| Review of the Huawei Ascend P1 |
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Huawei (pronounced Wah-way) are generally known for low-end phones, but the Ascend P1 bucks that trend and aims much higher. Don’t get me wrong however, the P1 is not a contender for the true high-end market, dominated by the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S3, the HTC One X, or the iPhone 5. However, it’s no bottom feeder either. I guess the best way to describe its position in the market is say that it's upper-middle class. It’s a surprisingly good phone with just a few annoyances that may or may not put you off buying one. Last Updated: 28-Oct-2012 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
At present the Ascend P1 (model U9200) is sold in Canada through Wind Mobile for $400 (straight-up price). The one I tested was unlocked and was operated on my Rogers account. This is because the phone supports not only AWS (needed for Wind), but also 850 MHz and 1900 MHz used by Rogers, Bell, and Telus. I borrowed it from Howard Chui, so it’s the exact same one that he reviewed for HowardForums.
Also see Howard Chui's review of the
Huawei Ascend P1 at HowardForums.
RF Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
The RF sensitivity on the Huawei Ascend P1 is slightly above average, but not by
enough to separate it from the rest of the rabble. It can sustain a slightly
higher data speed for slightly longer than a typical Samsung phone in fringe
conditions for example, but the difference is too slight to be of any
consequence. Most smartphones these days seem to fall into this average range
when it comes to picking up a signal, with only Motorola seeming to do markedly
better.
Audio
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, an how to interpret it.
When it comes to incoming audio,
the Ascend P1 is exceptionally good. The overall tonal balance is nice, with
just enough low-end to sound almost rich. The earpiece produces lots of volume,
so you can hear it well in noisy environments. The sweet spot is fairly large,
and therefore quite easy to find as you move the phone around on your ear. The
phone itself isn’t the most comfortable I’ve ever used, but for long
conversations it’s much better than many of the phones I’ve recently tested,
including my own Samsung Galaxy S
II LTE (AKA the Skyrocket for US readers). Outgoing audio is fairly
good and the phone includes a secondary microphone on the back to help cancel
background noise.
Loudspeaker: In-call performance of the speaker
(which seems to be the Achilles Heel for many phones) isn’t half bad. It seems
to suffer from far less sympathetic vibration than many other phones, including
my S2 LTE.
For multimedia playback however, the speaker doesn’t seem to produce the sort of
sound you’d expect given the speakerphone performance. While none of the tiny
speakers in phones sound exceptional, and of course they all totally lack
anything resembling bass, the Ascend just seems to sound a little bit shallower
than the rest. Volume is detectably lower than on my S2 LTE, and the overall
quality is a little tinnier.
Headset Audio: The huge disappointment here is the
exceptionally low external headset volume. This means that the volume you’ll get
through earbuds/headphones will be low compared to most other smartphones (or
dedicated MP3 players). This low-volume problem isn’t an issue when the device
is hooked up to an amplifier however, because you can usually just crank up the
volume control on the amp to compensate.
However, one my applications for a phone is to track my bike rides. I have an
amplified speaker that goes on my handlebars that not only safely protects
the phone in a hard shell compartment, it also allows me to hear the spoken
updates from
SportsTracker Pro as I ride. However, this expensive amplifier has a fixed
gain and is designed for the standard output of most audio devices. In the case
of the Ascend P1 however, it just isn’t loud enough (by a long shot).
I thought I might be able to “fix” the problem by using the
Volume+ app (which I have a purchased copy of). Sadly this does not work,
because if you turn up the volume too much the internal amplifiers just clip and
distort. The end result is audio that’s still markedly fainter than what comes
out of just about every other smartphone on the market.
To make matters worse, I observed random volume level changes that occurred when
I used multiple audio apps at the same time (in my case, Google Navigation
giving directions,
Slacker Radio playing music, and
Zello
to talk with the wife). The jumps in volume are quite noticeable and forced me
to adjust the volume on the car stereo. And by this I’m not referring to
different volumes from different apps. I mean that the volume of the music
suddenly got much louder, and then later got suddenly much quieter.
I initially couldn’t believe this was a widespread problem and I thought it was
just the unit I was testing. However, I did a search on Google and I found
discussions threads that talked about this same issue, and so it seems that a
lot of people have complained about it.
Display
The display on the Ascend P1 is a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED featuring a resolution
of 540 x 960 (rather than the more standard 480 x 800 on previous-generation
phones like my S2 LTE, or 720 x 1280 on most high-end phones). Like most AMOLED
displays, it features deep blacks and well-saturated colors, though in the case
of the Ascend P1 they might be a bit over-saturated (more on that in a second).
This is otherwise a crisp-looking display whose only real drawback is that it
doesn’t get particularly bright. However, this is a common issue with AMOLED vs
modern LCD displays such as those found on the HTC One X. At full brightness it
is almost as bright as my S2 LTE however.
The over saturation is most obvious when viewing photographs. I took one of a
face, and on the screen of the P1 the lips looked too red, as though the person
was wearing lipstick. When I copied that same unmodified picture over to
my S2 LTE the lips looked natural. For other uses however, over saturation isn’t
really a bad thing and the colors really pop on this display.
If this screen has a gotcha however, it’s a lack of touch accuracy and
sensitivity. Perhaps I’m just spoiled, but the screen on my S2 LTE always
provides accurate touch predictability and I rarely find myself having to touch
it twice to get something to happen. With the Ascend however, I found myself
constantly actuating the WRONG spot on the screen, or I had to touch twice
(which might have just been before I was missing the target). This was
particularly evident when there were closely-spaced options to select, such as
stacked hyperlinks in the browser or when pressing keys on the keyboard.
The problem isn’t a deal-breaker, but it was aggravating enough to make the
Ascend feel a little cheap. After enough use however, I managed to compensate
for some of the inaccuracy by touching higher than I expected, but I was always
conscious that I was making this adjustment.
Processor and
Chipset
The Ascend P1 sports a dual-core 1.5 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 processor
with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU. Neither of these chips is exactly top-end, but
they’re no slouch either. I found the overall performance of the P1 to be
satisfyingly quick with no detectable lag and fairly smooth graphics
performance. However, it only runs Ice Cream Sandwich and would probably feel
even smoother if it had Jelly Bean. In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the P1 is
once again hardly at the top of the heap, but it does well enough that it
doesn’t look bad when compared to many of the competition on the market,
especially for the price.
I ran
GL Bench 2.51 and I performed on-screen comparisons between the Ascend P1
and my S2 LTE. My phone managed to achieve a score of 1451 vs 1262 on the Ascend
P1. However, if we allow for the difference in screen resolution however, my S2
LTE would only score 1075 if it had a 960 x 540 screen instead of an 800 x 480
screen (assuming results are linear). These numbers are hardly comparable to the
newest high-end phones, but they are still pretty impressive for a phone with
this market position.
Memory
This is one area where the Ascend P1 fails to impress, because the phone only
comes with 4 GB of built-in flash storage. It does have a MicroSD slot
(accessible from a covered slot on the side of the phone), so you can pop in up
to 32 GB more. However, I couldn’t find a way to move apps to the SD card (the
button was missing in app control screen), and so it seems you are limited to
the internal memory for apps. Depending upon how much internal memory the apps
you install chew up, I had no difficult installing as many apps as I wanted
without getting anywhere near running out of memory. Just the same, it’s
virtually a crime for a modern Android phone to come with so little onboard
storage.
Fortunately the phone does come with 1 GB of RAM. Until the Galaxy S3 came along
this was considered the defacto gold standard for the amount of RAM in an
Android device. Given that so few models sport 2 GB, it isn’t fair to mark down
the P1 for having only 1 GB. There are plenty of high-end models (like the HTC
One X and the Samsung Galaxy S3 outside of North America) that come with only 1
GB of RAM.
USB Connectivity
Unfortunately the Ascend P1 does not provide an option for USB Mass Storage,
though it does provide a camera mode that allows you to download photographs
directly over USB Mass Storage. I don’t often use USB Mass Storage on my phones,
but for transferring stuff really fast and conveniently, it can’t be beat.
GPS
As usual, I tested the GPS by tracking my bike rides. This is a rather demanding
application (for me at least), because I generally expect stellar accuracy. So
far every single phone I’ve tested during 2012 has come up a little short in
this regard compared to my S2 LTE. In fact, the only phone to come close has
been my old Samsung Galaxy S Captivate. Surprisingly the Galaxy S3 didn’t
perform well in this test, even though you’d have thought it would.
The P1 doesn’t seem to perform any better than the other phones I’ve tested
throughout the last year. However, that leads me to believe that my S2 LTE (or
perhaps all S2 LTEs) has pretty good GPS accuracy that just isn’t the norm for
other phones. That being the case, the P1 is right up there with the likes of
the Galaxy S3 and the HTC One X. But like them, it just isn’t as good as it can
be.
Battery
The Ascend P1 comes with a non-removable battery with a capacity of 1650 mAh.
When it comes to battery life, my experiences have been rather mixed. When the
screen is OFF the battery drain is quite low and it looks like the phone could
easily run for the better part of 2 to 3 days (even longer if you don’t have
background processes constantly updating themselves online). However, when the
screen comes ON the battery drain is quite steep and much worse than my S2 LTE.
I really don’t have an explanation for this, other than to surmise that the
AMOLED screen on the Ascend P1 is a much bigger power consumer than the one on
the S2 LTE.
The charge rate is refreshing quick however. I was able to charge the phone from
50% to 90% in just half an hour. After the charge reaches 90%, the phone
trickle-charges the battery the remainder of the way to 100%.
Data Speeds
The Ascend P1 supports HSPA+, which means theoretical speeds of up to 21 Mbps
down and 5.76 Mbps up. However, in practice you’ll probably never see speeds
this high, but that’s more a function of the network you’re on than it is the
phone. I’m used to seeing LTE speeds, and so running speed tests on the P1
brought me back down to earth a little. Still, in day-to-day use the phone
seemed to have little trouble providing reasonably snappy performance on HSPA.
Camera
The Ascend P1 includes an 8 megapixel rear camera, but sadly this is one aspect
of the device that doesn’t quite meet the expectations generated by the rest of
the phone. Image quality is descent in bright light, but it looks a little fuzzy
in low light. The lens on my test phone wasn’t consistent either, providing
fairly good focus in the middle and blurrier focus on the edges. Color balance
is also not particularly great, but it is something you can fix with Photoshop
if you are so inclined.
Overall the pictures are fine if you don’t pixel-peek, and so for taking shots
to go directly on Facebook or Twitter (where the images are shrunk anyway, which
hides a multitude of sins) the camera is more than adequate.
Conclusions
The Huawei Ascend P1 is a really good midrange Android phone. $400 may sound
like a lot of money, but the typical high-end phone goes for $600 to $700 with
no contract or tab. When you look at how little you actually give up compared to
a true high-end model, the P1 is an excellent value. Even if you aren’t on Wind,
buying one and getting it unlocked to work on other networks might be worth your
consideration.
However, I should note that if it were me considering the purchase of this
phone, the extremely low headset output issue would be a deal-breaker. I use my
phone heavily for audio-based apps and the low output had proven to be a pain
for me during my testing of phone. If you are considering the purchase of this
model, I would recommend you think seriously about the potential impact this
issue would have on your enjoyment of this otherwise stellar phone.
