Huawei Ascend G 300

Editor's Review of the Ascend G 300

Not everyone wants to splash out over £400 for a smartphone. In fact, unless you're trying to prove a point, it's safe to say that no one would pay that much for a phone if they had the choice.

Thankfully, there are very sensibly-priced smartphone options out there, and one of these is the Ascend G 300 from Huawei. The phone looks good, packs a 1GHz processor and, thanks to its sub-£100 price tag, is instantly endearing.

Design & Build

As just mentioned, the Ascend is pretty for the price. It may come in plastic, but the white rim, silver back and black glossy front are a decent visual combination, in their own weird way. At 10.5mm of thickness, it's hardly obese, and certainly among the sleeker phones in this price bracket.

It's always nice to see a budget handset that doesn't hold back on screen size. Here we have a 4" IPS LCD touchscreen that squeezes in an impressive 233ppi. While it won't blow you away with its slightly pale colour palette, the picture clarity and viewing angles are all you could ask for.

OS & Performance

Most of you know what to expect from Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Fast navigation speeds and reasonable customisability of home screens, widgets and other visual features. It's also welcoming news that Huawei have announced that they will be releasing the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update on the phone. While it won't be the flashy-flash, 3D-effects, super-smooth experience you get on high-end phones, it'll still help this thrifty phone feel much more up-to-date.

With a 1GHz processor, the G300 is no speed demon but also handles the demands of Android 2.3 very well. You'll need to have a good several apps open at once to sense any slowdown, and while you shouldn't expect to play cutting-edge games on this thing, you won't have a problem running fan favourites such as Temple Run and, of course, Angry Birds.

Camera

The auto-focusing 5MP camera sounds pretty impressive on paper, this being a budget phone and all. While it delivers in comfortable, well-lit settings, it suffers in any conditions that deviate from the optimal. It takes some extreme darkness to trigger the flash, and the four-second delay in the shutter will quickly replace the smiles on your photo subjects' faces with frustrated frowns.

Software & Multimedia

Huawei haven't imposed too much of their relatively unknown own-look bits and bobs to the handset. The lock screen is intuitive, with you being able to open a different app depending on which part of the screen you swipe to. Sadly, the widgets are non-customisable. Huawei have also thrown in some custom widgets for such basics as the clock, radio and calendar.

Battery life, Connectivity & Storage

The removable battery contained beneath the slick silver casing of the G300 is a 1500 mAh offering, which will give you an impressive amount of running time. On a long-haul flight, you can squeeze up to 10 hours of life out of this thing in Flight Mode. When it comes to normal usage, the phone will easily live over a day.

It's business as usual in the connectivity office, with WiFi, Bluetooth and even old-school EDGE mobile internet (running at a whopping 384kbps) all accounted for. Hopefully you won't have to fall back on the Edge too often though, and will spend more time indulging in HSDPA speeds of up to 7.2MBps that this phone is capable of.

The G300 has what can be described as multi-layered storage options. Aside from the 675MB of dedicated internal app storage, there is 2GB of extra onboard space and the potential to expand it by a further 32GB via microSD. In conclusion, there's room-a-plenty.

Conclusion

It's a bit of a mystery how the Chinese phone giants - ZTE and Huawei - manage to roll out good-quality phones at such prices, although given the country's reputation for poor working conditions, the less questions asked the better probably.

The Ascend G300 should be seriously considered by anyone on a budget. Its lowly price really doesn't reflect the decent quality of features and specs onboard, and the big bright screen is quite possibly the best you'll find among entry-level smartphones.