Huawei Blaze review

An Android 2.3.4 smartphone, unsubsidised, for £99. Bargain?

Reviews
By Gary Cutlack
published
Huawei Blaze
Stylish and functional for a cheap Android smartphone, but with a few glitches

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Given that the Huawei Blaze is based around Google's 2.3 version of its Android operating system, the Google suite of apps are pre-loaded on it.

Huawei blaze

Google Maps is always the most enjoyable of the toys to play with, and the Huawei Blaze manages to render maps and scroll about them pretty well. What's missing are some of the advanced gesture controls. You do get the two-fingered perspective-tilting effect, but you can't rotate the map, although support for 3D street-level building views in the few cities Google has mapped in 3D, is in.

Huawei blaze

You also get GPS and Google's full sat nav tool, with the Huawei Blaze doing a quick job of hooking up to the satellite network and enabling us to calculate a route in less than 30 seconds.

Elsewhere from Google is Gmail, of course, plus the very bland News & Weather widget and app, the Google Talk messaging app, YouTube, Latitude and Places.

Huawei blaze

As for third-party features, Huawei has put on the popular Documents to Go suite, which is a compatible reader for MS Office files. You'll need to pay money to upgrade that if you need doc creation powers on your phone.

There's also a standard File Manager in here, which is something a lot of Android phones simply don't include, plus Huawei's Smart Traffic app, which enables you to keep track of your mobile data use, should you be on a data limit.

Huawei blaze

Memory may become a bit of a problem. With only the basics installed, we're showing 73MB of internal app memory free. That's soon going to fill up, especially if you're into mobile gaming in any way.

Gary Cutlack