Review: Huawei Ascend W1

When the Huawei Ascend W1 showed up in our offices, I took a cursory glance at the specifications and wasn’t particularly impressed.

Then I found out the device costs $299.

The version of the W1 we’ll see here in New Zealand is rather attractive, despite being inexpensive. It uses Gorilla Glass, which is surprising for a phone in this price range, and will help to prevent scratching when you’ve got your phone in your pocket with your keys. The screen is backed by an electric blue case – a very similar shade to the colour its carrier, 2degrees, uses in its promotional material. The case is very easy to open, but it’s not so loose that dropping the phone will cause the back to fall off. It’s lightweight at 130 grams and just over a centimetre thick, so quite slim and stylish overall. It doesn’t look nearly as cheap as its price suggests.

The phone is by far the cheapest available to run Windows Phone 8, but since it has to live up to Windows Phone’s base spec requirements, it’s not underpowered. The Ascend W1 has a 4-inch screen with a 480 by 800 pixel resolution, and it’s very bright. Colours are accurately represented, and text is sharp.

The Ascend W1 is relatively speedy, as it has a dual-core Snapdragon processor and 512MB RAM – if it had 1GB RAM that would be ideal, but I guess Huawei had to make compromises somewhere. Nonetheless, it was more than capable of running the games and apps we tried, and performed well when we quickly switched between various apps and menus. The touch screen was also responsive; we didn’t notice any delays between touching the touch screen and the command being carried out.

Battery life is good, which is a relief: not all the Windows Phone 8 devices we’ve tested have been up to scratch. The 1950mAh battery lasted more than a day without charging, with the brightness turned right up and Wi-Fi turned on. I was using it fairly heavily too, although mostly for texting and checking email.

The biggest downside to the Ascend W1 is the amount of on-board storage space – it has only 4GB of on-board storage, and only about 2GB is usable when you first set up the device. The good news is that storage is exandable, but you’ll have to spend a fair bit of extra money – between $20 and $100, depending on how much space you need – on a microSD card. Still, 4GB storage is not unusual for a phone in this price range, and some low-priced phones we’ve seen have 8GB on-board storage but lack the W1’s potential for expansion.

If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on a smartphone, or simply don’t feel like you should spend a lot of money on a smartphone, at $299 the Ascend W1 is a great choice.

In value-for-money terms, it’s fantastic.

Just remember to keep in mind that you’ll need to pay a little bit extra for a microSD card at some point in the future, and that Windows Phone 8 still has some work to do, particularly when it comes to the Windows Phone app store.