The Huawei Y6s which came out in January this year but was launched in the Kenyan market on 24th of February. The Y6s is the latest budget smartphone to be launched in our market.
When it was first launched the phone was only available on pre-order but it is now available at all authorized Huawei retailers.
Appearance
The Huawei Y6s just like its predecessor, the Huawei Y5 comes with smoothed out edges that make it easy to handle.
The back of the phone is interesting in that it features a two tone design whereby it has a glossy top half and a matte bottom half. The phones comes with two color variants that is Orchid Blue and Starry Black.
The Y6s comes with a 6.09 inch HD LCD capacitive touchscreen with 16 M colors. The screen is an improvement from the Y5 which rocked a 5.71 inch screen. The advantage of having a phone with a bigger screen is that it makes the consumption of media say on Youtube, Instagram or Twitter all the more enjoyable. The screen is HD with 720×1520 pixels giving you some fairly good images.
It comes with a dewdrop notch for the selfie camera and a slim top bezel that also houses the LED notification light and sensors for the face unlock as well as proximity and ambience.
Camera
The phones comes with a 8 MP front camera, which takes some decent selfies. Beauty mode on the camera ensures that your selfies look flawless.
At the back, the phone features a 13-megapixel primary sensor of an f/1.8 aperture, which comes with a LED flash. The camera takes some decent photos during the day but struggled during evening shoots as some of the photos came out grainy. Check out some of the photos that I took with it;
Fingerprint Sensor
Fingerprint sensors have made unlocking phones that much easier, the Huawei Y6 sensor is located at the back of the phone. It can save up to five fingerprints and it is fast and accurate.
Facial Recognition
Artificial Intelligence technology allows users to unlock their phones using facial recognition. The phone does this by scanning the 296 unique recognition points of their faces improving accuracy. It’s pretty fast and nifty.
Sound
The sound on the phone is actually not bad and it is something that one can work with. The speakers are conveniently located at the bottom so you can listen to your music whichever way you place the phone. However, the phone does not come with earphones as such one has to purchase them differently.
Performance
The phone comes with a 3GB RAM, 64GB internal storage and is powered by an MediaTek Helio P35 Processor together with a PowerVR GE8320 GPU. It also comes with Android 9.0 Pie OS. The phone handles day to day activities such as streaming, binging on social media or just listening to music without any issues. However, there is some lag when multitasking or when playing games. If you are a heavy user, this phone might not do you justice but for regular day to day use, it works just fine.
Battery
The phone comes with a 3020 mAh battery which is non-removable. Nowadays we have gotten accustomed to phones with bigger batteries, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised that the battery on this phone held its own. A full battery took me a day and a half on fairly heavy usage.
However, the downside is that it does not have a fast charge option and one has to wait for almost two hours for it to charge fully.
Storage
The phone comes with 64 GB internal storage which can be expanded using a Micro SD to up to 512 GB. The internal storage should be adequate but the option of expanding the memory is always welcome.
Conclusion
For what many would consider a budget smartphone, the Huawei Y6 handles quite well. I would definitely recommend purchase if one is not a heavy user. The price point of Ksh. 13,999 is also quite affordable.