Huawei GR5 Mini has been getting a lot of attention from the Nepalese mid-range phone market for the package it delivers with it price. The phone has a compact form factor with a premium finish and sports an interesting fingerprint sensor. Carrying a price tag of Rs. 21,999, does this phone has it all to deserve all of this attention?
DESIGN
Huawei GR5 Mini comes with a metal body with a brushed finish to be precise, which looks very premium. It does have plastic used in its design but this doesn’t lower its presence, thanks to the premium grade metal. The design is visual and good to hold due to its curved back and corners. Overall the design is good and offers nice handling.
DISPLAY
Huawei GR5 Mini contains full HD IPS LCD display which is 5.2’’ with 424 ppi. The display has nice viewing angles and true color reproduction like any LCD screen. The display falters in sunlight as the performance of auto brightness sensor seem shaky. The screen sometimes takes little more time than usual to adjust and the adjustment did not seem that accurate. Also, the phone doesn’t come with any protection so it is advised to use a tempered glass.
SOFTWARE
Huawei GR5 Mini comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the new EMUI 4.1 which does not have an app drawer. This new UI seems more customized than the previous one. The notification drawer can be accessed by the fingerprint scanner. The UI comes with apps like system optimizer, harassment filter, battery manager, pedometer and a lot more. The bloatware which was not admired by a lot of users has been optimized to a nice extent this time.
PERFORMANCE
Huawei GR5 Mini runs on octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 650 processor on a 16nm FinFET manufacturing process and 2 GB RAM. The chipset and the optimization made by Huawei seem to make 2 GB RAM sufficient in compared to its competitors which possess more ram. It comes with 16GB of internal storage out of which around 10GB is available to the user. The phone encompasses a Hybrid Dual SIM card slot that can allow the usage of two nano SIM cards or one nano SIM and one microSD card. The external memory is expandable unto 128 GB.
CAMERA
Huawei GR5 Mini comes with a 13-megapixel primary with a single tone led flash and 8-megapixel secondary camera. Both the camera are capable of recording 1080P video. The camera interface is very handy with a lot of features. The shutter speed and the focus speed is fast. The camera also has a dedicated pro mode which allows the user to control separate features. The colors are decent and reproduction is also nice. The camera produced nice quality photos with enough details.
The front camera was also able to produce nice pictures. The photos can be clicked by using the finger sensor. The camera did falter in low light but at this price segment, you should hardly complain. The camera performance was significantly more than what was expected with any phone in this price segment.
FINGERPRINT
The fingerprint sensor of Huawei GR5 Mini is placed at the back below the primary camera. Its size and position seem suitable to serve it purpose. One can store up to 5 fingerprints. The fingerprint is very fast and accurate for its segment. It works almost every time unless the fingers were wet or dirty. The fingerprint sensor extends its function.
With several other functions, from unlocking the phone, it can be used to unlock the desired apps, click pictures, attend a call, stop the alarm, access notification panel and even swipe the photos and much more. This particular feature was very interesting to use.
CONNECTIVITY
The phone comes with a 4G connectivity and dual sim feature in hybrid SIM slot form. So one cannot expect to use the SD card while using the two SIM simultaneously. The call quality and reception were descent. The phone comes with Bluetooth 4.1, GPS and Wi- Fi but not a dual band Wi-Fi. I have been using the phones since past month and I haven’t come across any issues with the call quality and network reception.
BATTERY
Huawei GR5 Mini comes with a non-removable 3000mah battery. But it doesn’t support fast charging. It takes more than 2.5 hours to completely charge the phone to from less than 5% charge. But the battery performance is good for a daily use. Even after a day of decent use like Social networking, YouTube, attending calls and camera, the battery has no issues. The battery does get heated while charging which seems like a normal case for any smartphone today.
CONCLUSION
Huawei GR5 Mini is an efficient compact-sized device. The hardware-software optimization has smoothened the overall performance here thanks to 16nm FinFET technology used by the HI Silicon Kirin 650 processor.
The phone doesn’t seem to stand out in any particular feature. But again, it definitely doesn’t disappoint you in any unlike phones that woo us in the specifications but disappoint in usage. Many phones in this segment have a tendency of standing out in different features while bringing hidden low featured attributes in the hands of the user. But Huawei GR5 Mini brings all that is needed for a decent usage with this price point.
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