Huawei GR3 Review: Non-techie Version
First, a short non-techie summary for everyone else: Pros– Slim, handy, and lightweight– Good battery life– very good network reception– very good performance– Works with both Smile 4G and Ntel 4G networks– Superb in-call audio quality and clarity Cons– Screen is not very bright– Does not support Google Calendar out of the box, but the app can be downloaded Now, on to our detailed review. Grab a drink and some small chops!
Design
The Huawei GR3 has a simple, pleasant design. The device is built around an aluminium frame. Overall, it is an elegant design. The GR3 is also light in the hand (135 g) and very handy at a 7.6 mm thickness. The display is only 5 inches large. There is no Gorilla Glass protection here. Also, the display is not very bright, though it works well even under direct sunlight if you crank it up to 50% brightness and above. You can access a handful of functions via shortcuts without unlocking the screen by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Those functions include: music, settings, recorder, calculator, flashlight and camera. The Huawei GR3 has two SIM slots on the left side – one micro and the other nano (the nano slot can also house a microSD card to expand your storage capacity above the 16 GB built-in instead of a nano SIM). The usual suspects are all there – 3.5 mm port at the top end, microUSB port at the bottom, and volume and power buttons on the right side. They are all well crafted, with nothing feeling out of place. If you haven’t seen it, go enjoy our Huawei GR3 Unboxing for more photos.
Software
The Huawei GR3 runs Android Lollipop, with a layer of Huawei’s custom Emotion UI skin over that. The native Android app drawer is gone. In its place, you swipe horizontally across panes to access all apps. We found Emotion UI to be light and easy to use. When you set up your Gmail account, you have access to Play Store, get to manage your email and synchronize your Google Contacts. Unfortunately, while the built-in calendar app is comprehensive and user-friendly, it does not support Google Calendar out of the box. Worry not. The solution is simple. Download Google Calendar from Play Store, add your Google account in there, and your calendar entries sync into both Google calendar and the built-in calendar apps.
Network Reception and 4G LTE Compatibility
The GR3 is a champ at holding on to a network signal even in weak coverage areas. Also, in our 4G tests, it worked with both Smile and Ntel 4G LTE networks. However, it worked in data-only mode. We were unable to place any Voice over LTE calls. See our Huawei GR3 4G tests. Huawei’s phone dialler implementation in their dual SIM smartphones is also easily one of the nicest I’ve seen. You have two green “Call” buttons, one respectively for each SIM card, so you can make a call with either line directly. You can switch between the dialler, contacts and messaging easily too. In-call audio quality and clarity is also superb. Top marks here.
Music On The Huawei GR3
The GR3 isn’t targeted at audio lovers, but that doesn’t mean that it is a slouch there. The built-in Music app is a delight to use. It has some nifty features too: Like all decent music apps, you can create and manage playlists, favourite songs and access a list of the most recent songs, among other regular features. It really is a compelling music app. As far as audio reproduction is concerned, if you plug in a decent set of audio headphones to the phone, you get very good quality music. However, audio reproduction via the loudspeaker isn’t anything super. It isn’t bad. It just isn’t spectacular.
Camera and Photography
The 13 megapixel rear camera on the GR3 is good but again not spectacular. Your pictures won’t look horrible, but they won’t wow anyone either. There is an LED flash for low-light and night photos. Again, the results are just average. As for the 5 megapixel front-facing camera, it is standard selfie stuff. Nothing superb either.
Performance
Performance is one of the areas where the Huawei GR3 shines. It runs smooth for everyday tasks and won’t buck under more demanding tasks. The octa-core 1.5 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM are more than enough for everyday use. There’s a Mali-T720 MP3 GPU for assistance with graphics. In its class, the GR3 outperforms many others. In our usual benchmark tests, the Huawei GR3 produces results that ere quite good:
AnTuTu: 40,585GeekBench: 714 Single-Core, 3,240 Multi-CoreQuadrant: 25,370
Battery
With a fairly unimpressive 2,200 mAh battery, we were quite worried about what battery life on this 5-inch display smartphone would be like. It turned out not to be as bad as we assumed it would be. Huawei seems to have done some work optimizing the device. We mentioned that the display brightness isn’t superb even when cranked up to the max. This appears to be one of the ways in which power consumption has been kept down to manageable levels. The display is usable even in direct sunlight when cranked above the 50% mark, so it doesn’t fail. It just isn’t super bright. And when you are running out of power in extreme situations, there is an ultra power saving mode that shuts down most smartphone functions and provides access to only the most basic functions (see above photo). This extends your battery life by hours.
Conclusions
Our first review of a Huawei smartphone turned out to be a delightful experience. It is average in many areas, but shines in network reception and performance. The music player is a delight too. The lack of Google Calendar syncing would have been a deal-breaker for users of that service, but a quick download solves that problem. And it supports both Smile and Ntel 4G networks. It is a shame though that there is no Gorilla Glass protection or similar on the display. We ended up liking the GR3 a lot. Don’t forget to check out the full Huawei GR3 specifications.
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