sensible as well as having fun with it.

 

 

 

Conclusion

Unfortunately that is the end of my review of the Huawei IDEOS so I hope that you’ve enjoyed it because I know that I have enjoyed using this phone and writing this review no end!

I would literally recommend this little beauty of a handset to anyone who has never used an Android handset before or to someone who fancies a go at a capacitive touch screen because it is truly remarkable what Huawei have managed to cram into such a tiny device, yes it has its flaws but what doesn’t these days?! If it were me I’d be buying it for myself never mind as a gift for someone else but only really if the screen were a little larger otherwise the phone is brilliant and the best android handset under £150 I’ve seen to date!!

 

 

 

Reviewed by: Chris Vesey

Posted in: Phones, Reviews
Tags: ,

About the Author:

A tech reviewer for 4 years, I have a great passion for mobile phones specifically but review a vast array of technology.
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