Huawei Ideos X5 Pro Review

Around the middle of last year, Huawei had introduced the Ideos Pro smartphone. A neat looking phone with a set of decent features but a tad high on price. The company recently introduced the successor to the device in the form of the Ideos X5 Pro. The company has now added a few enhancements and the device has been re-launched at a slightly lower price. However, in the last six to eight months, a lot has been happening on the Android front, and manufacturers have been putting their best foot forward crafting devices in this price bracket. To know if the smartphone can stand strong with the current competition, read on.

Maintaing the same design

Form factor
On the design front, Huawei hasn’t brought in a lot of changes. The Huawei Pro X5 features the same deign as its predecessor and likewise even tips the scale at 130 grams. The same oval design adds comfort while holding the phone. Its rubberized back ensures a firm grip and one can easily operate the phone using one hand. Maintaining the same design, the front exhibits a large 3.8-inch display with 480 x 800 resolution. The capacitive touchscreen accurately responds to touch. The rim on the front side is chromed with Android's four distinctive buttons below the screen – Back, Apps, Home and Search. The rubberized backside has an easily removable flap that hides the microSD card slot while the 5 Megapixel camera sensor slightly protrudes outward with an LED flash that is placed right next to it. The left edge features the volume controls while the top edge has the power/sleep button and 3.5mm jack. The lower edge features a mic and micro USB port. Speakers are placed on the front and back side.

X5 at an angle

You will notice the speakers on the front and backside. There is an LED indicator near the speaker area which keeps you updated about the status of the phone, when it’s charging, missed call or unread messages or so on. On this front, there is nothing much to talk about as the phone hasn't undergone any improvement as such. Nevertheless, we still like it; it’s the same old yet tasteful design. The build quality is decent but the screen is prone to scratches and acts as a stubborn finger print magnet too.

On video: Huawei X5 Pro

Features
User Interface
Though Huawei didn’t plan on a design makeover for the X5 Pro, the company has gone ahead and boosted its power with a 1GHz Scorpion processor. It runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system and one will find the screen featuring an ICS-kind of lockscreen, which is actually a Huawei lockscreen itself. The lockscreen takes you to shortcuts like Messages, Call log, simple unlock and the homescreen too. On the homescreen, the app shortcut is on the lower left hand side (a bit odd). Navigation is smooth and the user interface is slick and easy to use. The phone's UI also features a 3D-ish flow for swiping through desktops using cube, slide and rotation styles. It is nice to see the inclusion of the Swype keyboard, which is swift once you get the hang of it. There’s Huawei’s keyboard as well as an alphanumeric option.

Slick and smooth

In our tests, the X5 Pro scored 2511 on Antutu and in the Linpack  test, it scored 39.91 MFLOPS in single thread run and 33.85 MFLOPS in the multi thread run. For this kind of price, those scores are quite good.

Media
When we tried playing music and video files, it gave us default options which included playing through the Cloud+ Gallery. The stock player couldn't play AVI and MOV files so essentially it supports MP4 and a couple of other standard formats. Third party players like Rockplayer, allowed us to play all video files quite smoothly. The device also manages to play 1080p videos, almost without stutter. The default players didn't allow much tweaking.

The X5 Pro manages to emit clear cut music tones. With SRS WOW HD settings the overal bass in the audio is enhanced and the surround tones become well balanced. The X5 also features a few more EQ presets and the player's UI is also visually quite attarctive. The external speakers are loud enough for a  small room but we'd urge you to refrain from using them in public places. If you're looking for a slightly more personalised tone in your audio you could opt for a third party media player app but the native player is nevertheless pretty good on its own. It has 1.5GB of internal memory which can be expanded further via microSD card slot so rest asured you have enough space for your media. The X5 Pro also has a fairly decent FM radio.