Huawei U8150 IDEOS: A User’s Review

Sometimes in late March this year I lost a low end Nokia feature phone that I really loved. What next? Replacement?

I cannot really refer to Huawei’s low cost smartphone, the U8150 IDEOS as a replacement because it completely revolutionized my usage of phones or rather unclassified PCs since I have always used it as my phone(calling, texting and such stuff), my personal computer, my tablet computer and to be sincere, just my everything.

With access to over 60,000 applications in the Android market, there’s just nothing that you can’t do with an Android smartphone whether its a low cost model like the IDEOS or a high end one like the Samsung Galaxy S II.

Just like you would expect of a typical smartphone, the IDEOS is a serious power guzzler. The numerous apps you download from the Market end up draining the battery seriously. Without accessing the internet, listening to radio or playing music from the media player, the battery can last upto 6 hours. What’s the point of having your smartphone if you can’t listen to your favorite songs or FM radio station or get your mail and push notifications on the go? If you are an internet maniac like myself then plugging your device everytime is a habit you will have no choice but to embrace.

The camera is whacky! Though it comes with an impressive stat of 3.15 megapixels, the camera of the IDEOS is, to say the least, bogus. Some low cost feature phones can take sharp, crisp images yet a whole smartphone performs dismally. Anyway, the IDEOS smartphone ain’t a camera phone. It’s meant to bring the famed Android experience to the lower end of the smartphone market. However, I’d give the camera 4 on a scale of 1 to 10.

The Huawei U8150 IDEOS like other smartphones is a serious data guzzler. For maximum usage, connection to a Wi-Fi network is recommended. However, for someone like me, a suitable data plan with your carrier is all you need.

The other specifications, which would otherwise be higher in a typical smartphone are rather low in the IDEOS. Anyway what would you expect of a $100 or Ksh 8,500 device? The Kenyan telecommunications giant that brought the IDEOS together with maker Huawei to Kenya, Safaricom Ltd, priced the device at Ksh 8,499 complete with free 1,000/- airtime and 600Mb data. The price then dropped to Ksh 7,999 recently. The pricing therefore just tells you what to expect from the IDEOS.

A major downside of the device is that it ships with Android 2.2 Froyo and cannot update to any new version of the flagship Google mobile operating system. However after rooting(which I don’t recommend though its entirely possible), it should be able to allow the latest Android OS for smartphones, Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread to run smoothly and thus allow you to tinker alot more with your device.

I would recommend the U8150 IDEOS as an entry device to the world of flashy devices because courtesy of it I’ve been able to use, with ease, devices like the Samsung Galaxy I, the Apple iPad 2 etc.

The internal memory is low, at 166MB but very manageable if you don’t clutter your phone with lots of apps. The external memory is expandable upto 32GB even though I’ll recommend a sdcard of upto 4GB for quicker loading after a reboot or after you unmount the sdcard. The RAM is also low at 178MB but this too is manageable by constantly cleaning your device’s cache and not installing many applications.

When it comes to music, the speaker ain’t that good but it performs efficiently and the sound quality is also high.

To anyone still wanting to get this phone, I recommend it as an entry level device to the Android world. For the geeks, this phone offers a certain level of convenience but it isn’t up to the mark.