▷ Huawei Y6 2018, analysis and user experience for two weeks

Huawei's Y series has historically been characterized by having low-end phones whose price has nothing to do with that of current flagships. One of the phones that according to the brand itself has worked for them at the sales level is the Huawei Y6, and specifically, the Huawei Y6 2018 . Despite being launched last year, it was not until a few months ago that it began to be distributed among the different countries where the brand operates. I have had the opportunity to test the mobile for a little over two weeks and today I will tell you my impressions of the device in the analysis of the Huawei Y6 2018.

Huawei Y6 2018 data sheet

Notchless design in line with 2018

As a good low-end launched during 2018, the Huawei Y6 has a design very similar to other phones of the brand such as the Honor 9 Lite itself without notch and with a fairly simple construction a priori.

In summary, we find a terminal with a body made of plastic on all four sides  and a fairly compact size despite its screen size, around 5.7 inches. This is due not only to its 18: 9 screen ratio, but also to its reduced frames.

How does the terminal feel in the hand? The truth is that it is quite robust. Of course, we cannot compare it with other mobiles made of glass or aluminum, but the sensations are not negative at all. What has surprised me, and for the better, is its tiny weight , of only 150 grams. In most cases, the terminal cannot be felt in your pocket.

As for the rest of the design aspects, little or nothing remains to be highlighted about it. We do not find any fingerprint sensor. Neither with a USB type C connection. The only aspect to highlight is the integration of a jack input for the headphones , something that unfortunately is becoming less common even in the mid-range. This does not mean that compared to other similarly priced models, the design of the Huawei Y6 lags well behind its direct competition .

HD display with acceptable brightness and fair quality

In the section of the screen, as in the design, Huawei has played it safe betting on a 5.7-inch panel with HD + resolution and LCD technology (the manufacturer does not specify if it is IPS or TFT) .

My experience with the Huawei Y6 2018 screen has been somewhat cold, almost as much as the calibration of it. Although the panel has a resolution of 1,440 x 720 dots, you will not be missing more pixels per inch at any time . The shortcomings of this come from the hand of aspects such as the calibration of the colors and the fidelity of the same.

By default, the screen has a pretty cool calibration from my point of view. The good thing is that we can alternate between warmer colors through the system's own options. As for the representation of the colors, I have been able to compare it with the Honor 9 Lite and the screen of the Huawei Y6 2018 is clearly below.

Muted colors and with blacks that border on gray if we compare them with those of an AMOLED screen or even a higher quality IPS LCD screen. Nor do the viewing angles give us a good feeling when looking at the device from either side. The experience on this occasion replicates the shortcomings mentioned above: muted colors, grayish tones ...

Something that has very pleasantly surprised me is the maximum and minimum brightness. Outdoors, the device even rivals the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 . If we are to use the mobile in bed, the screen of the Huawei Y6 has a fairly low minimum brightness. As for the automatic brightness, it has shown an even more realistic behavior than that of my OnePlus 6T adjusting the brightness level depending on the situation.

The worst of the Huawei Y6 2018: its performance

We come to one of the most interesting sections of the Huawei Y6 2018, the performance. The technical data tells us that we are facing a quad-core Snapdragon 425 processor , an Adreno 308 GPU, 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage.

How does this whole set behave? The truth is that of approved scraping. A user experience that is limited by the integration of a low-end processor and an insufficient memory configuration in our opinion.

Huawei Y6 2018 score in Antutu (left) and AndroBench (right). The internal memory is eMMC type, with a sequential write speed of only 43.81 MB / s. Added to the low performance of the processor, it results in an unpleasant and fluid experience when using applications with a minimum demand on CPU, memory and GPU.

Slow opening of most applications (Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube ...), irregular browsing when opening web pages and experience in games very limited by the low rate of frames per second (Asphalt 8 and FIFA 18). If we opt for an undemanding graphics configuration, the performance in games is decent, although far from what other similarly priced mobiles offer us. Otherwise, the normal thing is that the game or the application in question gives us some forced closure.

Another aspect to take into account of the Huawei Y6 2018 is its memory configuration. And it is that despite the fact that in theory we find 16 GB of internal storage, the truth is that in practice the mobile as it comes out of the box has about 8 GB of free space . This is due not only to EMUI, Huawei's customization layer, but also to the applications and games that are installed by default on the system.

Free space after installing commonly used applications (WhatsApp, Telegram, FIFA 19, Twitter, Asphalt 8…). The EMUI firmware reaches 5 GB in weight as standard.

Applications such as Booking, App Gallery, Google Duo, Spreadsheets, Party mode, Instagram, Facebook and games such as Puzzle Pets, Spider Man, Kingdoms, DragonMania and Asphalt Nitro that although they can be uninstalled, occupy more than half of the free space of the mobile. Since we cannot install applications on the SD card, we will be forced to resort to moving files from internal memory to external memory from time to time .

Interesting features of the Huawei Y6 2018

We leave you below with a series of interesting applications and features that are included in the Huawei Y6 EMUI 8.0:

• Phone Clone application (to transfer all the information from one mobile to another)
• Party Mode application (to synchronize the music with another mobile and listen to the same song on two different devices)
• Themes application (to install themes from the Huawei store or from the Play Store)
• Game Suite application (to improve game performance)
• FM Radio App
• Mirror Application
• Face unlock
• Main screen style (to change launcher type in EMUI)
• Smart resolution
• One-handed user interface
• Capture with three fingers
• Press twice to unlock
• Scheduled power on and off
• Power saving mode
• Ultra power saving mode
• Reading mode

If you want to know more tricks of the Huawei Y6, you can take a look at the article that we just linked.

Very fair camera with some surprise

When it comes to analyzing a certain mobile model, expectations regarding the graphical section decrease as the price falls. Has this Huawei Y6 2018 met expectations? The truth is that no .

The technical data tells us that we are faced with a 13 megapixel rear sensor with f / 2.2 focal aperture and a front camera sensor consisting of 5 megapixels and the same focal aperture as the main sensor. All this data translated into a real user experience results in very poor quality in most scenarios.

Rear camera

During the day, the lack of dynamic range and the limited ability of the shutter to focus mean that many photos lack detail, color and vividness . In backlit spaces, the camera completely loses shadow and highlight detail even if the main subject is properly lit. While it is true that we have an HDR mode, this does not manage to save the situations where other similarly priced mobiles approve with note.

Nor can we play too much with the macro due to the poor focusing capacity of the main sensor, only with objects or bodies with a considerable volume (the leaf of a tree, the palm of a hand or the surface of a keyboard). Since the Camera application does not have camera modes based on Artificial Intelligence , the typical blur modes (portrait mode and bokeh mode) are totally ruled out due to the lack of a second sensor with a telephoto lens. Another aspect that I have most missed in the Native Camera app is a professional or manual mode with which to play with the image parameters.

The main sensor's watercolor effect is noticeable in photos at night to artificially reduce noise.

And how does the camera perform at night? The results in this case worsen the aforementioned. Little or no focusing capacity, colors with a watercolor effect, noise in the darkest areas and a level of luminosity that is obscured by the focal aperture of the lens.

These same shortcomings are also transferred when recording video both day and night, with a rather zero stabilization and a dynamic range that will overexpose a good part of the scenes during the day. The autofocus in this case does behave excellently , with almost zero waiting time when focusing on bodies at different distances.

Front camera

As for the front camera of the Huawei Y6 2018, the 5 megapixel sensor again reports the deficiencies of the main sensor by having the same lens aperture and a much lower resolution compared to the aforementioned sensor.

The photographic results give us a rather mediocre quality and a watercolor effect in most of the photos even in good light . If we activate the beauty mode that the Camera application includes as standard, the aforementioned watercolor effect is even more pronounced, smoothing out any texture that the algorithm detects on our face. The surprise in this case comes from the front LED flash.

Unlike most mobiles of this price, the Huawei Y6 integrates a flash that despite not having too much power , manages to save the lighting of selfies photographs at night, although the quality of the images when light is scarce it is rather poor, as with natural or artificial light.

The bump in front camera photos disappears at night to reduce noise and improve lighting.

The last aspect of the front camera to note has to do with face unlock. Being based on software, the recognition depends largely on the image captured by the latter, and the deficiencies of the sensor come to light again when we make use of the aforementioned unlocking system.

A slow operation and a hit rate below 50% that will be accentuated if we are in a place with low light and with a different position than that registered through the system options. Better to opt for an unlock pattern if we want immediate availability of the mobile, since we do not have a biometric method to unlock the mobile, such as a fingerprint sensor or an iris sensor.

All camera modes of the Huawei Y6 2018

We leave you below with the list of camera modes of the Huawei Y6:

• Photo
• Enhance food
• Video
• HDR
• Panorama
• Total photo
• Filter
• Watermark
• Document recognition (downloadable mode)

All the camera options of the Huawei Y6 2018

We leave you below with the list of camera options of the Huawei Y6:

• Flash
• Beauty mode
• Resolution
• GPS location
• First save to SD card
• Camera grid
• Mirror reflection
• Silence
• Timer
• Audio control
• Press to capture
• Capture smiles
• Hold shutter pressed
• Volume key function
• Quick snapshot

Autonomy for the whole day and charging - very - slow

Accustomed to seeing capacities that reach up to 4,000 and even 4,200 mAh, the Huawei Y6 consists of a battery of only 3,000 mAh that although it may seem scarce, it seems enough for day-to-day use. Remember that the terminal has a low-power processor and a 5.7-inch screen whose resolution does not reach Full HD.

In summary, my experience for just over two weeks of use has been pleasant. The average screen hours are close to 6 hours with a fairly varied use . Social networks, games, camera, video and music playback and messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

If we activate the different battery saving modes that EMUI offers us, the autonomy can reach 6 and a half hours and even 7 . In this regard, the options that Huawei includes as standard are appreciated. This is not the case with charging, because unlike other mobile phones of the brand, the Y6 of 2018 does not have fast charging .

The average waiting time to charge the mobile to 100% has come to exceed two and a half hours , reaching almost 3 if we use the mobile while charging the device or have a process hosted in the background. This is due to the charger that is included in the box, with a power of only 1A and 5V. The average value in 2019 is usually 2.1A and 9V for most phones.

Connectivity that meets but can be improved

The connectivity section is usually one of the most complete in Huawei's low and medium range. We have seen it with terminals such as the Honor 8X, the Honor 9 Lite and even the P Smart. Unfortunately, the Y6 leaves some of the most important connections in the pipeline.

In summary, we find a device that does not have NFC, dual-band WiFi or Bluetooth 5.0 (it has version 4.1 released in 2013). The only noteworthy aspect of the terminal is the FM radio, included as standard as a native EMUI application. What we do not find in the Huawei Y6 2019 box are headphones (at least in the test unit) that serve as an antenna to operate the radio. My experience with the latter using external headphones has been quite good. Good sound quality and low interference level . And yes, it has a headphone jack input. No input via USB type C or micro USB.

Regarding the operation of the networks included in the terminal, this has been expected. Good stability and range both when using Bluetooth and WiFi . Of course, we must bear in mind that the antennas are located in the upper part of the terminal, so if we shut off the upper frame of the screen, it is likely that we suffer some connection cut, especially when using WiFi .

This has happened on at least three occasions during the use of the terminal in a room away from the router, although it is something that other mobiles such as the Motorola Moto G7 Power have suffered during my tests. Finally, it should be noted the absence of the USB type C connector . Although it is true that the terminal was launched during the middle of 2018, at this point a mobile cannot be conceived without the aforementioned connector.

High sound and with somewhat poor nuances

One of the aspects that have surprised me the most about the Huawei Y6 of 2018 is without a doubt its sound.

A volume that rivals and even surpasses that of my OnePlus 6T and some nuances that although poor, manage to save the sound even at the maximum volume level without protrusions or palpable distortions. The reason for this is due to the low presence of bass in songs that make use of them. This is not the case with the treble, with nuances that make the voices of the singers shine in the songs and that of the youtubers in the application of the same name.

As for the sound of your front speaker for calls, the volume level and quality of the same is sufficient for most situations . It does not have the same quality as the main speaker, but it does not claim to.

Regarding the sound picked up by the microphone, its volume and definition are conspicuous by its absence . In applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram, the average volume level and sound quality is clearly lower than that of other mobiles of a similar range despite having a microphone that is assumed to perform noise cancellation functions.

Conclusions of the Huawei Y6 2018

My conclusions after two weeks of using the Huawei Y6 are clear. Is it worth buying this mobile in 2019 for what it is worth today? Clearly not. Currently the price of the Huawei Y6 2018 is around 110 euros. In this price range we can find mobiles such as the Xiaomi Redmi 7 or even the Redmi Note 7 that exceed the specifications of the Chinese brand device. The terminal would only be recommended if its price was around 80 euros and we did not require intensive use of the device.

Beyond the price, and ignoring its technical characteristics, the Huawei Y6 2018 has a performance that, unless we make use of undemanding applications, disappoints in most aspects . Not only when playing games or multitasking. Popular apps like Instagram or Google Chrome don't provide a satisfying experience. Excessive loading times and an overall pretty spotty experience.

To this are added the shortcomings of the photographic section and an inefficient charging system that exceeds 2 and a half hours if we use the charger that is included in the box. The lack of aspects such as USB type C or a fingerprint sensor adds even more weight to the list of shortcomings of the terminal.

Is it worth opting for the Huawei Y6 2019? Although we have not yet been able to test it, everything indicates that the experience will be similar to this . And is that despite the fact that the terminal has a renewed design with a fingerprint sensor, double camera and 6-inch screen, its technical characteristics make us think that the performance will be very similar to the 2018 model. The only difference is found from the processor manufacturer, which in this case is Mediatek. The rest of the features are made up of 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage.