Huawei phones could be making a surprise return soon

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The Huawei Y6 (2019) isn’t out to wow anyone, but as a basic, very affordable smartphone it should get the job done for most users.

We‘ve picked out the best Huawei phone on 2019 so you can see quickly what’s ideal for you. There is a catch when it comes to Huawei, though. Since a trade ban from the US government, Huawei phones aren’t so appealing any more. The ban means the latest Huawei phones can’t run Google Mobile Services and don’t have the Google Play Store.

Chinese giant may license out phone design to third parties in order to get component access. Huawei is reportedly considering outsourcing smartphone design to a third party in order to circumvent US sanctions and keep its consumer business afloat,.

According to Bloomberg, the company is currently negotiating the deal with Xnova, a China Postal and Telecommunications Appliances (PTAC) unit. If the deal goes through, Xnova will then be able to purchase smartphone parts, such as chips, which have been out of Huawei’s reach since the ban imposed by former US President Donald Trump.

Bloomberg claims Xnova is already selling some Huawei-branded Nova phones on its e-commerce site. Citing people familiar with the matter, who decided to stay anonymous because the negotiations are still ongoing, the publication further claims Xnova will also offer self-branded devices, based on the larger company’s designs, as well as some devices featuring Huawei’s design, under its own brand.

Motivated by Honor?

However, some Huawei engineers have already started redesigning the circuits of some of their key smartphones, to fit either Qualcomm or MediaTek processors, it was said. Huawei is expecting at least 30 million devices sold next year.

So far, all companies allegedly involved in these negotiations are staying silent on the matter, but the Trump administration hurt Huawei badly, with the sanctions meaning business sales have fallen for the past four quarters.

The company was forced to offset the Honor sub-brand to a consortium of companies last year, but given its recent strong performance, Huawei could have been motivated by Honor’s good performance for its new move.

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Huawei Y6 (2019) review

This phone (2019) has a 6.09-inch 720 x 1560 screen with a pixel density of 282 pixels per inch. That’s not amazing in terms of resolution but it’s pretty good for the money. The Samsung Galaxy A40 for comparison has 437 pixels per inch but it costs around twice as much, at £219.

And the Huawei Y6’s screen isn’t just about resolution. It’s also impressively large, uses a modern 19.5:9 aspect ratio, and has an 87% screen-to-body ratio, which is to say the front is almost all screen.

It uses LCD, which isn’t typically as good as OLED, but that’s to be expected at this price, and the overall screen quality is more than good enough for the money.

Design The Huawei Y6 (2019)

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The Huawei Y6 (2019) comes in three different colors, but these are more than just shades. There’s the Sapphire Blue one for example, which includes reflective particles that diffract light to colourful effect, while the Amber Brown shade uses an anti-fingerprint faux leather, and the Midnight Black is relatively plain.

Whichever colour you choose the back is plastic, but in the blue and brown shades it’s less immediately obvious that this is the case.

The Huawei Y6 (2019) also looks good from the front, thanks to the aforementioned high screen-to-body ratio. There is a slim bezel at the bottom and a tiny camera notch at the top, but it’s an impressively screen-filled design for such a budget phone. Of course, being so cheap there’s no water resistance here, but you’d typically have to pay more than twice as much to get that.

Power The Huawei Y6 (2019)

You get a quad-core MediaTek Helio A22 chipset inside the Huawei Y6 (2019).

Camera

The Huawei Y6 (2019) has a single-lens 13MP camera on the back with an f/1.8 aperture. Huawei is at pains to highlight the low light shooting potential of this camera and to some extent it does have other phones beat, but only others that come in at a similar sort of price.

That is to say, if the light isn’t good, nor will your pictures look particularly good, but they will look at least as good as low light photos shot on most other phones that cost around £100 or less.

In better lighting things improve. Results are still basic, but adequate for social media or viewing on your phone screen.

Features

The Huawei Y6 (2019) has two other features that are worth highlighting. The first is facial recognition, allowing you to unlock the phone just by looking at it.

The system will even increase the brightness in low light so that it can still make out your face. It’s not as fast as some facial recognition systems, and facial recognition in general is rarely as secure as a fingerprint or PIN, but it’s a nice option to have.

Plus, for those who like listening to radio, this has an FM Radio built in, and unlike some phones you don’t need to connect headphones to listen to it.

The Huawei Y6 (2019) runs Android 9 Pie. Unlike the Huawei Mate 30 Pro you get full Android here, with access to the Google Play Store. However, with Huawei’s Android future in doubt, so is the potential for software updates, which is something to bear in mind if you’re considering this – or any – Huawei handset.

 

Battery life, memory and connectivity

Battery life isn’t special, but light to moderate users should generally be able to get a day of life from the phone. Heavy users will be reaching for a charger before nightfall though.

The Huawei Y6 (2019) has 32GB of storage, which isn’t much in this day and age, but there’s also a microSD card slot, so as long as you have a card you can easily boost that.

Connectivity options include Bluetooth 4.2, but notably there’s no NFC, meaning no potential for contactless payments from the phone.

Verdict

The Huawei Y6 (2019) is a reasonable handset for what little it costs. While we’d have liked to see NFC and a bit more power, most other things are as you’d expect for the money, if not a little bit better.

 

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