Huawei Ascend G6 hands on (MWC 2014)
The Ascend G6 is rather premium looking device that continues with the design language that Huawei introduced last year with the Ascend P6. You get the same clean lines without many needless flourishes, the same rounded bottom, and the same placement of buttons and ports.
The back plate of the device is a smooth plastic that doesn’t pick up a lot of fingerprints and oil stains. The faux metal accents around the camera and on the sides also complement the main material nicely. The Ascend G6 is 7.9 mm thick, and very light, which makes it very easy to handle, not only because of its thickness and weight but also due to its rounded edges.
The Huawei Ascend G6 comes with an IPS LCD display of 4.5-inches, with a resolution of 960 x 540, resulting in a pixel density of 245 ppi. Granted, it’s comparatively much lower than what you get with flagship devices, but isn’t all that bad when you consider the price point of this smartphone. Plenty of users will be perfectly happy with this screen, with its decent levels of brightness and nice, lively colors.
At the heart of the Ascend G6 is a Huawei-made quad-core system on a chip, clocked at 1.2 GHz. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really test it as much as we’d have liked to during our short time with it, but at least on the pre-production unit that we had, the device felt quite responsive.
You get 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage with the Huawei Ascend G6, which has quickly become the standard for mid-range devices these days. To help counter the relatively low built-in storage, another standard feature that makes in appearance is the microSD card slot, which is located beneath the removable black plate.
Huawei is on the selfie bandwagon with this device, which packs a 5 MP wide-angle front camera, a feature you don’t often see on affordable devices such as this one, or with a a lot of flagship devices either. The main camera on the back is an 8 MP shooter.
Powering everything is a rather small 2,000 mAh battery, but we won’t write it off until we get to see how thirsty the Ascend G6 really is in daily usage.
The Emotion UI on the G6 is based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, albeit with some extensive modifications by Huawei.
To simplify the user experience, Huawei has done away with the app drawer altogether, so all your apps live on the homescreen. Coming from a different Android UI, this might take some getting used to, and depending on how many apps you download, and without some organization, your homescreens could quickly become cluttered.
Huawei built an even simpler mode into the Emotion UI, that transforms the interface into a set of bright live tiles, that reminded us of the Windows Phone interface. The simpler mode actually feels a lot more organized, and if you have a lot of apps, will certainly be easier to work with.
What we get with the Huawei Ascend G6 is a mid-range smartphone with a premium feel, and with its affordable price tag, should be accessible to most consumers. Additionally, for those of you who love taking selfies, this device is one of the best tools you could have.
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