Huawei U8300 (Ideos Chat)

Intro, Features, Design & Usability

Huawei's Ideos series ushers a new era for the company as this is the first time they are trying to create mobile phones and market them in a space where there are quite a few established players already.

The Huawei U8300 or the Ideos Chat is a sub 10k phone which is similar to Nokia's touch-and-type series of phones featuring a QWERTY keypad, and touchscreen. The USP of the Ideos Chat, however, is the trackball. The Android based Huawei U8300 looks specifically targeted at the younger generation with the funky color options its available in. Read further to know whether the youth or for that matter anybody should go ahead and spend their hard earned money on the Ideos Chat.

Features & Specs

The U8300 runs vanilla Android 2.1 (except for the weird wallpaper that greets you when you switch on the phone). The 2.6 inch TFT resistive touchscreen has a native resolution of 320x240 and displays 256K colors. The QWERTY keypad complements the resistive touchscreen and as a result you don't find an onboard keyboard (smart move by Huawei since an onscreen keyboard would be cramped on the small screen and ruined the user experience). The most intriguing part is the addition of a trackball which works fine on all occasions and makes up for the shortcomings while you encounter problems in touch based actions. The box contained a bundle consisting of a charger, earphones, user guide, and a USB cable.

The U8300 has a 3.5mm jack provided for earphones/headphones and a microUSB port. The memory card slot supports memory cards up to 16GB.

The U8300 has the regular Android apps but Huawei has bundled a few extras like Twitroyd-a Twitter client for all you obsessive tweeters and popular chat application Nimbuzz.

Design and Usability

One look at the U8300 and it reminds me of the portable video game (we kids used to call it brick game) I used to play when I was five. The phone has a boxy structure and is totally built of plastic. The U8300 at 94 x 64 x 11 mm weighs 104g and it fit snugly in my palm. The design is very uninspiring but if you are a fan of swanky colours then you would be delighted to know that the phone is available in three color options: green, yellow and purple. Thankfully, I received the more sober grey one for review more in line with my taste.

If you are a fan of swanky colours then you would be delighted to know that the phone is available in three color options: green, yellow and purple.

Huawei design is plain-Jane and it includes a volume rocker key on the left side of the phone, the power button on the top, the right side of the phone has the microUSB slot which doubles up as a charging point and the 3.5mm jack sits snugly at the bottom. The most retro design aspect of the phone is reflected in the round speaker grill which occupies the bottom left corner at the back of the phone.

The resistive touchscreen of the U8300 is quite responsive similar to the one seen on the X3-02. I tried Angry Birds for the first time on a resistive touchscreen and it worked fine except you can't pinch-and-zoom so it hampers the total game experience.  However, there were quite a few times when I ended up hitting the wrong icon and I faced a lot of trouble trying to slide the drop down back up to the top. But I really liked using the trackball as the secondary option for navigating through the menu. It is not as great as the one RIM used in the Blackberry models in the past but very effective nonetheless.

Angry Birds Rio anyone?

Android 2.1 is two steps behind the current Android 2.3 (gingerbread). I do not think that the Huawei has lined up any further upgrade for the Ideos chat. Android 2.1 works fine on the phone. I encountered a noticeable lag only while typing messages.

At full brightness the 2.6 inch screen comes to life but you have to keep in mind that it will drain your battery. The screen quality is overall decent but visibility takes a slight hit while viewing under bright sunlight. The screen has automatic orientation sensor which is a plus. Overall, the quality of the screen is surprisingly good.

The battery life of the phone which is quite decent as the phone lasted around one and a half day before it needed a trip to the charging point. The voice quality is not that great as the person on the other side was not very audible.