Review & First Look : Huawei Ascend G600 The Snapdragon S4 Gangstar

 Huawei being the leading company for years in manufacturing telecommunication
Yet their device are not that well known due to factor user primary considering the device as a "China" branded device.On this review we are looking on the Ascend G600 the come back attack from Huawei which launch together with it's sibling the D1 Quad and G330.Mostly aiming a budget quality product yet stylish design.

Design and Feel

Ascend G600 is available with either Black and White color choice.It has glass feel panel
on the front with 3 capacitive button at the bottom of the screen.The rear battery cover is
coated plastic which is good (non finger print magnet)
Design offer mainly derive from the Huawei Honor Series which has the square body with curve edges.The design ain't going to impress anyone or particular stylish as well but hey Ascend G600 have solid feel and not feeling cheap to hold on.









 Display 

 It's not big to hold on a 4.5" Ascend G600 maybe because i'm use to my 4.7" One X which sometime
the slim bezel G600 feel small to me but somehow G600 will fit any user hand well including their pocket.There's nothing much to company except the display having some glaring using under sunlight but overall brightness level is good enough for day to day usage.
Packed with qHD display on a 4.5" device is great because having higher PPI thus enhancing user viewing experience especially viewing video with vivid color and not washed out.

Camera

This is a aspect to be taken count for user that considering a day to day use phone that pack all-in-one features like myself.Camera quality is not washed out like many budget device out there with balance saturation produce on the picture.The Ascend G600 pack with 8MP BSI Camera (Rear) & 0.3MP(Front)which is a boomer.
With additional HDR,Panorama Features and BSI package it produce vivid output image.
There's bunch of setting which can be access by tapping on the arrow button and selecting the multiple option offer.Front camera are also having acceptable quality of video and image.Moving shoot seem to be ok.A sample of image (untouched) inside a moving car below :

 The downside on the Ascend G600 is the issue of unable to record even HD video lefting it to be only able to be capturing video up to FWVGA (HQ) video which is minus on this device.Eventhough video quality not consider as bad but lack of HD & FullHD option isn't the best choice to be day-to-day camera phone.

Software

The Ascend G600 is powered by Huawei Emotion Ui layer on top stock AOSP android 4.0.4
Keeping the system as stock as possible but with some of tricks from Huawei.
 With this method keeping the ram usage low and fluid device as the same time User Interface looks great and cool.

The User Interface can be change by accessing menu button and selecting theme setting and there's 3 choice available.Just a simple as that to switch from stock ui or Huawei customized ui.

Software developer over Huawei did a great job by featuring both of Power Saving Mode and Fast boot.Both of this features is normally found on HTC devices.Power saving mode will one of the best to have on these days as smartphone becoming more hunger on battery life.The G600 power saving mode will prompt to request to be enable as soon the battery drop below 30%.

 Extra features that being the selling point of the Ascend G600 is the capability of NFC which being a new standard for phone to have it.This one super fast way to transfer files from phone to phone as well different usages of NFC by just tapping on NFC enable devices or Tag.As i mention before on the Star S1 review,i really like shortcut button that give user easy access to setting without digging that wasting precious time.

Performance

 Ascend is powered by all new Snapdragon S4 (Cortex A5) 1.2ghz which seem to be a lot.
This a good to chance to let me explain to user out there about the speed of processor doesn't represent true speed of the processor.On the MSM8225 that powered the G600 offer a moderate speed but i found out that it have relative slow down during switching between page or opening an app.Graphic neither doesn't perform quite well as the Adreno 203 isn't the best choice for gaming.
Suffering on graphic glitches on Subway Surf and Dead Trigger even worst.Nevertheless the gaming experience is still playable but it might be software issue. 

 

On both Antutu Benchmark and Quadrant Standard

The Dual Core powered G600 score relatively low especially on Quadrant.

Seem to be the processor is being defeated by other dual core device including the Star S1 which we reviewed recently which scored 6610 on Antutu and 3036 on Quadrant even it's clocked at 1.0ghz.

Processor speed doesn't really matter but i guess due to low amount of ram(768mb) drag down all the performance of this little monster.

Sound

 The most biggest selling feature of the Huawei Ascend G600 is the Stereo DTS powered speaker

Awesome sound output with loud volume than most device you can bring on the party.

Even being the loudest,the DTS optimization keep it clear and without shattering.

Lovely speaker.A huge thumb up on that Huawei!

Verdict

Huawei have did a great job on both hardware and software to keep the Ascend G600 fly.
Great quality of build that feel solid and packed with beautiful looking qHD screen.
For the price of RM799 this device making it the affordable as the features offer are tempting
even though it suffer from some hold back by it's performance.


What I Like : 

•  Solid Body Feel (Nice to hold)
• Slim Bezel
• qHD 4.5" Display
• Front Camera are not washed out
• Rear Camera that takes vivid photo 
• Clean and glass feel of the display and front panel
• 1930mAh Battery
• Gaming and Apps compability via Google Play
• Expandable storage via microsd
• Power Saving Mode
• NFC Feature
• HDR Feature
• Fast Boot
• DTS Stereo Speakers
• Rear body that non fingerprint magnet
• Removable Battery.

What I Dislike :

• No HD/Full HD on 8MP BSI Camera
• Outdated Operating System 4.0.4 (Currently 4.2.1 Jellybean is the latest)
• Performance slow down on the MSM8225 Dual Core processor