Huawei Y6P review: Budget phone but no Google

Huawei’s NZ$300¹ Y6P comes with a three lens rear camera and a 5000mAh battery. There is a 6-inch screen and 64GB of storage.

You get a lot of phone for $300. Low cost phones always come with compromises. This one is a potential killer. A US technology ban means Huawei can’t sell Android phones with all the Google trimmings.

If you prefer US surveillance capitalism over a Chinese alternative stop reading now. This is not for you. Look elsewhere.

Google free zone

Like the recent Huawei P20 Pro, there are no Google apps. Instead Huawei offers its own app gallery and a new app to help you find apps that run on post-Google Huawei phones. We’ll look at the Petal Search app in a separate post.

A word of warning: there will be popular paid for or subscription Android apps that won’t run on this phone. That said, if you use that kind of software, it’s unlikely you’d be looking for a bargain basement phone.

The phone hardware is promising enough. Huawei says that 5000nAh battery is good for 32 hours of video playback. It will handle 20 hours of web surfing using mobile data. In normal use you should go two or more days between charges.

Charging other phones

Huawei has included hardware that allows you to charge other phones from the Y6P. You’ll need to buy a separate reverse charging adapter to do this.

The adaptor is not available on Huawei’s New Zealand website at the time of writing. Finding one online shouldn’t be a struggle, but it highlights a lack of attention to detail. It’s something you wouldn’t expect Apple to miss.

Almost the entire front of the phone is a 6-inch 720×1600 display. Huawei’s specification sheet says 6.3-inches, but the image doesn’t go to the edge of the display.

Huawei calls its display Dewdrop. That’s a fancy way of saying the camera notch is tiny compared with other phones. It is, but in practice it is no less irritating.

Y6P camera

Phone makers spend a lot of time talking about cameras. This is the main area where the Y6P departs from premium phones. Keep in mind, the Y6P is at least a grand cheaper than today’s top handsets.

There’s a 13 megapixel camera on the back. It comes with a 5MP wide angle camera and a 2MP depth camera for bokeh shots. The front camera is 8MP.

No-one is going to get excited about the phone’s photography. It’s more than adequate, roughly in line with what you might find on a premium phone three or four years ago. This is more than enough for casual photography, but don’t plan to shoot you next movie on the Y6P.

It’s not a fabulous phone. Yet the Y6P is great value. The big problem is that while it looks like and feels like an Android, it isn’t.

Although you can work around the restrictions, you may not want to. There will be readers who enjoy that challenge. You may have better things to do with your time.