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Welcome to the Huawei Sonic U8650 phone review. The Sonic has been around for a little while but was un-interesting until it was released as an outright phone available through the big chain department stores like DSE, Big W and Safeway. The Huawei Sonic is a reasonable $188 at most stores but as usual there are a few issues that you should be aware of before you decide to buy.
The Sonic is not a known quality in terms of reliability and support. Admittedly since it is sold by the major retailers you should be able to get your money back if something does go wrong. Note that it only has dual band 3G that works on the Optus/Vodaphone/Virgin etc.. so as long as your with any other carrier except Telstra the Sonic will work properly.
In terms of construction the Huawei Sonic is a solid and reasonably looking handset. It feels good to hold and not too light or cheap. We have no complaints for most Huawei phone since it is quite cheap handset. The Sonics's screen is a capacitive model which is great for the price but with average resolution and size so nothing much to complain about. We feel that Huawei makes better quality mobile handsets than their rival Telstra/ZTE.
The Sonic runs Andriod 2.3 OS which is the latest version you can get in mid-2011 and has more than enough features, it also has all the benefits and issues of any other handset that uses the same OS. However it does have a slower CPU so can get laggy when running lots of apps at the same time. However thanks to the screen tech (mainly) it feels better than phones with similar specifications.
The Android store has an increasing number of decent free and paid apps you can try too. Apart from that the standard very good web browser you'll be able to access all the social networks like Facebook, Twitter and so forth without the need for additional apps. You'll be able to do everything even Skype and use Firefox! It also runs Flash files in the browser and videos.
Overall we can't say anything bad about the Sonic. It is a very decent phone for the relatively low outright price. We would not rate it higher than the HTC Wildfire S though - which is available on the Telstra network for $199. Certainly after a taste of the Sonic you may want something faster - but faster models are at least double the price! That said Acer has reduced the price of the Liquid Metal phone to under $199. The Liquid Metal is the better phone than either the Wildfire S or the Sonic. See the review on the website.
Specifications
- Huawei Sonic
- Network
Tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900
Dual-band 3G 900/2100
- Design
Touch screen
- L116.3mm x W60.5mm x D11.9mm
Weight 120 grams
- Display/s
3.5 inch TFT 320 x 480
- Camera
3.2 MP
- Video Camera
640 x 480 pixel main video camera 15FPS
- Connectivity
Bluetooth V2.1
Wi-Fi
Micro-USB
- CPU
600Mhz
- Memory
Up to 512 MB available to user
MicroSD up to 32Gig
- Ring tones
ACC, MP3, MIDI, vibration and others
- Features
A-GPS
Accelerometer Sensor
JAVA Apps
Music and Media player
Organiser/Calender
SMS, MMS, IM, Email
JAVA MIDP 2.0
FM radio
Speaker Phone/Hands free
3.5mm AV/headset
Custom 3.7V 1400mAh
Up to 9 days Standby
Up to 6 hours Talk Time
- Price history
Under $188 AUD August 2011 (Outright)
