We’re currently putting the Huawei Y300 through its paces, so stay tuned to see what we think. In the meantime, check out our updated gallery of images to see if this budget marvel has the power for you.
We’re not quite sure why some handsets don’t get a proper announcement when they are in front of the world’s press, but the Huawei Ascend Y300 is another handset from the Chinese manufacturer that is quietly residing on its booth.
This handset is incredibly similar to the Ascend G330 in terms of specification, but it sports a slightly different design, battery boost, a newer version of Android and a fresh overlay.
The Ascend Y300 release date is set for April/May and while no price was available we reckon it will land around the £100 (around $150/AU$147) mark.
In terms of style, the Ascend Y300 borrows its look from its bigger brother, the Huawei Ascend G510, sporting an assuming generic smartphone design.
It’s not the slimmest of handsets, at 11.2mm (0.4 inches), but the Y300 sits comfortably in the hand and its 124.5 x 63.8mm (4.9 x 2.5 inch) frame is made easier to hold thanks to the slightly curved and textured back.
Like the waterproof Ascend G350, the Ascend Y300 comes with a 4-inch WVGA IPS display, which is a little brighter than its water-resistant brother.
On screen you’ll find version 4.1.1 of Android Jelly Bean and the same Emotion UI overlay that graces the flagship Ascend P2, as well as the mid-range Ascend G510.
This user interface does away with the app list altogether, providing you with only the home screens to manage your apps from, in a bid to make Android an easier platform for first time users.
Luckily you can easily create folders by dragging and dropping one app onto another, which means you won’t have to use all nine home screens and waste time skipping between them to find what you want.
There’s also a range of themes to choose from, which change the icon style, wallpaper, font and colour scheme to give you a look that suits you.
Adding to the personalisation options even more, Huawei has added a master widget that enables you to pop several widgets of varying sizes into one larger container – a design that reminds us slightly of the Live tiles on Windows Phone 8.
Jelly Bean runs pretty smoothly on the Ascend Y300, and we managed to navigate around and jump between apps with relative ease, although the missing app list key at the bottom of the screen did catch us out a couple of times.
There’s a 1GHz dual-core processor running the show, so the Huawei Ascend Y300 has enough power to ensure that even the more taxing applications such as Google Maps didn’t cause too much trouble.
Huawei seems keen to deliver a relatively decent camera experience at the bottom end of the smartphone market, with the Y300 another handset in the firm’s line up to sport a 5MP rear-facing camera, plus there’s a single LED flash thrown in for good measure.
The camera app is a little sluggish and the shutter takes a couple of seconds to settle the autofocus and snap a picture, meaning rapid fire photos were out of the question.
The design of the rear camera reminds us of the HTC One X, while a front-facing 0.3MP camera offers up a low quality lens for video calls and vanity checks.
Typing on the Ascend Y300 is pretty decent thanks to Huawei sticking with the stock Android keyboard, which offers up a responsive and accurate experience.
A 1,730mAh battery has been squashed inside the Ascend Y300, which should give you a decent amount of battery life, but we’ll put this to the test during our in-depth review.
Early verdict
The Ascend G330 hasn’t been around for long but the Ascend Y300 looks set to usurp it at the bottom of Huawei’s smartphone range.
It offers a good array of features for a low-end smartphone and will certainly give the ZTE Blade 3 and LG Optimus L3 2 a run for their low cost money.
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