Huawei Ascend II review – new Android phone from Cricket

The Huawei Ascend II is the latest Android phone, actually fifth in the row, released by Cricket. It is also the second Huawei phone from this carrier as well. The first version of Huawei Ascend was one of the best-sold devices on Cricket and since Ascend II has some first-rate enhancement, this deal is expected to be quite successful as well. This phone is required with all-inclusive $55 Android plan that offers everything unlimited, so you are looking to save some good amount of money. In addition, this is no contract deal so for $179.99 you can get higher-end Android smartphone at affordable monthly cost with no strings attached.

Update: Right now (August 25, 2011), you can get the Huawei Ascend II for $129.99 after $50 discount. This is limited time offer.

For quick review of the phone’s features, check out the video. For more in-depth review, please, continue reading.

 

Design

The Huawei Ascend II is a good looking phone. It looks much more attractive and up to date than it’s first version. It is lighter and thinner but also, where ones were trackball and physical buttons, below the display, now are touch sensitive buttons. Above the display, an indicator light blinks when you are charging you phone but also indicates that you have missed text message or call. The display itself is 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with 320 x 480 screen resolution, which is the same as with previous version unfortunately but runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which is great improvement. There are five home screens to choose from, the phone has accelerometer and you have the option to change the method of scrolling. On the Huawei Ascend II, there is the standard Gingerbread virtual QWERTY keyboard, very easy for typing but also if you are used to Swipe input method, than you have it.

The size of the phone is 4.6 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches and it weight 4.1 ounces. This Cricket phone does not support multi touch function, so there is no zooming in and out but has a cool feature that does support, that by the way cannot help with the functioning of the phone but still can help you enjoy and that is support for live wallpaper. Looks great.

Features

The Huawei Ascend II, as already mentioned, is Android 2.3 Gingerbread smart phone with 600MHz ARM11 Qualcomm processor. The processor is also slightly improved compared to previous Ascend. The phone does what an Android should do mostly and that’s great browsing thanks to 3G Real Web Browsing and WiFi capability. It provides access to email accounts, social networking sites, to Google apps as YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Search as well as to the Android market for over 200,000 apps to choose from. The Huawei Ascend II offers a 5 megapixel camera, comparing to its predecessor that has 3.2-megapixels, with video capture. Pictures produces are not the best quality ever but still, many higher-end phones offer this class of phone camera.

The phone’s internal memory is not even close enough for storing your pictures and music on your phone so that is why the microSD card slot and 2GB of additional memory that phone ships with, comes as a rescue. If you need more memory expansion, you can always fill memory card slot up to 32GB. As far as music is concerned, some users have been reporting that some of their music cannot be played with preloaded music player so they recommend getting the Power Amp app to enjoy it all. On the other side, Cricket users will be soon entitled to an upgrade to carrier’s Muve Music service for unlimited music downloads.

The Huawei Ascend II from Cricket also features Bluetooth, Fm radio, a 3.5 mm headset jack, and a 1400 mAh battery that lasts up to 300 hours of standby time and up to 220 minutes of talk time.