Huawei Ascend G300 review

Is this more than just a budget phone at a budget price?

Huawei Ascend G300
Pull the Ascend G300 out of your pocket and the smart design brings a smile to your face

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Huawei Ascend G300 review

One of the basics of the Android browser, and of any internet experience, is the presence of Flash. On many budget devices though, Flash is incompatible due to the slower processor.

Happily, due to the 1GHz processor running in the background, the Huawei Ascend G300 meets Adobe's Flash requirements.

And this Flash functionality remains after updating to Android 4.0, although it's a little slow and impacts on page display and scrolling speeds, so you'll probably save any hardcore video viewing sessions for when you're next on your proper computer.

What you see on the Huawei Ascend G300 nowadays is the all-new Android web browser, which arrives as part of the update to Android 4.0.

There's a vast amount of new things to play with, such as a visual and actually useful tabbing system, accessed through a button to the right of the URL bar.

Bring this up and you can access your bookmarks through the same tab, with your history and local copies of any pages you've saved for offline reading.

Huawei Ascend G300 review

Android options include the ability to select text easily. Long pressing on an area of text brings up two sliders, marking the beginning and end of highlighted text.

These can be adjusted to you select as much, or as little text as needed, then tapping again to copy the words to the clipboard.

Android 4.0 adds a menu button that enables you to copy, share, perform a web search for the highlighted text or search for other instances of the selected words on the page.

Elsewhere in the settings, there are varying toggles, such as the useful ability to turn off image loading and disable plug ins, ideal for those on restrictive data plans.

Settings also highlights the security features on offer, such as password management and location features, plus Android 4.0 features a great slide-in Quick Controls option, that does away with the URL bar in favour of a floating tab that pops up over the top of the page when you run a finger in from the left or right of the display, maximising screen size.

Huawei Ascend G300 review

The internet browsing on the Huawei Ascend G300 isn't what you'd call a dream, but then it was never going to be.

Pages do load rather quickly, both over Wi-Fi and 3G, but moving around the page can feel a little hesitant at times, especially on Flash-heavy sites.

The Android 4.0 update doesn't make things move any quicker either, with the phone taking quite a few seconds to switch tabs when you're viewing a few chunky pages.

We also found the browser became unresponsive a few times when running under Android 4.0, especially when messing about too much zooming in on text and opening multiple tabs.

Still, at least you can now install Google's Chrome browser on the Ascend G300, with the Android 4.0 exclusive browser an option to those who've upgraded from the Huawei Ascend G300's old 2.3 software.