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Stepping into the handset arena in India only last year, Huawei is yet to become a household name. However, it does not stop the company from trying to get a foothold in what is currently the most popular handset segment in the country - the budget smartphone. In a genre where the first name that comes to mind is Nokia – Huawei is a company which despite some drawbacks, still manages to retain the loyalty of many. Has it played its cards right with the IDEOS, a touch-smartphone that promises to be easy on the pocket without compromising the user experience?
Mini-bar
Designed with a mini-candy bar form factor, the IDEOS looks spunky with its bright blue back panel. Power it on with the slim button on the top left, which also doubles up as the virtual lock, and the 2.8-inch screen comes alive.
It has two thin, slat-like ‘Accept' and ‘End' buttons – the green and red ones to put it in simpler terms. Between these you have a circular navigation pad with a metallic rim which serves as a 5-way navigator. This would be preferable to those who might take some time getting used to a touch interface or just prefer physical buttons in the long run. Above these three physical buttons, you have a slim row of four touch-functions – Return, Settings, Menu and Search. All four prove to be useful shortcuts while using the smartphone. The Search button launches a window, where you type in whatever you are looking for – it could be a contact, an Italian restaurant or an address - and conveniently presents both your Phone Book and Google in the same window.
Getting a feel
The user interface was all that you'd expect from the green robot – neatly threaded messages, navigating via Places, the Market app and the five home screens to customise – among other things that Android 2.2 comes with.
The touch (capacitive) experience was quite smooth, accurately launching functions with a press. But the virtual keyboard feels especially cramped when you type in the portrait mode, however we could avoid a lot of typo errors when we just typed in landscape.
IDEOS holds in store a 3.2-meg camera which we tried out under various lighting conditions. The camera does not have a Flash but it manages to reproduce colours quite nicely both indoors and under bright sunlight. Most photographs we took were reasonably sharp although they did look slightly distorted in the low-res display (320x240). Double tap to zoom in to the image and tap on the Menu button to access options like Crop, Share or start a digital slideshow.
The handset is marketed as a low-budget Android smartphone and this shows in the display and processor capabilities. However, when it comes to connectivity, IDEOS isn't much of a compromise. It packs in a Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and can act as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot to connect other devices to with Bluetooth 2.1, apart from the availability of HSDPA (7.2 Mbps) that'll let you stream or download media at decent speeds over a 3G connection.
Also, as with most other budget smartphones, you get the token 512 MB internal storage but you can pick up an SD card – the handset can accommodate one with up to 32GB of external storage. With its 1200mAh battery, the IDEOS easily gave us close to two days of usage with only voice calls. However, this was obviously reduced to just a working day with Wi-Fi, GPRS and app activity.
The compact handset, although with a affordable price tag, doesn't let you down with most of its features and would be a spunky handset to show off with its Blue, Pink and Yellow rear panels. Huawei seems to have tried not to cut corners with the build quality as well – the handset does not feel flimsy and plasticky when you hold it.
We say
Despite being one of the later entrants in the smartphone market in India, Huawei seems to have got a major part of its formula right in putting together a budget smartphone for the masses here. With the latest version of Android, good connectivity options, and a decent touch screen, the IDEOS seems to be a great smartphone to go for, especially due to the price tag.
Love – Accurate capacitive touch screen, good connectivity options
Hate – Low-res screen, disappointing camera
Rs 8,499
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