back to article Huawei Ascend G300 budget Android

As an example of how much the budget smartphone has come on over the last 12 months you need look no further than Huawei's G300, which at £100 pre-paid is Vodafone’s latest entry-level Android smartphone. Huawei Ascend G300 Android smartphone Cost conscious: Huawei's Ascend G300 What do you get for your 100 spondulicks? A …

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  1. Nick 6
    Megaphone

    low volume...

    a lot of low volume probs were sorted by an OTA update about 4-6 weeks ago - worth going through the menus to find and apply it.

    i have one and its great as my first smartphone, glad i didn't spend 3-4 times more,

  2. Andy Bloice
    Happy

    Or cheaper if you don't mind a credit search...

    ...by hopping over to Very.co.uk (via quidco obviously!), then if you don't mind waiting a couple of weeks (went out of stock after knowledge of the deal went wider) it can be yours for a nats under £73 fine english pounds.

    Quidco for 6% cashback for a new account (2% for existing), then you'll need a code for the £30 account credit, which you can get by checking various voucher sites.

    The quidco is in addition to, not included in the £73 price, so that's extra bunce if you use it.

    I'm not doing all the legwork for you!!

    1. handle

      Re: Or cheaper if you don't mind a credit search...

      TopCashBack offers the same (well, fractionally more) cashback than Quidco and doesn't charge an annual fee.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is this the one with the backdoors

    and subsidised by the Chinese government?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/us_gov_scrtinizes_chinese_vendors/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is this the one with the backdoors

      The world is a mess if I have anything of interest to the Chinese government. I'd rather they snoop on me than Bath and North East Somerset Unitary Authority. Obviously, I'd had a different opinion if I lived in China

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Is this the one with the backdoors

        I'm sure the Chinese Govt would be happy to pass on any info to the Bath and North East Somerset Unitary Authority, for a suitable fee :-)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not good enough

    Huawei Blaze is better at £59 from Phones4u INcLUDING a front camera for video calling.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not good enough

      What rubbish, the Blaze only has a 600mhz processor

      1. handle

        Re: Not good enough

        And the display only has a quarter of the pixels. And it doesn't have a Gorilla Glass scratch-resistant front as far as I know.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Afflicted.John
      Facepalm

      Re: Not good enough

      Utter tosh. The G300 puts the Blaze out. For good.

  5. Paul Shirley

    The nice thing about this phone is even if Huawei don't come through with ICS (and I really don't expect them to pull a Sony), people are already at work on 3rd party ICS roms. Pretty much a no brainer really if the hardware's good enough for you.

  6. ukgnome

    Looks like a reasonable replacement for the ZTE skate

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In Short

    a HTC Desire spec'd phone for £100.

    Not bad at all. Expect this free on £10/month smartphone contracts.

  8. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    For once a budget phone that isn't more usable as a doorstop and is available at a price that isn't insane. After all since when is "mid-range" £300?

    Hopefully other manufacturers will take a kicking from this device and respond by making decent budget phones as well.

  9. Tapeador
    Meh

    I've got one

    it runs BBC iPlayer!! Yay!

    this is the market functioning as it's supposed to, i.e. a company deploying cut-throat price competition. I think.

    Of course it could just be a branding thing - if Huawei get enough PR and market share off this, then they may decide that continued competition reduces the optimal overal profit - that it pays them more to sell fewer units at a higher price.

    We in the UK suffer from limited competition a great deal. Maybe I'm just seizing on the G300 as a symbolic respite in the smartphone market. But if the parts get cheaper and cheaper, well, maybe someone else will try to undercut them - but they might just take as long as they possibly can to do so.

  10. Some Beggar
    Unhappy

    If "smartie" becomes a standard slang term for a smartphone then I am officially dropping English from my supported languages.

    1. Darryl

      C'est dommage

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        Dommage

        Could be worse, wouldn't be surprised if "un smart" became the French equivalent. Just like a sweatshirt is "un sweat".

        1. Some Beggar

          Re: Dommage

          I think the Académie Française wants them to be called "ordiphones".

          So the one thing we can be sure of is that they won't be called ordiphones.

    2. Tom 7

      dont worry

      US marketing will rule and we will have them rebranded to M&M's or something,

      dadadada

      ditditditdit

      menumenum

      ditditditdit

  11. JDX Gold badge

    Sounds pretty amazing

    I'm still on my Nokia N81 and finally considering upgrading, but I want to stay on O2. I imagine the £100 price on this means it's locked to Vodafone?

    I've been looking at the Lumia 710 and I would be interested to know how the two stack up. Note I am not after high performance or external storage or the ability to root my phone... I want a solid phone which can also do internet/email on the side.

    1. handle

      Unlocking

      Can be unlocked for aout £5 on eBay as a quick internet search will tell you.

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Sounds pretty amazing

      If you can get it from Carphone Warehouse on Vodafone, they do theirs unlocked. And without Vodafone's 'wonderful' branding and software.

      That's how I got my Lumia 710, at £100 but technically Voda pay&go.

      WinPho is based round your address book more. Which I think is a lot nicer than the Android ones I tried. That's where Facebook and Twitter stuff turns up (should you wish to turn it on). Plus swipe left on someone's address, and you get a list of all calls, texts, emails (and social networking crap) for them for the last few weeks. You can pin contacts to your home screen. I've found WinPho better at handling lots of contacts, better at searching your contacts, and smoother at dealing with ones synched to different accounts. Oh and most importantly for me, big writing, when trying to call someone when you're out-and-about.

      As a phone I think the Lumia is great. I seem to be getting better signal than on my HTC Wildfire, or my previous Samsung dumb phone. I can make calls from my bedroom and a mate's house with dodgy reception without them breaking up, which neither of the other 2 could manage. I think it's a bit less fiddly to use than either the Android or iOS phone functions, but the in call controls are probably a bit worse (2 buttons to get it onto speakerphone for example).

      I prefer email on WinPho, but I doubt there's much in it. You can have a unified inbox (which I haven't tried) and I don't think Android can do that. But I'm told it's good. For a bit of browsing IE seems to be pretty good. However, someone above says they can get iPlayer on the Huawei, so it must do Flash. WinPho doesn't.

      As a computer, Android wins. I'm pretty unimpressed with the Windows Marketplace. There's lots of apps, but a lot of them are crap, and there are many things you can't do that there are loads of free apps for on Android. The only one I miss is a WiFi network analyser, so I don't mind. But you might. Also Android's widgets are better than WinPho's live tiles. You can change size on some of them, and display more information. Plus Android can have more than one home screen. Mostly I don't miss this, other than having brightness and GPS controls on the home screen. However, WinPho has Nokia Drive, which is way better for navigation than Google maps. And you have free worldwide maps to dowload to the phone (for when there's no signal).

      Finally software. Looks like the Lumia might only get one more major update. It's not going to WinPho 8. I guess the Huawei will only get to ICS.

      Final, final caveat. No tethering on the Lumia 710 yet. Nokia have apparently released the software update in some markets, but not all, and it's been promised since April. They're not saying why/when. Quick websearch tells me this is now due on the 27th.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Sounds pretty amazing

        I can't work it out. Have I been downvoted by the fandroids, for saying Android is less than perfect? Or is it WinPho fanboys for the same reason (assuming there are any)? Or perhaps Apple's legions, for barely mentioning them?

        I didn't think I'd said anything objectionable, and tried hard to be fair. Perhaps I should just put it down to the usual drooling idiots...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sounds pretty amazing

          I think you went way off topic, that's all

        2. Humph3

          Re: Sounds pretty amazing

          I have a policy of downvoting anyone who whines about being downvoted.

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
            Happy

            Re: Sounds pretty amazing

            "I have a policy of downvoting anyone who whines about being downvoted."

            Seems fair enough.

            Although from the 2 upvotes for the post above, it seems like off-topic wins.

            Weird, given that someone asked for a comparison of this phone and an identically priced WinPho, which I did my best to do. But there's nout as queer as folk...

            1. Paul Shirley

              Re: Sounds pretty amazing

              "comparison of this phone and an identically priced WinPho"

              Who right now is most angry, Android or WP fanbois? (After ruling out Xperia Play owners ;)

              A fair few of the WP 'usual suspects' were made into liars by the 'no WP8 upgrade' admission, some seem conveniently MIA right now but I wouldn't be surprised if they're still voting.

              I suppose some of the Android crew might forget that stock firmware is just where you start, it's very easy to criticise - and a good fallback when suppliers layer on too much, like the 10+ Facebook+Twitter integration apks Sony scatter on devices like manure on fields.

              1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

                Re: Sounds pretty amazing

                The Android fans seem to be permanently grumpy. Partly because there are more of them, so you'd expect the loony minority to include more people.

                I'm not angry, because I bought WinPho for around £100, and knew what I was getting. You'd have to be a bit annoyed if you'd just gone for a Lumia 900 though. I'd be pretty miffed at MS if I were Nokia, but then they've probably known for ages. Dumping users on platforms that are about to expire is nothing new for them anyway...

                To be fair to MS, they are providing another major WinPho7 update, so they're not abandoning the old handsets totally. And they've got a pretty decent record on keeping support going for older stuff, so there may still be patches.

                This is one of the areas that gets the most name calling. As people feel the need to justify their spending decisions. It's amazingly rubbish that Android 2.3 handsets are still being released, when ICS is now around 9 months old, and you'd hope Google were providing previews to favoured manufacturers. I think that gets the Android fanbois all defensive. And as we know, attack is the best form of defence...

                It's a bit worrying that WinPho8 won't run on single core chips. It has to make you wonder if it's got all porky and bloated, because WinPho7 is very fast on mediocre hardware.

                1. Paul Shirley

                  Re: Sounds pretty amazing

                  "WinPho7 is very fast on mediocre hardware"

                  Isn't that because WP7 doesn't let the phone or individual apps get too busy?

                  Typical Android user ladles on sanity challenging numbers of background apps, never, ever closes apps and then cant understand why it might take a little longer to fire up the next app! That's not really possible on WP7, tasks are too restricted.

                  The real killer though is native code. VM's tend to be scheduler friendly. Native code shouldn't be able to stop preemptive task switching but somehow it always seems to manage it. The big advance dual core brought me on XP was the ability to still control the damn machine when some rogue app (or Win32 itself) grabbed 100% of a core.

                  WP8 brings more multitasking and native code. Multicore suddenly seems like a good safety net ;)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sounds pretty amazing

        Down-voted for off topic ramble I suspect. And them down-voted again for moaning about being down-voted.

  12. Lamont Cranston

    Shame this wasn't out

    a couple of months ago - I'd have probably bought one. Then again, Vodaphone - blech!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: Shame this wasn't out

      At the moment it's exclusive to Vodafone. However, I brought one for my Daughter, unlocked it for around a fiver (from ebay) and got for it a Giff Gaff SIM. Perfect for the kids. The lack of a webcam was a bit of a shock, but hey - £100!

  13. handle

    It *was* out a couple of months ago

    In fact El Reg previewed it then - more than a couple of months ago:

    http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/11/hands_on_with_huawei_ascend_g300_android_smartphone/

    Once Voda sorted out their broken purchasing system (someone had entered the wrong code so all purchases were being referred to a team of slow humans who were cancelling the orders after three days) then they arrived, and one quick unlock later you don't have to worry about Vodafone any more.

  14. Lockwood
    Joke

    Will never be allowed to sell.

    Phone. Check.

    Rounded corners. Check.

    SWipe finger from one point on scren to another to unlock. Check. (If my last Android phone was anything to go by)

    I'm sure a Foxconn rebrander will prohibit its sales.

  15. Jason Hindle

    Looks amazing for the money

    My usual "promises promises" caveat applies when it comes to all things ICS but even if ICS for this phone turns out to be vapourware, it's still amazing for the money. I'm seriously thinking of replacing my Wildfire S with one of these.

    1. Tapeador

      Re: Looks amazing for the money

      Totally agree - I had a Wildfire S and it didn't have full Flash support which the G300 does. The white version looks even nicer.

      1. Jeffrey Jefferson
        Go

        Re: Looks amazing for the money

        Got rid of my Wildfire S within a month.. terrible battery life and hated the size. Ended up getting a Desire HD, but to be honest I'd of settled for this G300.

    2. Paul Shirley

      Re: Looks amazing for the money

      As I said above, in the unlikely event Huawei don't deliver, an independent ICS rom is being worked on right now. Contrary to popular chatter ICS can work very well in 512Mb.

  16. Craig Mulvaney
    Thumb Up

    Actually quite good...

    I got one as an interim device when my iPhone4 when kaput. I'm pretty impressed with it!

    I unlocked it for £5 and put my T-mob sim in it, no probs there. If you head over to modaco then there's a fairly active forum there and I was able to root the device easily enough and then proceeded to remove the Voda bloatware. I'm using Holo launcher at the moment, but Launcher Pro made the thing really fast - again impressive at this price.

    Something I really like is the RGB LED which works excellently with Light Flow from the play store. Ok, it's not as smooth an experience as the iPhone might have been, but I'm really impressed with what you can get for £100. Also, shove on a Nillkin hard case (again from ebay for less than a tenner) and the whole thing feels much more solid.

    I wasn't impressed with the battery at all, however give it a week of charge cycles and it improves hugely.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    80% !

    80% ! Brilliant !

    Wait, everything gets either 65%, 80/85%, or 90%.

    Your ratings suck.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 80% !

      err..the .HTC One V and Lumia 900 got 75% and the Motorola Defy Mini got 70% so you're criticism is that most phones get rated between 60 and 90%?

      That seems reasonable to me as only the truly shit will get less and only the truly superb more. The latter doesn't exist and the former wouldn't be worth reviewing!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Blimey

    the spec on this isn't that far south of the HTC Desire HD (bit more RAM and system storage, we bit bigger screen but lower dpi) and when I got mine 18 months ago it was the bleeding edge of smartphone tech,

  19. peterm3
    Thumb Down

    sadly no bargain

    Bought this phone online for £100, second day it did a hard factory reset. Fourth day it did the same thing. A phone which does a reset back to factory settings is a waste of time. The touch-screen is very inaccurate and also fuzzy compared to the HTC One V. You get what you pay for, and I would pay at least £50 not to have the crappy Vodafone software. Also £50 to have Ice Cream sandwhich, so the Huawei is no bargain against the £200 One V.

    1. Jamie Carpenter

      Re: sadly no bargain

      Think you were unlucky. I've got one, love it. Especially when people see what it can do (i.e. run any android app that their £500 phone can) and they find out I only paid £100 for it. Torque works perfectly on it which was my main reason for buying it. There was a major firmware update for it, including a fix for the poor speaker and reliability updates. But that won't fix your dodgy screen! On mine, the screen is plenty sharp enough and touch is better than any touchscreen I've used apart from the Samsung Galaxy S2 and S3. You must never have used a Blackberry Storm if you think it's bad..! I think you got a dud I'm afraid.

      But yeah the vodafone software is annoying. If I get bored one day I might try and hack it off.

  20. Johan Bastiaansen
    Devil

    Optional???

    "Out of the box the Ascend G300 looks rather smart, if a little anonymous. In fact I’m struggling to think of anything to say about the shape other than it’s nicely rounded and easy to hold. There’s nothing wrong with the build quality though, which is top notch."

    Well, that's got to be an infringement right there, doesn't it?.

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