Huawei Sonic U8650 review: Cloud power
Huawei seems to pay really close attention to the best features of bigger brands and try to adopt them with a twist of its own – or that’s what it seems. Take the white compact Cardbox box for example – instantly reminds you of HTC boxes, with sketches on the front along with the device photo, and quick specs on the back. The material is thick cardboard and thus is sturdy enough. Pull out the tray inside and you have the Sonic sitting right there in the bathtub. Below it are the usual accessories namely adaptop, USB cable, earphones and related manuals. Overall we have no complaints about the packaging. Infact it is kind of classy and we say grabs your attention with a very important good first impression.
Design and built:
The 3.5-inch screen takes up most of the front side alongwith the four familiar touchkeys – home, menu, back and search. The screen is very glossy and will attract your fingerprints for sure. The backflap has a brilliant high-quality rubber-like coating that provides excellent grip and looks very premium at the same time. There is the 3.2MP camera on top and the speaker resides at the bottom left. We would’ve loved an LED flash though.
Opening the backflap will reveal the 1400mAh battery and the microSD card slot (at the top right). You need to remove the battery to take out the SIM but not in the case of the MicroSD card which is a good thing.
The left side has the volume rocker, with the micro USB port at bottom, nothing on right and the 3.5mm jack and power button on top. There is a brilliant chrome ring goes around the sides of the phone which gives it a very sleek and premium consumer look.
Overall we love the design and built quality. It looks premium and study, both at the same time.
Display:
The screen is a capacitive touch-screen with no problem with smooth swipes. In fact it swipes better than some of the more expensive devices. The resolution of 320×480 pixels looks a bit stretched out on the 3.5-inch real estate, although sharper than that on the Galaxy Y phones. There is no true multi-touch and it would be unfair to expect that at this price point anyway.
The screens sunlight-readability is average.
Pallab
hello, I am student & my parents are willing to buy me this phone. Your article is very well written.
Basically, I will use this phone for calls, messaging, facebook, saving college notes, skype, vimeo (checking videos), checking some blogs, livestream etc.
Please suggest if this phone is a right option. Thanks.
Hi Prabha, thanks for the appreciation. If you’re not the geek kinds who will tear the phone down or load it with all kinds of latest apps at the first opportunity – you can go for this phone. Just remember it’ll slow down if you are working on multiple things at a time. So go a little slow on him…
NO FRONT CAMERA, USING SKYPE WOULD BE PROBLEN