When I attended the launch of the Huawei Mate 8 last month, they also revealed another range of devices that they were introducing to the market, the G Series. Huawei said that the G Series was aimed at the youth market with the phone offering more in terms of a playful creative nature compared to their other phones which are made more for the business individuals. It seemed to make sense seeing that kids mainly use their phones for taking pictures, listening to music, and being on the social media stream, so would they really need the hardcore processing power and the rest of the jazz that goes into the high end smart phones when they could really have their own which would cost significantly less? Well the answer is yes, although it did have me wondering, how much did Huawei compromise on their product to make the G series what it is? Well a couple weeks ago they sent me the G8, the "top of the range" if you may call it, from the lot, with the others being the G3, and G5 to test out and this was my experience with it.
Quality
Since the package arrived I tried to see where the manufacturer tried to make the device different form the others, the packaging still looking sleek and typical of their devices so no cost cutting there. Once opened, and removed the phone, I was surprised at the weight, as it was quite heavy compared to your normal phone but the reason behind this was the massive screen, unlike the P8 and P9, the G8 comes with a 5.5" screen instead of a 5.2" as found on the other 2 devices. The build quality seems great as well, just as all their other devices so definitely no cost cutting on that part of the phone. The finish is exquisite and high quality as well, really gives off that premium feel to it.
Design & Dimensions
When compared to the the P series, the G would be slightly bigger due to the screen size which see's the overall dimensions of the phone at 152 x 76.5 x 7.5mm which still is a comfortable size to fit into the palm of your hand. The beveled edges also help with this as it gives the phone a less edgy feel and therefore a better grip for the user. The 360 touch finger print recognition has improved in leaps and bounds since the P8. With it taking a full scan of your finger , thus improving scanning speeds to milliseconds upon touch.
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| Taken with the Huawei G8 |
Camera
The G8 comes with a 13 megapixel primary camera, with auto focus and dual LED flash. Huawei takes it's camera's very seriously and the quality on this one is just as great as the others. I love the features it comes with one of my favourite being the time-lapse. I even recorded my entire flight from Johannesburg to Durban which you can find below. I wish they could give you ways in which you can control the frames per second though, I mean the 50 odd minute flight only was a 1 minute video, most of it was boring but it would be nice to slow down certain aspects of the video and speed up the rest. The front facing camera is a 5 megapixel lens and has the smile detection feature which is perfect for selfies.
Performance
Now many might be reading and thinking, if this phone is aimed at the youth and would be more affordable, how exactly did they do it if Huawei didn't compromise on build quality or features, well I'll tell you where they saved the cash, it was in the processing power. Whilst their top phones come with the powerful HiSilicon Kirin chipsets, the G Series opts for the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. While there is a significant difference between the two, the Qualcomm Snapdragon is still a quality chip with 1.5GHz Cortex - A53 & quad-core 1.2 Ghz Cortex-A53 CPU. It's more than sufficient to deal with the demands for what the phone was made for.
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| Taken with the Huawei G8 |
Display
As mentioned before on the post, the G8 does come with a larger screen, a 5.5" ISP LCD capactivie touchscreen to be exact. It has 16 million colours to mesmerise your eyes with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 so, you have a full high definition experience. The touch screen is multi touch capable and has an Emotion UI 3.1 rating for protection, hence the added weight of the phone which is 167g in total.
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| Taken with the Huawei G8 |
Verdict
While the manufacturer has compromised on performance for this device, it's acceptable when looking at the overall phone and what it's purpose is meant for. Certainly everything else is up to scratch with other devices in the market with some aspects being even better than their competitors flagship devices. The phone still offers the same great UI with a host of themes and settings to make yours unique and there are 3 colours for you to chose from. I quite enjoyed my time with the G8, more so because I used it for all my social media activities and capturing pictures and video with it and it did that perfectly, battery life was surprisingly great as I thought with the larger display it would drain it quite quickly. It's certainly a great phone if you're looking at getting one for those specific purposes or something you want to get for your kid.
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| Taken with the Huawei G8 |
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