Huawei U8510 IDEOS X3 Blaze review

Another remarkably inexpensive smartphone from a manufacturer keen to make its name in the Android market, but is the Huawei Blaze as cheerful as it is cheap? Julian Prokaza goes hands-on to find out.

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IT Pro Verdict

The U8510 Blaze is remarkably cheap, but it’s also surprisingly cheerful and Huawei has done a good job of delivering a relatively capable Android smartphone for very little money. It’s probably only suited as a main smartphone for undemanding users, but the very low price still makes it ideal for a host of other purposes.

Huawei is a name perhaps more usually associated with 3G USB modems, but it also makes smartphones albeit as an OEM for other companies. It has been quietly selling smartphones under its own name for a while though, and the U8510 IDEOS X3 Blaze is the latest.

Huawei U8510 IDEOS X3 Blaze

The Huawei Blaze is certainly cheap, but this isn't a particularly pejorative description, since it still has a commendable specification for the price.Huawei announced last year that it intends to be a top five mobile manufacturer in the US some time within the next three years and its strategy seems to be based on shipping more affordable smartphones, rather than costly premium models that compete with the iPhone and its ilk.

"Affordable" is certainly a diplomatic description of the Huawei Blaze, but a more meaningful one might be "cheap", since it's currently available for an

The power and volume buttons on the top and side are easily pressed, as is the wide lozenge-shaped Home button just below the screen. The Blaze has capacitive soft' buttons for the other three usual Android OS controls and these require a fair amount of pressure to activate, unlike all-to-easily triggered the soft buttons on some other Android smartphones we've used. SIM and micros card slots are found beneath the Blaze's back panel; the former needs the battery to be removed to access, the latter does not.

Julian Prokaza