Huawei G play mini made up of plastic

Huawei recently launched a new mid-range phone—G play mini for Rs.19,999 (USD $200) in Nepal. I have been using this handset for almost 2 months, and many of you have been asking me on whether Huawei G play mini stands out to be the best phone to buy for NRs.20,000. Well, let’s find out in this article.

More About Huawei G Play Mini

At a first glance at the specs, you will notice that the Huawei G play mini specs look identical to Honor 4c— the phone that was launched in India for INR 8,999 (NRs.14,400). So, you might want to know why are we paying more for the phone with almost same specs? Huawei Device Nepal says that Huawei Honor 4c and Huawei G play mini are different phones with Huawei G play mini sporting a superior design better suited for gaming. But, after some research and comparison, it turns out Gplay mini and Honor 4c has almost similar design.  So, why is the Honor 4c cheaper? The main reason is that there is too much competition going on in Indian smartphone market with the likes of Xiaomi Redmi 2 and Micromax Yuphoria providing decent phones under INR 10K. But, unfortunately, that’s not the case here in Nepal.

Moving on… I actually bought Gplay mini for Rs.18,500 and also got a free screen guard and an egregious flip cover that will only make your phone look ugly. The box content comprises of a wall charger, data cable, and a chintzy earphone.

DESIGN & BUILD: 6/10
Like any other sub-20K phones, G play mini made up of plastic. Talking about ergonomics of this phone, the phone feels heavy and is extremely difficult to use with one hand as the phone comes with bigger bezels. The phone weighs 162 gms, which is abnormal for a 5-inch phone. Last year’s Huawei Honor 3c has a 5-inch display and weighs 140gms. Comparing it with other 5-inch devices, it feels bulky and heavy.

 DISPLAY: 7/10

The Huawei G play Mini features a 5-inch (1280 x 720) pixel display with 294ppi (320dpi). High-definition displays are common these days in a mid-range segment, but what really matters is the quality of the screen, brightness, color reproduction and touch sensitivity.

As far as Huawei G play mini is concerned, the quality of the screen is really good with decent viewing angles thanks to the IPS technology. The display panel manages to produce vibrant and accurate colors, but there are two minor glitches that I saw in the display. First of all, the screen is not bright enough. Under normal usage, it’s okay but when you keep Honor 3c and Gplay mini side by side, Huawei Honor 3c screen is brighter and better compared to Gplay mini.

Another thing that might annoy you is how fingerprint magnet the screen is; it easily attracts smudge marks and you will find yourself cleaning the display quite often. Moreover, the display lacks Corning Gorilla Glass protection and is therefore prone to scratches.

SOFTWARE UI: 7/10

The Huawei G play mini is running the Huawei Emotion 3.0 UI on top of Android 4.4.2 KitKat. The Emotion UI is not stock, but the 3.0 version is much better than any of its previous version. However, there are still improvements to be done from Huawei in its Software UI.

PERFORMANCE: 8/10

The Huawei G play mini is equipped with Huawei’s in-house Kirin 620 chipset with an Octa core 1.2Ghz Cortex A53 64 bit processor supplemented by 2GB of DDR3 RAM.

The Kirin 620 Chipset is somewhat similar to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615 chipset seen on Micromax Yureka Yu, HTC desire 820 and Xiaomi Mi4i. Under normal usage like browsing, chatting,etc., the phone is deprived of any lags. The phone runs smoothly while multi-tasking or switching between apps.

I installed some heavy games like FIFA15, MC5, etc and it runs smoothly without any lags. It tends to heat after continuous usage, but that won’t bother you too much. Even flagship phones like Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC one M9 heats up while playing that kind of graphics demanding games.

Overall, the performance of the G play mini is its biggest asset. If you want a phone with the best performance in this price range, G play mini would be a worthy choice.

MEMORY: 7/10

The Huawei G play mini comes with 8GB inbuilt storage out of which only 3.5GB is available to users. This big chunk of memory is taken by the Operating System. However, you can expand the memory via a microSD card slot up to 32GB. You can move most of the apps to SD card, but some apps can only be installed to the internal storage.

CAMERA

The Huawei G play mini is capable of capturing some nice shots as it’s been equipped with a 13MP rear facing camera – and decent feature for such a low-cost device. Up front, a 5MP camera can capture excellent selfies.

The 13 MP back camera can capture good photos during daylight. Macro shots are amazing with lots of details, vividness, and accurate color reproduction. Low or artificial light shot is not impressive but doesn’t disappoint at all. Check out the photos sample here: LINK 

BATTERY: 7/10

The non-removable 2550 mAh battery on the Huawei G play mini is more than enough for one day of moderate usage. You can watch Youtube Videos continuously for 4 hrs. Upon continuous browsing and chatting, it should give you 5 hrs of backup.

CONNECTIVITY: 8/10

The phone supports Dual GSM 3G SIM (HSPA). Other connectivity includes WiFi 802.11b/g/n, WiFi Direct support, WiFi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS/GLONASS. However, the phone doesn’t support USB OTG and neither has 4G LTE bands.

VERDICT:

Overall, the Huawei G play mini is among the good mid-range smartphones available in Nepal. At Rs. 19,999 it’s bit costly compared to the Honor 4c even though the smartphone has almost the same specs.
If you are looking for a Dual SIM smartphone with a really good performance around Rs. 20,000, the G play mini is a good choice. To summarize, here are the pros and cons of the smartphone.

Thanks for the tip Pujan

Find the Latest Huawei Smartphone’s Specification and also the price in Nepal.