Huawei Ascend Honor 3X G750 review

Does this 'phablet' live up to the high expectations?


Huawei Ascend Honor 3X G750 review

As a self-respecting smartphone manufacturer, you can't do without a phablet in your product range. They saw that at Huawei and so they came early this year with the Huawei Ascend Honor 3X G750.

That's quite a mouthful, and the name also differs from continent to continent. Honor 3X and Ascend G750, both refer to the same device. Contrary to what you would suspect, the G750 is not a super high-end phone at all. Again, it is not a midget, but it is a bit in between. The screen is 5.5 inches with a 720p resolution. The camera resolution is 13 megapixels, which is in line with modern flagships. Floating power in the G750 is an octacore processor. This means a processor with eight cores, which can be active at the same time and must be able to provide the necessary computing power.

Huawei telephones are generally reasonably priced. This also applies to the G750, but an even more advantageous competitor is the Alcatel One Touch Pop C9. Comparably priced is the Nokia Lumia 1320 and in the slightly more expensive segment are the HTC Desire 816 and Sony Xperia T2 Ultra.


What's with the device?

In the rectangular, turquoise colored box the G750 covers the entire top. Underneath the device we find a microUSB cable with adapter plug and a white headset. There is also a separate battery, quick start guide and warranty certificate.

Appearance

The G750 is a big boy and therefore stands out. Especially when the monitor is on. Still, the design is not very striking. The front is healed black and has no eye-catching accents. There are three touch-sensitive, physical keys underneath the screen. Unfortunately, the rightmost one is not the multitask button that belongs to Android, but a menu button. Actually, this function is already built into Android apps and in some apps the menu key doesn't work at all. Above the screen is not only a camera, invisible to the naked eye, but also a LED notification light with different colors.

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All around it has a lightly brushed, dark grey plastic edge. It contains on the right side the power button and volume buttons. On top is the headset connection. The left side is completely empty and at the bottom we find the microUSB connection and microphone.

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The entire back is covered by the back cover, with the exception of the camera lens and flash of course. The backcover has a nice luxurious, faux leather finish. Because of this it feels soft and gives a lot of grip. Unfortunately it doesn't fit tightly in the corners and the glass in front of the camera isn't quite straight either. Above the battery, a microSIM, microSD card and 'normal' miniSIM can be placed in the camera.

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Apart from the backcover, the unit also feels solid. Because of the rounded corners and the slight bulge at the back, the aircraft is still reasonably easy to hold despite its size. Its size ensures that it can get in the way in a pocket.

Endurance

The Huawei appliances have a very extensive energy saving section in the settings menu. This includes, for example, three settings for the power plan. These adjust the CPU and network usage so that the battery lasts a little longer or shorter. Although the differences are not very large.

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When estimating the remaining time, we have our doubts. Furthermore, there is battery monitoring that can be used to detect problems that need to be optimised. A useful function although we find the term 'problems' a bit heavy because some functions are just part of the operation of the phone. All in all, the G750 easily lasts a full day with a maximum run time of about 10 hours.

Call quality

In contrast to the previous Huawei we tested, with the G750 the phone application is simply integrated with the phone book again. There are three tabs at the top and one of them is for the communicator. With the help of smartdial you can quickly find the desired contact here. Furthermore, the application is clear and functional.

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After our experiences with the Ascend G6 in this area, we were very curious how the G750 would fare. The performance is only variable. During several conversations the sound quality started to deteriorate noticeably in the middle of a conversation. What caused this remains unclear to us. There is an option in the menu to use speech enhancement but we could not detect a clear difference between on and off.

Display

Despite its size, the G750 does not have a Full HD display. We have to do it with an HD resolution of 1280 × 720 pixels. This keeps the pixel density at 267 pixels per inch. Due to the size of the screen, there is still enough space left to display content, but because of the resolution, this is mainly enlarged and not very detailed. Colors look beautiful and vivid. Moreover, in the menu, the color temperature can be adjusted so that the image can be made warmer or colder.

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Unfortunately the automatic screen brightness reacts very fluctuating. Actually, it seems to have only two real modes; indoors at its lowest and outdoors at its maximum. That's why it's usually too dark indoors and it often consumes too much energy outdoors.

Menu

The G750 runs on Android 4.2.2 with a shell developed by Huawei that they call Emotion UI. On the G750 it is version 2.0 but it looks significantly different from the previously tested Ascend G6. That does not alter the fact that it has largely the same properties. For example, there is no application menu. Instead, all apps are placed on one of the home screens. Just like on the iPhone. This is not really convenient for the overview because a lot of apps are already in a more or less random folder by default.

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To keep the icons all the same size and shape, the size of the icons of downloaded apps are resized or placed on a shield. This may benefit the unity of the interface, but the result is not always nice.

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Also the notification screen of the G750 is slightly different from the one on the G6. At the top is still the time and date with a shortcut to the settings menu. Below that is a line with five shortcuts to specific settings. This line can be unfolded by pressing the arrow after which eight more settings appear and the screen brightness can be adjusted.

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In addition to the standard theme, two other themes are available. In addition, the individual parts of these themes can be exchanged with each other. In addition, there is a simplified display of the start screen that looks a bit like Windows Phone with its tiles.

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Newer Huawei devices have version 2.3 of the Emotion interface, so the differences between them are very different. The appreciation of Emotion UI will depend on personal taste and preferences. It may lower the threshold for new Android users. What bothers us most about the G750 is the fact that the interface feels rather syrupy. Despite the processor with eight cores, the G750 is often still quite slow when starting and closing apps or transitions in the interface.

Phonebook

As mentioned before, the contact list is housed in the phone application. Furthermore, the functionality also corresponds to what we are used to from Android. This means that besides the SIM card or phone memory, contacts from Gmail can of course also be displayed.

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In addition, the contact list can, for example, be synchronized with Facebook or another email account. In order to save the overview, the type of contacts to be displayed can be adjusted. When scrolling through the list, the initial letter of a new group of contacts lights up each time.

Messaging

The Ascend G6 gave when preparing a new SMS message the choice of the most called contacts, but that is no longer the case on the G750. Furthermore, the operation of the application speaks for itself. The G750 seems to suffer from ghost messages. Sometimes it makes noise while no notifications have been received. By which app or application this is caused, we could not figure out.

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In the standard mailapp accounts from Exchange, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and others can be added. Otherwise, it means that you have to enter all data manually. Mails read on the device and/or deleted mails are not synchronized with the mailbox of your webmail. In addition, self-created online folders are also missing.

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For text input, the G750 is equipped with the Swype keyboard. In addition to normal typing, you can also enter text by dragging and dropping across the screen. As far as we are concerned one of the finest alternative keyboards. Unfortunately it suffers from the weak hardware. If you drag too fast, not all entered words will be processed. As an alternative, the well-functioning standard Android keyboard is present.

Connectivity

As said, the G750 has room for two SIM cards. These can be used side by side at the same time, although there are a few ifs and buts to consider. When a call is made on one SIM, you are also unreachable on the other. Data traffic can only be activated on one of the two cards at a time. WiFi and Bluetooth function properly and can be switched on and off via the notification menu.

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In addition to Google's Chrome, the G750 also has another internet browser as standard. In terms of functionality, they do not evade each other much. Zooming is a bit faster with Huawei's browser and the text reflow works better. On the other hand, it is possible to fully synchronize Chrome with the browser on your computer and it works better with Google Now.

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Camera

In the camera's search screen, you can switch between photo and video, front or rear camera, flash modes and photo modes. The available photo modes are normal, smart, beautiful, HDR, panorama, metering, multiple angles, effect, audio annotation and audio control.

With its 13 megapixels, the G750's camera shoots well-groomed photos. Detail and colour reproduction look very neat. Moreover, the photos are largely free of noise. Both indoors and outdoors.

The 5 megapixel camera on the front has a handy little screen in the corner that helps you to look into the camera as naturally as possible. In addition, you can adjust the beauty level to cover up blemishes on your skin.

Huawei Ascend Honor 3X G750 camera samples
Click above for more sample pictures of the Ascend G750

Existing programs

On the G750 the following applications are pre-installed: gallery, Facebook, Twitter, music, notitties, clock, calendar, file management, backup, Bitcasa, phone info, themes, weather, flashlight, calculator, sound recorder, DLNA, fm radio, voice dialer, Google Play, hangouts, YouTube, Google+, local, photos, navigation, voice search, Play Kiosk, Drive, system update, downloads, app install.

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There are not many spectacular items, but the collection is complete. Bitcasa is an app to store files in the cloud. More striking is phone management. This allows the phone to be optimized via a quick scan. Furthermore, there are separate components to quickly set up per app whether or not they are allowed to access the internet via mobile internet and/or WiFi and to determine whether or not they are allowed to send push messages. You will also find options to clean the storage and to make the phone faster by closing apps.

Conclusion

The specification list of the G750 is quite impressive. With a 5.5-inch monitor, octacore processor and 13-megapixel camera combined with a hefty battery, the G750 appears to be his man at first glance. Especially when we consider the accompanying price tag. And indeed, when it comes to stamina and the camera, the G750 scores well. Unfortunately the controls feel a bit syrupy.

The screen is nicely large but has a somewhat low resolution. Because of its price tag this can still be explained but the strange functioning automatic screen brightness doesn't make it any better. It could be turned off, but that's not really a user-friendly solution. Unfortunately, again the sound quality of phone calls is not quite right. It is not as bad as with the Ascend G6, but it is not completely free of defects.


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