We spent this Huawei Philippines' first Android Go device in the recent holidays and we got the verdict - here's our Huawei Y5 Lite 2018 Review
It is a bit of a strange feeling that we felt when we had Android Go in a Huawei device which is quite good but still with a bit of their "touch' with Hicare. With their choice of Mediatek MT6739 quad-core processor, based on Android 8.0 Oreo and 1 GB RAM - the phone was a-ok on scrolling the apps in the drawer but we noticed that the booting time was quite a bit long for over a minute and random times that it will be sluggish. Good thing that it left 12 GB out of 16 GB internal memory for app storage
One of the shining lights of this budget Huawei device is the connectivity. Still with this under 5k smartphone, you can still have good calls, texts, mobile data, WiFi and OTG support. Bonus that it has true blue dual nano SIM support
On display, it was decent with their choice of 5.5 inch HD+ display on 18:9 ratio
On battery, our video rundown test showed it survived on 12 hours and 10 minutes in our video battery rundown test. On real-time usage, you can only manage it to use on a full day with 4 hours of screen on time in medium mode. Charging time will be at around 2 hours and 45 minutes from 0 to 100%
On benchmarks, it is quite weird that the phone did not allow us to put in the Antutu benchmark (but we already knew the MT6739 processor in numbers). In sensors, the device has accelerometer, light, proximity and sound.
On camera, we never expected the UI to see something like this which is quite uninspiring. This UI from way back from Jellybean/Kitkat days plus the image processing time is quite poor - almost 2 seconds. Output on both cameras were decent as long as you are on a lit environment for social media as both have f/2.8 aperture Not recommended to use is as a shooter at night.
Huawei Y5 Lite rear camera samples
Huawei Y5 Lite 2018 front camera sample
On extras, it is quite weird that once you go to the software update in the settings menu, we can still see that it is not stock, it is still run on EMUI. Unfortunately during our times that we had this as a main driver, we did not get any OTAs.
When we bought and reviewed the Huawei Y5 2018, it was at Php 4,490 (a big help that we got a total of over 900 pesos of discounts on Lazada's 12.12 sale) which is a good price for what you can expect but not on the Php 4,990 (which we seen today) and even it's regular price of Php 5,490 which will be a no-no especially that Android Go counterpart of Asus is also available locally. You will be buying it for sure for it's budget price for an international brand, dual SIM support, connectivity, getting 12 GB of space out of 16 GB ROM and the Android Go charm. Camera performance is expected. One thing that gave us a concern is the random sluggish operation which we are hoping on it's first ever software update. For us, it is 3.5 out of 5 for Huawei Y5 Lite 2018
