A cheap Android smartphone, but you get what you pay for
Android smartphones priced around £100 are nothing new, but to date they have been utterly dreadful with shoddy build quality, slow processors and frustratingly laggy touchscreens. The Huawei Ascend Y530 isn’t nearly as flawed as previous £100 Android phones, but it’s still far from perfect.
Despite its low price, the Y530 feels very well made. The black plastic build looks very plain apart from the ribbed rear cover, but it is sturdy. The cover is easy to remove, giving quick access to the replaceable battery, SIM card slot and microSD card slot for adding more storage. The latter is essential if you plan to install anything more than a handful of apps. The phone has 4GB built-in, but only 2GB is available for use, with the rest occupied by the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system and the pre-installed apps.
The Y530 didn’t excel in our demanding 3D graphics and webpageloading benchmark tests, but it opened and ran most apps reasonably quickly. However, the phone became very slow when attempting to use multiple apps simultaneously due to the meagre 512MB of memory. Even something as simple as checking email while downloading app updates in the background caused the email app to become slow and unresponsive. This is a shame as the touchscreen was otherwise surprisingly accurate and fast, tracking our finger movements and prods smoothly.
The Y530 is a little tricky to hold and use single-handed if you have small hands due to how wide it is. A bigger problem is the screen’s low resolution of 854x480 pixels. Such a low resolution in such a big screen makes text look especially fuzzy, so reading long emails and webpages is a strain on the eyes. It is at least reasonably bright, though. As expected, the quality of photos taken using the phone’s five-megapixel camera was poor. Smeared details and inaccurate colours were common, even in shots taken in bright sunlight.
Snaps taken in dimly lit conditions were unacceptably dark. These aren’t crippling flaws, though, as we wouldn’t expect a good quality camera in such a cheap phone. Far more disappointing was the Y530’s short battery life. When playing videos continuously, it lasted just under nine hours. It was even less impressive when used for making calls, taking photos, browsing the web and route finding using Google Maps and the GPS, lasting just 12 hours. We’d expect most smartphones to last around 24 hours.
The GPS itself sometimes took a minute or two to lock onto our location. It was also a little sluggish in tracking and updating our location on Google Maps, sometimes taking several seconds to do so. Both should occur almost instantaneously. Call quality in London’s West End on O2’s 3G network was good. Callers reported that our voices sounded clear and loud with background noise from a construction site effectively blocked out. However, callers sounded a little quiet and fuzzy through the built-in earpiece. As expected for a budget phone, the Y530 is 3G-only with no 4G support.
Huawei has modified Android, removing the app drawer. All your downloaded apps will therefore end up on your home screens, whether you want them to or not. A more useful modification is Simple Mode, which replaces the traditional Android home screens with a simplified view that superficially resembles Windows Phone. The app icons look like large coloured tiles (see photo above) and only icons for the most essential apps – such as Phone and Browser – are visible by default although you can, of course, add more. It’s a useful view for the elderly and others just starting out with their first smartphone.
The Y530 isn’t a bad Android phone as long as you stick to using it for very simple tasks. It’s therefore best suited as a first smartphone for novices, but everyone else should buy the Motorola Moto G instead. It costs £40 more, but it has almost none of the Y530’s flaws.
VERDICT: Cheap, but only suitable for those with very basic needs
★★★☆☆
ALTERNATIVE: Motorola Moto G £140 Slightly more expensive, but a far superior budget Android phone in every way
