The Huawei Ascend G35

Introduction

Huawei has made some of our favourite low-cost Android phones in the past. That's because the company knows how to pack-in plenty of features at a great price. The Huawei Ascend G350 is its latest budget hero and although not a specs powerhouse, it does come with some serious waterproofing credibility.

Huawei Ascend G350 – Design and Features

Making a low-cost phone like the Huawei Ascend G350 generally revolves around adding a bit of texture here, an extra line or two there; you certainly won’t find flashy materials here.



The Huawei Ascend G350 has plastic bodywork, and its little design tweaks are an embossed texture on the sides of the handset, and a series of colourful bodies. Huawei showed off a khaki green model at MWC 2013, and we think they couldn’t really have made a worse choice. The murky-looking shade underplays quite how good the texturing could look.


Huawei says the company hasn’t quite decided which shades to ship, but it says this green and a red/black combo will definitely be among them.

The red/black Huawei Ascend G350 was on show too, but was dumped into the world’s least convenient phone case, a fish bowl, to show off the phone’s coolest feature.



The Huawei Ascend G350 offers IP68 weatherproofing certification. This means the phone can be immersed in water beyond 1m deep, in addition to which it's also completely dust-proof. This should light up the eyes of anyone who has killed a phone by taking it out during a fierce bout of rain or dropped it in a puddle.

To get this impressive level of hardiness, the Ascend G350 uses rubber-sealed flaps that cover the outer sockets – the 3.5mm headphone jack and microUSB power socket. It’s not exactly that impressive tech-wise and stops working when, say, you have your earphones plugged-in, but that it doesn’t really affect how the phone looks much shows how far we’ve come from the bulbous waterproof phones of a few years ago.



The only way your pay is with a bit of extra thickness – the Huawei Ascend G350 is around 12mm thick.

Huawei Ascend G350 – Screen

The Huawei Ascend G350 comes with a 4-inch screen. This size of display offers a great compromise between pocketability and usability. Typing is pretty comfortable too.



It doesn’t really represent a step up from the last model, though. And with 800 x 480 pixel resolution, the pixels aren't dense enough to give that “you can’t see the pixels” effect of the iPhone 5. However, it’s not desperately pixellated like some of Samsung’s budget Androids and with an IPS panel viewing angles are decent – albeit with some significant loss of brightness. Top brightness wasn’t too great either, although this effect was magnified by the harsh lighting of a tech show floor.

Huawei Ascend G350 – Software and Interface

The Huawei Ascend G350 features version 4.1 Jelly Bean of Android. Crucially, this features the Project Butter speed optimisations – some of the most important changes made to Android in a long, long time.



Despite the fairly low-grade dual-core 1GHz processor, performance was decent.

Huawei’s spokesperson said that the Huawei Ascend G350 may well feature the custom Emotion UI, but the model on show featured a much easier-going interface. Emotion 1.6 gets rid of the separate apps menu, bunging everything onto your home screens instead. Here, the two-part standard structure of Android was in place. If we’re honest, we’d prefer it if Huawei stuck to using a near-stock version of Android.

Huawei Ascend G350 – Camera

Like its predecessor the Ascend G330, the Huawei Ascend G350 has a 5-megapixel main camera and a VGA video call sensor on the front. Also like the G330, the camera is a little slow to respond, with significant shutter lag. There is a LED flash, but it’s obscured in our photos.

Huawei Ascend G350 – Impressions

The Huawei Ascend G350 is barely an upgrade over its predecessor specs-wise, but its IP68 certification will win it a few fans. We wish Huawei had shown a handset that wasn’t murky green in hue, but with the right shade this could become one of the better-looking, affordable ruggedized Android phones. We’ll look forward to giving the camera a proper test in our full review.

The feature packed rugged, waterproof phone

Main Features: 4 inch WVGA display | 1 GHz dual core processor, 512MB RAM | Android Jelly Bean OS v4.1 | 4GB internal storage, expandable upto 32GB | 5 MP primary camera, VGA secondary camera | Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi, USB connectivity | 1730 mAH Li-Ion battery | Waterproof and shockproofDisplay and Configuration
Huawei G350 features a 4 inch WVGA display with a 480x800 resolution and ~223 ppi pixel density. The screen although good with displaying colours, is a bit on the darker side and visibility in sunlight is a bit difficult. It is powered by a 1GHz dual core processor by Qualcomm and an Adreno 203 GPU. The device includes 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage which thankfully can be upgraded to 32GB via microSD.
Huawei has chosen not to mess around too much with the OS and as a result you almost get a stock android feel with minimal lag in operation.
Camera and connectivity
The Huawei G350 is fitted with a 5 MP rear camera with autofocus and LED flash, and it does a good job of clicking daily pictures. The VGA front camera is decent for video calling, but don't expect any good clicks coming out of that one.
Connectivity wise the device has 3G, WIFI, bluetooth 3.0 and all types of sensors although the signal might get a bit poor occasionally .
Ruggedness and Waterproofing
Huawei is marketing the G350 as a rugged waterproof phone that can withstand a direct drop on hard concrete from up to 1.2 metres and stay underwater upto a depth of 1.5 metres for about 30 minutes and still come out working as before. For this to happen effectively, all the ports on the phone are provided with a flap and the battery is sealed, so you can't remove it and change it for another one, a minor inconvenience for such durability.

Huawei G350 Reviews

• Extremely rugged and waterproof
• Affordably priced
• Strong set of features
• Stock Android experience

• Available only in dull colour
• Limited storage

Verdict: For all the explorers and Mariners or just anybody with jelly hands when it comes to handling mobiles with care, this is the phone for you. Affordably priced and feature packed along with the durability, this is a serious contender.