Design and Ergonomics
The design of the Huawei Ascend G610 can be described as unremarkable. The smartphone is quite large – 142 × 73,6 × 9,9 mm, but thanks to the rounded edges it fits comfortably in your hand. The device weighs 170 grams, which is a lot. The frames around the screen are large, but it is not a flagship, so it is quite forgivable.
The layout of the keys and interfaces is as follows: the top of the front panel is located speaker, proximity sensors and light, LED missed events and the front camera eye, and the bottom of the front panel are hardware touch keys with backlight. On the ends of the smartphone are the power key, the volume control knob and a special recess for removing the back cover (right)
3.5 mm jack (top), Micro-USB and the main microphone (bottom). The left side of the smartphone is empty. Around the perimeter of the case runs a plastic chrome bezel. On the back cover there is a 5 MP camera lens, LED flash and an additional microphone, and almost at the bottom, under the decorative grille, the multimedia speaker.
I liked the location of the power key – it is just in the right place where it should be.
Camera
The smartphone has two cameras: a 5 MP rear camera, and a 0.3 MP front camera. Of course, there is HDR in photo mode and stabilization in video mode. The maximum possible video recording quality is 720p.
The camera doesn’t have many settings. The shooting modes include panorama, exposure metering, HDR, decoration, smile and burst. The white balance settings are standard. In the general settings, you can select the ISO value from 100 to 800 units. Here you can also change the exposure, saturation, contrast and brightness. The video mode settings are even simpler: recording quality, enabling or disabling stabilization and GPS tags.
The quality of photos is below average. The pictures lack detail, but the color rendering is quite good. HDR mode takes photos with a long delay, so fast-moving objects are blurred. Also in HDR mode, colors become too bright. Examples of photos and videos can be seen below.
Example of photos taken by Huawei Ascend G610 smartphone
Example of a video taken by the Huawei Ascend G610 smartphone
Operating system and shell
The smartphone runs on the Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean operating system with its own Emotion UI 1.6. The shell looks fresh. Its key feature is the absence of an application menu.
Pressing the power key, we get to the lock screen, presented in the form of four shortcuts: unlock, call log, camera and messages. At the top of the screen there is the name of the operators and the time with the date. Unfortunately, it is not possible to change the standard applications of the lock screen. By the way, the lock screen is almost exactly the same solution used in the MIUI shell.
After unlocking, we get to the desktop, which, as in the case of MIUI V5, can contain both widgets and application icons. It is possible to create folders by dragging one icon onto another. Up to five icons can be placed on the bottom panel. Themes are supported, initially there are three.
Emotion UI 1.6 doesn’t have many settings. There is a choice of effect when flipping between the pages of the desktop. You can add or remove the desired number of desktops and select the main desktop, which will be jumped to when you press the hardware home key. There are interesting settings for the wallpaper.
Despite all this, elements of the standard Android Jelly Bean interface are still visible. The manufacturer has redrawn not all standard applications. Such applications as the magazine, messages, phone book, calculator, clock, notes and FM-radio remained unchanged or changed only slightly.
Among the standard programs, the music player stands out. You can enable folder mapping, but there is no equalizer. The standard recorder is capable of recording both stereo and mono sound. There is an application for creating backups of programs and settings.
