An inexpensive t Android phone:Huawei Premia 4G

An inexpensive off-contract Android phone is hard to find, and for $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate, MetroPCS' Huawei Premia 4G has a particularly attractive price tag for a 4G Android 4.0 phone.
There are some very decent features for the price point, including a 5-megapixel camera with flash, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor.

Yet, something has to give, and in this case it's the phone's battery life, and to a lesser extent, its voice quality. MetroPCS' 4G LTE network, while steady in my tests, also produces speeds you'd expect from a 3G handset, not a 4G device.
While The Premia is an OK choice, especially when compared with the outdated Samsung Galaxy Admire 4G, and ZTE Avid 4G, LG's Motion 4G is the better phone for the same cost.

Design and build
If you've seen a black candy bar phone with rounded corners, you've seen the Premia 4G. It has a nice metallic-looking rim around the face, and a dark gray back cover that gets it grip from a fine layer of plastic goose bumps. I like that Huawei's placed the cover release on the phone's bottom corner; it makes popping it off obvious and manageable while still preserving your fingernails. It snaps reassuringly back into place.
The Premia measures 5 inches tall by 2.5 inches wide by 0.48 inch deep and weighs just under 5 ounces. It's fairly hefty, but doesn't seem overly brickish. I could slip it into a back pocket and carry it around with me indoors, but mostly I carried the Premia in my bag. The phone feels fine in the hand, and I had no complaints with it at the ear.

Huawai's Premia 4G fits into front pockets better than mega-phones, though I preferred toting it around in my back pocket or bag.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

A 4-inch display is your window into Android, surrounded by a bezel that's fairly thick by today's standard. Its screen has a 800x480-pixel resolution, which isn't a sharp as some premium smartphones, but I think that with automatic brightness and support for 16 million colors, it does just fine indoors. If you're outside, you'll notice a substantial glare.
Above the screen you'll find the 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and below the screen are the three capacitive navigation buttons, including the Back, Home, and Menu buttons.
Turn the Premia toward its left spine to locate the Micro-USB charging port. Flip it the other way to raise or lower the volume. The top of the phone houses the power button and 3.5 millimeter headset jack, and on the back are the 5-megapixel camera lens and LED flash. If you've got a microSD card up to 32GB in storage size, you can insert that right under the back cover.
OS and apps
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich may not be the most up-to-date Android version, but it covers all the basics of a modern Android operating system. Existing handsets are still getting Jelly Bean updates at this time, so I won't hold the lack of Android 4.1 against Huawei.
As an Android phone, the Premia 4G has all the Google services you could want on a smartphone, including Google Maps with Navigation, Gmail, access to all your contacts and to your Google Calendar, and then some. The Swype keyboard is one of a few different input options.

The Premia's 5-megapixel camera comes with an LED flash.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

MetroPCS and Huawei have also loaded the phone up with a full roster of apps, one of which is incredibly intrusive by default. The offender in question is Metro's MyExtras app, which pings you all sorts of "news" items in the morning, afternoon, and evening. This was turned on by default in the Premia 4G. You can either adjust the pinging frequency in the settings, or, luckily, uninstall the app altogether in your apps manager settings.
Other MetroPCS app are much less obtrusive. You'll find a mobile hot-spot helper, a backup manager, the MetroWeb browser, and various other hubs for content and online connections.
In addition, Yahoo Answers, a DLNA connector app, Pocket Express, Rhapsody music, and Joyn messenger are other preloaded programs. You'll also find visual voice mail, a weather app, a note taker, and a sound recorder in addition to system apps like the clock, the calendar, and the music player.
Cameras and video
When taking photos outdoors in daylight, I was actually pleased with the quality of the Premia's 5-megapixel camera. Although images never rendered quite as sharp after processing as they did through the viewfinder, colors were pretty accurate and I took some nice shots I wouldn't mind uploading to my social networks or sharing via e-mail.

The bloom looked sharper through the viewfinder than it did once the image resolved.

The Premia comes with autofocus, a bonus for a phone of this class, but you can also manually apply focus points. The camera doesn't seem equipped to handle extreme close-ups in automatic mode, either. Images blurred if I held the lens too near, and didn't resolve on screen. However, if I pulled back a little bit and refocused, the image generally grew sharper.

A crop of the full-resolution flower in question shows the lack of detail in the flower's center, where I focused the camera.

Adjusting camera settings is pretty straightforward on the Premia 4G: you can rotate the lens around and turn flash on and off with on-screen controls. A pop-out settings menu lets you toggle shooting modes, like HDR, burst, and panorama, plus there's a range of filters to choose from, including sepia tone and negative. White balance presets are also around, and in the settings, you can adjust ISO, photo quality, and face detection, among other items.

$99 Huawei Premia 4G

The $99 Huawei Premia 4G is among the least expensive smartphones in MetroPCS's roster of devices. It's a compact Android phone that offers entry-level specs and entry-level performance. Budget smartphone shoppers will find plenty to like.


Body

The Huawei Premia, which is an update to the Activa, makes no attempt to be flashy, special, or stylish. It has a spartan, utilitarian design that favors function over form. It is a black slab that's made of average materials and works about as well as a $99 phone should.

The front face is made of glass, of course, and that is surrounded by a shiny black rim made of plastic. The battery cover encompasses the entire rear of the Premia and wraps around the sides to meet the shiny black rim. The seam where these two meet is somewhat uneven. The material used to form the back and sides is a dull, textured dark gray plastic. It gives the Premia some grip in the hand, no doubt, but feels cheap.

Body

The height and width of the Premia aren't too much, but at 12mm thick, the Premia feels downright beefy. I suppose I have been spoiled by devices that measure less than 8mm. It may not sound like much, but that 4mm makes a huge difference in how the Premia feels in the hand. Its saving grace, perhaps, is the soap-bar shape that produces a comfortable, rounded profile. You will notice when the Premia is in your pocket thanks to its thick profile.

When set flat on a table or desk, the plastic rim will prevent the glass from getting scratched. The display is swimming in an unattractive, thick bezel. Huawei's logo, positioned above the screen, often catches light, giving it a bit of flair. There are three capacitive controls beneath the display. They are flush with the glass.

There are but two physical controls on the Premia 4G. The volume toggle is positioned along the right edge of the phone. I had trouble with this one, but only because so many devices put the screen lock button here. The button itself works well. The actual screen lock button is on the top edge of the phone. It’s easy to find, but travel and feedback are pathetic. The standard headphone jack joins the screen lock button on top. The microUSB port is on the left edge of the phone. There is no dedicated camera button.

As mentioned earlier, the battery cover is a shell that forms the entire back half of the Premia. It comes off very easily. Once removed, the battery, SIM card slot, and microSD card slots are all plainly visible. MicroSD cards can be inserted/removed at will, but the SIM card cannot be pulled unless you first remove the battery. The Premia uses a full-sized SIM card, not a microSIM card.

Almost everything about the Premia 4G's hardware functions properly. I only wish the lock screen button felt better and the whole thing didn't have a bargain-basement aura to it.

Huawei's second phone to sound like a brand of yogurt, the Premia 4G is much better than the first, last year's Activa 4G. And for as low as $99, it's the best deal you can get on a contract-free smartphone from MetroPCS right now. That doesn't mean the Premia 4G is perfect—it doesn't run the latest version of Android, the video camera isn't great, and it has a bulky frame for its 4-inch screen—but those flaws are easy to overlook if you're searching for something inexpensive and dependable.
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Cell Phones & Accessories Design, Network, and Call Quality

A sleek phone this is not. The Premia 4G has a humdrum slab design, with a dark gray textured back panel and a ring of shiny gray plastic around the glass display. It feels solid, but it also feels like it's an inch larger than it needs to be. The phone measures 4.96 by 2.53 by 0.48 inches and weighs 4.94 ounces. Given the 4-inch display, that means there's a lot of bezel surrounding it on all sides, particularly the top and bottom. It's still relatively comfortable to hold, even if it feels bigger than it actually is.

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Speaking of the display, the Premia has a 4-inch, 800-by-480-pixel TFT LCD.
It looks reasonably sharp and bright, especially given the price, though it's a little reflective. Typing on the on-screen, Swype-enabled keyboard felt fine. For controls, there's a Power button on top of the phone, Volume buttons on the right, and three capacitive touch buttons below the display.

If you're hesitant about getting the Premia because of T-Mobile's impending purchase of the company, you can put those fears to rest. While MetroPCS will shift its focus to GSM and LTE, sources have told us that the new network will support VoLTE even after CDMA declines. That means VoLTE-capable phones, like the Premia 4G, should work just fine.

We don't know what will happen to data plans in the future, but MetroPCS offers pretty phenomenal rates right now. You can get truly unlimited talk, text, and data for $60 per month. $50 per month gets you 2.5GB of LTE data, with throttled speeds after that, and $40 per month is good for 500GB of LTE data, with slower speeds once you've reached your cap.

Reception is fair and data speeds are very good on the Premia. As we discovered in our Fastest Mobile Networks survey, MetroPCS's LTE network can actually exceed 4G speeds on Verizon, though Verizon's network is more consistent and offers far more coverage. I pulled in average speeds of 4.8Mbps down and 3.9Mbps up, which are not the fastest LTE speeds we've ever seen, but plenty fast nonetheless. The Premia also connects to 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz band.

Call quality is average. Voices distort at top volume in the earpiece, and there's a lot of fuzz in the background. But calls made with the phone sound very clear, with surprisingly good background noise cancellation. Calls sounded fine through a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset and the stock Android voice dialer worked fine. The speakerphone sounds a bit distorted and isn't loud enough to hear outside. Battery life was average at 8 hours and 45 minutes of talk time.

Processor, Android, and Apps
The Premia 4G is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 processor, which is a fast chip for such a low price. The Premia feels fast and responsive in casual use, and turned in some respectable benchmark scores. You'll be able to run any of the 800,000+ apps in the Google Play store without a problem.

The phone is running Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), which is nearly a year and a half old now. That's somewhat disappointing, as Ice Cream Sandwich lacks many significant upgrades you'll find in newer versions of Android (Jelly Bean), like Google Now and an overall smoother experience. There's no word on an update to Jelly Bean, and I wouldn't expect one to come in the near future, if ever.

As it stands, the Premia runs a mostly-stock version of Google's OS. You get five home screens to swipe between and customize that come preloaded with a few apps from MetroPCS. There isn't a ton of bloatware, but you can't delete anything that has been preinstalled, which is a bummer. The phone also bombards you with incredibly annoying ads for MetroExtras until you turn them off. But you do get the MetroPCS Easy WiFi app, which automatically finds and connects you to free hotspots.

You also get all the typical Android bells and whistles, including a fast Web browser, excellent email support, and free voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions via Google Maps. You can also share music, photos, and video on your HDTV or monitor via DLNA.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
There's 2.17GB of internal storage, along with an empty microSD card slot underneath the battery cover. I was able to use my 32GB SanDisk card, but not my 64. All of our standard music test files played back fine except for FLAC and WMA. Music sounded excellent over a wired pair of earbuds, but it was a little thin through a stereo Bluetooth pair. For video, all of our test formats played back in resolutions up to 1080p but Bluetooth audio was very slightly out of sync.

The 5-megapixel camera is decent, but nothing more than that. It snaps photos in just 0.2 second, but takes a little longer to save them. Photos quality is average for a 5MP sensor, with decent color and detail, especially for photos taken outdoors. But video performance is poor. The camera records 720p video at a smooth 29 frames per second, but the autofocus locks in and out every time you move the camera even a little, which makes videos look like you are constantly refocusing. A standard 1.3-megapixel camera is on the front of the phone for video chat.

So while it isn't perfect, it's hard to argue against the Huawei Premia 4G for all the features you do get for less than $100. The ZTE Avid 4G costs the same, but has a very dim screen and a camera that's worse than what you get here. The LG Motion 4G is also comparable, but has a slightly more compact size at the expense of a smaller, lower-resolution display. If you're willing to spend a lot more, the Samsung Galaxy S III has a larger, sharper display, a faster processor, better call quality, and a much nicer camera. It's the best phone on MetroPCS right now, but you can buy almost five Premias for the same price.

Introducing a Budget Price HD (Huawei IDEOS X5 U8800)

China-based company Huawei has taken the Android market by storm at Singapore's CommunicAsia, sometimes nick-named the X5 U8800 aka Red Bull Mobile. And it even gets better; the much anticipated X5 U8800 retails at a cost you’d expect to pay three-times as much. In fact, if you've keenly gone through its spec sheet, you'll realize X5 has entrails equivalent to the HTC Desire Z; per se, we estimated the lion's share of the cost-cutting to come about around the Smartphone’s exterior, however it's not straight away visible which sections of the X5 U8800 are the inexpensive bits.
From the top to bottom its edges are distantly rounded and the face perimeter is beveled in silver chrome, drawling if not black gadget. A 3.8-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen engulfs the front and the center, similar to various android phone screens released in last 10 months, minus the cool imaging tech resemblance AMOLED and Super LCD employed by HTC and Samsung. The reaction of touchscreens is an intricate element to weigh against, but the X5 U8800 appears to be on-par with the other android phones recently released.
On dimensions of 120mm x 62mm x 11.6mm including an estimated weight of 130 grams (plus battery) the gadget feels sizeable in one’s hand, although not weighty when pocketed. If you hold the smartphone there’s that feeling that it’s quite craggy, in a Superior-tech Fischer-Price like. The discreet look of the X5 HD is perhaps not going to be “floss-like” phone when pulled out in public, but you’ll agree this is a highly functional Android phone.
Of course, one of the attractions of the X5 HD achieves is its vanilla Android 2.2.1 (FroYo) OS. And its standard Android FroYo (UI) User Interface is intuitive and functional– there are no complaints whatsoever. The X5 U8800 comes integrated with a Qualcomm MSM 7230 chipset housing a 45nm 800MHz Scorpion CPU, 512MB RAM and an Adreno 205 GPU. Considering performance, this hardware configuration can’t be said to be too scruffy at all. Remarkably, various benchmarking results placed the entire system on chip combination as a relatively highly rated gadget – slightly leading the Motorola Droid (Android 2.2+), and trailing a point behind Google Nexus One (Android 2.2+) that is, when you talk of system on chip performance.
Huawei has done well in delivering an android phone that commands superior user experience. The handset design may not be attractive, but its functionality won’t disappoint either, There are a few inexplicable omissions though, such as the lack of Wi-Fi hotspot feature, but if you're looking to try an android phone without spending much, then the Chinese maker Huawei X5 U8800 promises an ideal alternative.