14 DAY TRIAL // Android fans who cannot afford an expensive device will be happy to find that the original Huawei Ideos is now on sale in the UK.
Online retailer Play.com is now offering the smartphone for only £139.99 SIM-free and unlocked.
The entry-level smartphone Huawei Ideos was launched in September last year during the Internationale Funkaustellung consumer electronics show (IFA) in Berlin.
Even though it was delivered with Android 2.2, the latest version of the mobile platform at that time, the device is quite low-end on the rest of its features.
Huawei U8150 Ideos comes with a small but capacitive 2.8-inch touchscreen, which features 262k colors support and 240 x 320 pixels resolution.
It is equipped with a 3.2-megapixel photo snapper with camcorder (CIF) and a built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS.
Unlike the Optimus One, one of its main rivals on the budget segment, the Ideos only embeds a 528 MHz ARM 11 processor manufactured by Qualcomm, opposed to the more powerful 600 MHz included with the former.
Connectivity options should not be a problem for users, as the Huawei Ideos is HSDPA-enabled and offers Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support, as well as GPRS and EDGE class 10.
The phone packs 256 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM, 200 MB of internal memory, and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
Although it's only been six months since it hit the shelves, we might see the original Ideos closing in to its 'end of life' status, as the manufacturer has a pretty interesting roadmap for 2011.
Huawei is one of the largest networking and telecom equipment suppliers in China and is currently focusing on the low-end Android smartphone market.
The company sold more than 10 million phones worldwide in 2010 and is expected to become one of the top 5 handset manufacturers this year.
