Two months after the release of the Ascend Y300, Huawei has dropped a new entry-level device that is not only capable but very affordable as well, the Ascend G510. Let’s find out if the G510 takes the throne as its best entry-level offering by reading our full review.
Design and Construction
When we reviewed the Ascend Y300 a couple of months ago, we said that Huawei has set a higher standard when it comes to their entry-level devices. The Y300 has a really solid construction, simple, but elegant, and we’re glad that Huawei continued the trend with the G510.
Found on the front is the 4.5-inch display, along with the earpiece and VGA front-facing camera above and three capacitive buttons at the bottom. The left side houses the volume rocker and microUSB port while the right side is empty. Right on top is the headset jack while located at the bottom is the pinhole for the microphone. Flip it on its back and you’ll see the 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, together with the speaker and another microphone for video recording.
If the Y300 feels good in the hands, we can definitely say that the G510 feels much better. In addition to the ceramic finish, the backside is slightly curved with beveled edges which makes it really nice to touch and hold.
Display
The G510 carries a 4.5-inch FWVGA (480 x 854) IPS LCD with a pixel density of 218ppi. It’s 15ppi lesser than the Y300’s but it’s a small sacrifice for having a larger display. Besides, you won’t even notice it in the first place.
Still, the G510’s display managed to produce crisp icons, clear texts, vibrant colors and great viewing angles. Huawei could have added an OGS panel like the one found on the Ascend W1 but maybe the G510 doesn’t need one as the display is already stunning as it is.
OS, UI and Apps
The G510 comes with Android 4.1.1 Jellybean with Huawei’s Emotion UI v1.0 skin on top. There’s no app drawer as all the apps are already available on the homescreen. If you need to access homescreen settings, just tap and hold on a blank space and you’ll see a menu for wallpapers, transitions, widgets and homescreen thumbnails.
Most of the Emotion UI’s tweaks are visual with focus on animations and icons. There are five customizable themes and nine transition effects to choose from – nothing a good launcher app can’t do.
As for the apps, the G510 comes with no bloatware out of the box. There’s the usual Google goodies along with Huawei’s useful apps like the Cloud Service, Phone Finder, Super Compass, and its own app store called the App Center. Standard social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter are there as well which leaves you with 2.16GB of usable storage with 1GB dedicated for apps. In this case, a microSD card is highly recommended.
Camera and Multimedia
Huawei equipped the G510 with a 5 megapixel AF camera with LED flash. It shoots in a 4:3 aspect ratio and comes with panorama and built-in filters. This is an entry-level device so we didn’t expect much when it comes to image quality.
When shooting outdoors, the images are often times washed out and the colors needed some boost. While indoors, the images are susceptible to noise. Another thing we also noticed is the continuous Auto-Focus. The G510 supports tap-to-focus but once you click the shutter, it re-focuses then finally takes the image.
On the bright side, the images captured by the G510’s camera can still be considered as very decent and will surely suffice for uploading on SNS. Take a look at the sample photos below:
[fancygallery id=”22″ album=”22″]
As for video recording capabilities, the 5 megapixel sensor is only capable of shooting videos at VGA resolution in MP4 format. Watch the sample below:
Another feature that makes the G510 standout is the inclusion of NFC. Unfortunately, Huawei decided to make this feature market dependent. Although equipped with an NFC radio, the unit we have locally doesn’t have the software to run it, thus making it useless.
As for multimedia prowess, the G510 is limited to playing 720p video files. The speaker is very audible though but only loud enough to fill a small room.
Performance and Battery Life
Running under the hood of the G510 is a Qualcomm MSM8225 Snapdragon dual-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz, an Adreno 203 GPU, and 512MB of RAM. Under these specs, the G510 was able to perform basic tasks well like switching to and fro apps and running light games.
Lags do appear though when you start running graphic intensive games which is expected as the G510 isn’t exactly built for that. Dead Trigger is still very playable on High settings but the game starts to lag as you get into more action. Play in the recommended Low settings and the game runs like butter. However, we recommend clearing your RAM from background-running apps as you only have 190MB of room to wiggle.
We did our usual rounds of benchmarks on the Ascend G510 and here are the results:
*AnTuTu – 7,117
*Quadrant Standard – 2,181
*Vellamo HTML5 – 1,227
*Vellamo Metal – 379
*NenaMark2 – 31.2fps
As for battery life, the 1,700mAh battery was able to provide 3.5 hours of movie playback (720p video loop, 50% brightness, 0% volume, Airplane mode). With normal usage consisting of constant WiFi connectivity, heavy SNS browsing, light gaming, and moderate calling and texting, the G510 was able to last for 12 hours.
Conclusion
Huawei takes their entry-level offering a notch higher with the Ascend G510. It has a large screen, solid construction, really great build, and can deliver above average performance for an entry-level device. It’s not without limitations though, like the small ram and available storage for apps, but for the price of Php5,990USD 102INR 8,653EUR 97CNY 743, it surely makes up for that.
Huawei Ascend G510 specs:
4.5″ FWVGA (854 x 480) IPS display, 218ppi
Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8225 dual-core 1.2GHz
Adreno 203 GPU
512MB of RAM
4GB of internal storage
up to 32GB via microSD
5MP AF camera with LED flash
VGA front-facing camera
GPS with A-GPS support
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, WiFi Hotspot, DLNA
HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
Bluetooth 2.1 w/ A2DP
GPS with A-GPS support
Li-Ion 1,750mAh battery
Android 4.1 Jellybean
134 x 67 x 9.9mm
150g
Black and White
What we liked about it:
* Good build
* Solid construction
* Great display
* Above average performance
* Affordable price
What we didn’t like about it:
* Small RAM
* Limited internal storage for apps
* No NFC
* Redundant Auto-Focus
* VGA video recording
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Radical says:
Thanks f0r the review…an0ther ch0ice k0 pag hndi ak0 mag-rebranded.
Btw, can y0u als0 d0 a full review 0f Alcatel OT Sapphire 2?
merrylorie says:
great review, now i can choose briefly to which i should go..the Acend y300 or this
jayron says:
Walang kwenta. Buti pa mag Flare ka na lang. Pambili pa ng jeans ang matitipid mo.
gwiyumiXE says:
quality is a big deal,,kya taob yang flare mo…rmember you’ll get what you pay for!
jayron says:
When it comes to entry-level phones. Only a moron would buy branded. Katulad ng pagbili ko ng walang kwentang Alcatel 990 for 9k last year. It’s still alive, pero pinang ha-hotspot ko na lang. I’m worried it will explode anytime soon dahil palaging naka charge. Kasi nga ang bilis ma lowbat.
Brianne says:
Gusto ko rin yang Flare, pero mas mataas konti ang specs ng HAG510.
Ross says:
Naku, yang pinagmamalaki mong Flare? Ayun, try mo pumunta sa mga service centers ng Cherry Mobile, makikita mo ang haba ng pila, and guess what, almost 4 out of 10 people na nakapila dun eh yung magaling mong Flare ang pinapagawa at nirereklamo. Makakatipid ba? I dont think so.
merrylorie says:
hows the display compared to y300?
Rudi says:
Two correction to the above review :
a) The G510 does have NFC built in.
b) Standard it is only possible to shoot in VGA mode only.
However if you install “Snap Camara” you will be able to shoot in 1280/720.
Recommended is however 800/480 (WVGA) since at the highest resolution the frame rate becomes too low.
Brianne says:
Thanks po sa review, very helpful po, para po sa Plan 450 renew ko..Thanks uli. :)
jem says:
San po mkkabili nyan? Pls reply…:-)
sharon says:
hello.. just want to ask, just in case malaglag sa sahig hindi ba madaling masira? thanks.
ace says:
great review! another choice for me, what you guys think which is better LG G2 or Ascend?
jed says:
win the lg g2 with Yugatech’s Lg G2 index finger challenge
m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=QsSode7AMNU&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQsSode7AMNU%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_player