There’s no doubt that there have been a flood of smartphones in the last few months. Right from a first-time smartphone user to a connoisseur, everyone has got a choice and that too at different price points. Huawei, who was predominantly an OEM has also started to brand devices under their name. Their Ideos U8150 was received well due to its decent features and affordable price tag and this time again, Huawei is trying to do the same with Ideos X2 (U8500).
Design:
Huawei’s target market for Ideos X2 seems to be a first-time smartphone user that tries to give a smartphone experience along with a decent-sized screen. X2’s front is taken with a 3.2-inch touchscreen display with four physical buttons – Call, Menu, Back and End separated equally with the optical trackpad. The back houses a camera with the cover sporting a matte finish which gives it a superior grip. Sides integrate a volume rocker, a 3.5mm headphone jack and USB port for charging and data transfer.
Display:
As mentioned before, the phone comes with a 3.2-inch display but features a capacitive panel that gives an improved touch experience as compared to phones with resistive touch screen display. The display supports HVGA resolution (320×480), which is quite good for a phone that is pitched at a lower price point. The colors however, are a different story. The display supports max. 262k colors, which sometimes makes some images look dull and washed out.
Performance:
Ideos X2 (U8500) is powered by a Qualcomm chip clocked at 528MHz with 256MB RAM. Going by the current line of smartphones selling in the market, X2 seems slow but the processor speed and the RAM serves the purpose. The phone runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) and operations like playing music while surfing the web or editing documents can be done with ease. Of course, the phone starts lagging if you have too many apps running in background and given the nature of Android OS, you’ll end up doing so, which is why an automatic task killer (downloadable for free on Android Market) should be kept handy in such situations.
Ideos X2 boasts a decent connectivity options like GSM/EDGE, 3G and Wi-Fi for cellular data and internet and USB 2.0 and Bluetooth for short-range communication. The phone also features GPS which works well in conjunction with the Google Maps.
The phone can shoot pictures at up to 3.2-megapixel resolution. The camera is not a super snapper you see in most mid-range or high-end phones but works pretty well. Plus, it’s a fixed focus lens, which means getting good macro shots is a difficult task.
Battery Life:
Ideos X2 comes with an 1150mAh battery and with moderate usage of web (2G), music and camera, the phone can easily last around a day.
Conclusion:
Ideos X2 is a decent attempt by Huawei which may have some shortcomings but gives a good bang for a buck with a large display, camera and good battery life. However, few hurdles that the company can face is the lack of their brand name in the end consumer mobile phone market and other smart phones from competitors in the same price range. For instance the Samsung Galaxy Y that retails for around 7.5k is one example as well as other manufacturers like Micromax too compete in the same space.
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