Huawei has been creating a lot of buzz lately. The company used to have it’s focus on network devices previously. But now they seem to have set their eyes on the growing smartphone industry as well. At this year’s Mobile World Congress, we witnessed the Huawei Ascend D QUAD which came with a quad core processor and LTE. It looks like Huawei is really serious about what they’re doing. Anyway, this review isn’t about any monster spec’ed phone. This is about a low end yet a highly irresistible phone for its price, the Huawei Ideos X3. If you follow us on
Twitter or
Facebook, you know that we’ve been reviewing this phone for a while now. Here, check out our special unboxing video.
The Huawei Ideos X3 has a 3.2 inch TFT screen with 320X480 resolution which has approximately 180ppi. On the inside we have a 600MHz Qualcomm processor with 256MB RAM and 512MB ROM. And of course, the memory is expandable up to 32GB. The phone is also capable of connecting to HSDPA networks, WiFi b/g/n, GPS and Bluetooth devices. It can also take average pictures with its 3.15MP camera and 480p videos. For those radio addicts, it does FM radio connectivity.
Like you would expect, the Ideos X3 like any other Android phone gives you a seamless Google experience. With Gingerbread on board, it is the same experience what other Google OS powered phones has to offer. However, Huawei has really taken care of some of the biggest set backs of the Android OS. We know that by default, Google does not offer a pure back up solution other than the Google Plus service which just backs up your photos and videos alone. While your Google account keeps track of all the app you have on your phone which can be restored to your phone anytime you enter your Google credentials. But it does not backup any app data and hence it can’t restore the same either. Hence, Huawei has introduced the Huawei Cloud+ service which is a free(with huawei devices) online storage solution with some really good features. One can enjoy this service when he/she purchases a Huawei phone as the service is bundled with Huawei Android devices. Every data thats backed up to the cloud can be accessed via the web as well at hicloud.com
So what exactly is cloud+ ??
Cloud+:
Cloud+ is an exclusive Huawei Cloud service to Huawei device users. Cloud+ is seamlessly integrated into the Huawei phone platform. Cloud+ offers a range of next generation features like Cloud+ Drive, Message+, Streams, Phone Finder, SNS Contacts integration, and anywhere any device access for content saved on Drive. These features help the phone user to experience the future of smartphones.
Cloud+ Drive:
You get a 16GB free cloud storage with every smartphone that you purchase from Huawei. Since your contacts, mails, messages, settings and account information don’t use as much space, you will find that 16 GB goes a long way. Therefore, we provide hard disk for your life. You can store up to 3500 songs on Cloud+ Drive or 7000 photos on Cloud+ Album. Cloud+ is simple to start and simple to use. Access your smartphone menu and click on Cloud+ Settings. Give your account a user name and password. You are all set use Cloud+.
Message+:
Message+ is an advanced messaging solution to share text, photos music and voice notes between friends and groups. Send and receive messages in seconds and see when your contacts are typing. Don’t hold back; share your thoughts, stories with unlimited characters and emoticons. Get confirmation when your messages are delivered and read. Swap pictures, videos, voice notes and more; Never worry about the size of the files that you want to share with your friends. Huawei smart phone automatically detects your Message+ friends. If you have Message+ users on your phone contact list, then your phone automatically detects those friends. Otherwise, just enter your friends account name and get connected with your friend. And you can also do group chats using this app.
Huawei Social Streams:
Huawei Streams provides an integrated social networking experience with facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. Experience a new way of social networking on your smartphone with automatic updates of your friends, photo sharing, status updates, messaging with few key taps.
SNS Contact Integration:
Your facebook, twitter and LinkedIn contacts are imported and integrated with your phonebook. You contact’s updates, albums and your interaction with the contact are closely integrated with your contact’s information.
Cloud+ Synchronisation and Back up:
Cloud+ Contacts allows you to synchronize contacts from your phone to the Cloud+ server in real time. Contact information changes on your phone will be automatically synchronized to the Cloud+ server or your other Huawei phones and tablets. Go to your Contacts settings. Enable “Synchronize” option.
All Backup:
A smart way to backup all your important information. Backup the information so that even if you lose your phone, you just lose your phone not the information. Also, retrieve back the data on to your new Huawei smart phone and get back the same experience. Don’t just limit there, retrieve the backed up data on to your mediapad and get back the same experience.
Phone Finder:
Find My Phone
Don’t panic. As soon as you realize that your Huawei phone is missing, Hicloud can help you figure out where your phone is. Log on to www.hicloud.com, use the Phone finder feature to locate your phone on the google maps. Not just locate, perform other useful functions to safe guard your data.
Lock Your Phone
You keep lot of important information on your phone, so you want to protect this information until your phone is safely back in your hands. From the internet account, set a password to lock the phone and keep your information private.
Back Up Your Data
If you have lost your phone and you are worried that you would lose all the phone contacts, the message communications, system settings and account settings, you can backup your data on the cloud using this feature.
HiSpace
HiSpace is Huawei App store available exclusively to Huawei smartphone owners. Over 1500 top apps for work, play and everything in between. The apps that come in the Huawei smartphone is just the beginning. You can download more apps from HiSpace and experience more on your phone. Hispace provides categories to choose the apps from. Don’t get lost in the plethora of apps on the android market.
Hispace provides the best in the industry apps categorized to ease your search and experience on the app market.
So that’s the biggest highlight of this phone. This is something what no other Android phones can’t offer. Of course they can replicate the same experience if you download plenty of apps that almost do the same tasks. But remember its not unified, you have to find apps by yourself, sacrifice storage space, manually configure and handle them and of course remember all the credentials for each service which is a lot of hectic work. While the cloud service works out of the box. All you need is just one account and rest the phone takes care of.
So the biggest question is the battery life. The battery life wasn’t impressive from our tests. And lets face it, its 1200mAh battery. While it tried to offer approximately 5 hours on 2G with internet turned on all the time and Huawei Cloud services running in the background, we managed to squeeze in a little more when we tried turning off internet when we weren’t really using the internet apps. On 3G we got similar battery life as 2G when 3G was turned off, rest of the time it was fairly 4 hours. For improved battery life, we recommend turning off the automatic daily backups to weekly or manual. Unfortunately we couldn’t find an option to back up only when connected to a wifi network. Well, thats a bummer and we hope Huawei to address that immediately as 3G back up can cost you a lot of money.
At price around Rs 10,200/-, Huawei Ideos X3 offers a pure Android experience on a decent hardware and a great cloud service which one can only dream with other phones of the same price range.
