Huawei has rebadged its flagship budget Android phone and slashed the price in half. Question is, is the X1 an outdated smartphone relic or a must-have bargain for first-time Android users?Huawei made an aggressive push to steal the prepaid phone market in Australia late last year with an extensive range of budget Android phones, and is doubling up this year by pushing out more budget models with notable improvements.
The Chinese company that once sold rebadged phones to other phone makers has essentially rebadged its own Ideos U8150 from last year with the new X1 – doesn’t sound impressive, but slashing the price in half for a sleeker rebuild does.
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The X1 sports the same 10x5cm frame of the U8150, weighing a few unnoticeable grams less, but in a more refined body. The plastic body is coated is an ever-so-slightly rubbery finish more akin to other smartphones – a welcome departure from the glossy, multicoloured cases of the U8150 that gave the phone a cheap look to match the price tag.
The X1 sports the same meagre 528 MHz processor as its predecessor along with the same 2.2 version of Android. It adds a few advances to the operating system that are mostly cosmetic, including a cube-like home screen interface that revolves each home screen around on a visual cube as you swipe across. It runs a little choppy and won’t always recognise your finger swipe unless you pull the screen across from more than halfway. But the ability to swipe straight from the rightmost to the leftmost panel (or vice versa) is a welcome addition.
There’s a lot more polish in the flow of the apps menu, and other added features include a screensaver, recorder, radio, A-GPS and RSS reader – but no flash for the camera. The 2.8 inch screen has the poor resolution and doesn’t give much real estate for typing messages. On the software side, Huawei has thrown in a few handy icons like Optus’ SmartSafe cloud service and one-touch buttons for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, brightness and sound.
The most notable improvement is the new physical interface, which now consists of three soft touch buttons and a single, hard ‘home’ button. Apart from the obligatory power button and a volume up/down button on the side, the home button is the only physical button on the fascia and replaces the typical soft touch house icon underneath the screen.
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The soft touch buttons only consist of back, menu and search icons now, making the front screen look less cluttered and simpler to navigate. It improves the design on the previous Ideos model which housed a fatter home button with an unnecessary ring, adorned by physical answer and hang up buttons.
You’re pretty much getting the same phone you would’ve gotten last year with the U8150, and with the shortening lifespan of new smartphones, that is a definite downer. But the value you get for a sub-$100 price tag can’t be ignored, especially given that X1 is half the price of the original Ideos with a complimentary design revamp.
