Huawei Y5 Prime (2018)

Huawei Y5 Prime is a budget phone and an attempt to capture the budget crowd with a premium brand name. Priced at Rs. 6,999, the Y5 Prime does keep the price comfortable for the pockets of many people, though it does not come with capable hardware to pair it with it.

Though the Y5 Prime may attract you with its looks, inside the phone offers poor hardware and cameras, making it an inferior phone, even at a budget price.

The Huawei Y5 Prime comes with an elegant design and a great build quality which is not generally seen in low-end phones. It just goes to show the effort that Huawei puts in phone design. The back of the phone has a horizontal camera module with a flash placed in the top left corner. The phone does not have a fingerprint scanner, which is a disappointment. The phone is a plastic body with a metal frame embedded in it makes it quite durable. The phone looks stunning and is quite compact. On the front, it has a FullView display with negligible bezels. On the right side, it has the volume rocker and power button as usual. On the top is the 3.5mm headphone jack and the bottom hosts the micro USB charging port. The phone is quite lightweight at 145g and is slightly curved to give it a good grip. It comes with a matte finish, which makes it less prone to fingerprint smudges.

Huawei Y5 Prime 2018 comes with a FullView display arriving with a 5.45-inches screen which has minimal bezels on its side. It is an LCD screen which has a resolution of 720×1440 pixels. It has a pixel density of 295ppi. Despite the lack of side bezels, the phone does not entirely get rid of the top and bottom bezels and so, the 18:9 aspect ratio of the phone has an average screen-to-body ratio of 73.8%. The display is quite good and produces a crisp outcome. Watching movies is satisfying, and the colour saturation on this phone is quite decent. However, you won’t get the vibrancy that you get from an AMOLED screen.

The phone comes with a low-tier MediaTek MT6739. It is a poor quad-core and quite dated. The processor is supported by 2GB RAM. As expected, switching between apps is extremely laggy. There could be hiccups when you are updating any apps and running other apps in the background. Even moderate use can end up freezing the phone. It is not a gaming phone, and while 2D games may run on it, there will be lags in the overall gaming experience.

As an entry-level phone, there is no surprise present on this phone when it comes to the camera. It holds a primary 13MP rear camera along with a 5MP selfie camera. When there is adequate light, the phone takes average shots. In close range, the phone tends to lose details, and there is a lack of proper edge detection. HDR mode makes it worse since it overprocesses the images and hence, brightens up the entire picture. The natural colours fade away. Low-light shots are abysmal. The selfie camera is just about decent, but it also faces issues regarding colour saturation. Beauty mode whitens the complexion making it look artificial.

Huawei Y5 Prime 2018 comes with a decent 3020 mAh battery. The battery size is generous, and with light usage, for one hour it lost 15%. Video playback for 7 hours and 14minutes saw that phone die but the time is quite okay though not excellent. Heavy use for one hour found it lose 23%. The main problem with this phone is that it takes hours to charge up. The phone takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes to get from 0% to 100%.

As a budget phone, the Huawei Y5 Prime is a mixed bag. It has an inferior performance, but it tends to tackle the other aspects of the phone well. As a budget phone, it is not expected for the Y5 Prime to pick up pace in the camera department. On the other hand, when you consider the competition, the Y5 Prime remains starkly behind. Many budget phones are arriving with mid-tier Snapdragon 600 series. Overall, the phone can be a great find if you are short on money and want a Huawei set, though it is not a recommendation.