Android Phone Review - Huawei Ascend G510

As regular readers will know I was looking to replace my Huawei G300 with a decent but budget phone. During the search I looked at a number of Chinese phones and even one designed in the USA, problem was the Chinese ones were bad copies and the American company Blu couldn't even be bothered to answer my questions about buying one in the UK, the Nexus 4 was out as it was over budget and to be honest I did not like the back cover, little things I know but I ride a mountain bike and my phone goes everywhere I go so toughness was important too.

This lead to my old phones, new brother the Ascend G510. I have been using the phone now for 2 months and as always with a budget device there is good and bad points....

Before I turned the thing on I was suitably impressed, The full size removable back panel revealed a well thought out design with the NFC pad on the back of the rear cover, The micro sd slot is easily accessable as is the sim card slot and micro USB. The rear cover is nicely textured and feels like a quality item. The 4.5 inch LCD display is bright and vibrant while indoors or in low light but near impossible to see in bright sunlight and not much better even when the sun dips behind a cloud. When you can see it though it is clear and detailed and looks like it should be on a much more expensive phone.The 512MB of ram chugs on a bit paired to the Dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex A9 CPU, it does struggle a little when you get a lot running, my view is that if you want the pinnacle of multi tasking awesomeness then you need to look elsewhere for now but if you are patient then the lag is acceptable for now. 

Sound quality is excellent once you find an player with a pre-amp, I use Poweramp pro personally as the overall volume through the headphone jack is low. Through the external speaker it is loud enough without the preamp to hear in most conditions but with the DTS sound tech on board the distortion and popping associated with a small speaker and high volume and bass is not present, the small single speaker handles the job really really well. 

The Camera is 5MP which is not a lot these days but does boast 720p recording, the quality is good as long as you have very steady hands and again lots of patience. (photo examples at the bottom)

As with the G300 the standard Huawei/Vodafone ROM is packed with bloatware, most of which cannot be removed easily, But the worst part is the Huawei Emotion UI, because of this the 1700mAh battery last a matter of hours and the phone lags between screens, sometimes the pressing of the home button can take 3 or 4 seconds to register and the Wi-Fi is now having a tendency to drop on a regular basis.

These problems are exactly the same problems I experienced with the G300 when I got that new, the solution was a CM10 instalation which can not come soon enough, and from what I have read it is coming very soon. 
The size and feel of this phone makes it feel and look like a much more expensive device, I have even had some die hard iPhone fans compliment its aesthetics, but as with a stock G300 the look of wonder fades as they get familiar with the Huawei Emotion UI. A shame really as the potential of this £130.00 device is huge. What's needed is the Cyanogenmod team to work their magic. 
Since writing this I have discovered that CM10 is being worked on at present! Follow the details here 
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