Comparing two of the cheapest branded Android devices in the world is never easy, because you are required to compare the features at one hand and keep focus on the fact that the devices being compared are targeting the mass market, hence premium features are not what the devices are aiming at. As the title suggests, we are embarking on a journey to compare QMobile Noir A2 with Huawei Ascend Y200, both of which target the mass market as two Chinese products based companies gear-up to battle each other to capture the mass market by churning out smartphones at the price of dumb-phones. A reasonable difference in the price of these two devices makes the comparison a bit more difficult as Huawei Y200 is 35% dearer than Noir A2, nevertheless, I will try to balance the act and present a comparison which will provide you a true and fair view of the devices to help you choose your next bargain purchase.
Build & Design
On opening the boxes of both these devices, you will find the same contents viz. device, hands free, data cable and charger. There is nothing extraordinary with the packing and accessories as expected but the user manual available with QMobile Noir A2 is in color and has a better look and feel to it than that of Y200. The overall build of both the devices is great while considering their respective prices but there is a striking difference between the two, Noir A2 is shiny and (sort of) slippery while Ascend Y200 has a subdued aura to it and has a better back cover which ensures better grip. Noir A2 has all the four capacitive keys present usually in Gingerbread devices while Huawei Y200 has no search key. The device by Huawei got us by surprise as both the power button and volume rocker were on the left side. Despite being naturally left-handed, I find it quite difficult to deal with a power button and a volume rocker on the left side as due to years of training while using various devices I am now accustomed to using these with my right hand holding the device and hence using these keys with the same hand as well. It might not seem to be a big issue when you test drive the phone at a shop, but you will find it very difficult to come to terms with a displaced button in the long run. The volume rocker, moreover, is a bit harder and hence requires a real effort to press.
Touch Screen & User Interface
Both the devices have a 3.5” HVGA touch screen which performs really well as far as the touch-sensitivity is concerned. You won’t get the distinct Chinese below-par performance with these two and I can confidently put them with the likes of HTC and Samsung as these devices perform similar to those of big guns in the market. The only thing which disappoints is the lack of Gorilla Glass protection which will render these susceptible to more wear and tear as compared to high-end devices but this is expected due to the low cost of both devices, hence getting a screen protector on your device straight after you buy it isn’t a bad idea. There is only one issue with the screens of these devices i.e. they are finger print magnets and you will find it very hard to keep the prints off the screen of your device after the first use. Once again, spending a couple of hundred bucks on a screen protector won’t do any harm.
The UI of both the devices leave much to be desired as both the devices have a primitive user interface which focuses on swiping tabs without actually adding some special touch to the swiping-tabs user interface. The UI on Huawei Y200 resembles that of Go Launcher (which is available for free in the Google Play Store) except the fact that Go Launcher has a lot of animation options and a collection of themes to spice up your device. That being said, Noir A2 performs considerably better as far as the UI is concerned, the UI here seems pretty liquid and fast, add to it a great touch screen and using the device becomes a much better experience on Noir A2, despite it being the cheaper of the two. The lock screen of Huawei Y200, however, is far better than that of Noir A2. On Y200 there is a single lock icon in the middle which when tapped activates four icons around it while on Noir A2 there is a lock icon with a circle around it which has three icons and an animation resembling reflection of light starts rotating on the circle as soon as the screen is turned on, this looks pretty awful and QMobile should have been better off with the stock Android lock screen.
Connectivity
Both the devices have all the connectivity options a user in Pakistan needs. Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth and GPRS are all there. Bluetooth performs perfectly, GPRS connects without any issue and the speed totally depends on the operator being used but the Wi-Fi reception is not up to the high standards set by other features of the devices. When comparing the Wi-Fi signals being picked by Y200 and A2 with the signals being received by HTC Explorer and a Windows Phone device by Nokia by laying all three side-by-side, the signals being picked by Noir A2 and Huawei Y200 were considerably lower than those being picked by both the HTC & Nokia devices, moreover the signals kept dropping resulting in discontinuation of browsing and downloading. The built-in browsers are just fine and can be counted on to browse the internet.
Multimedia
Ascend Y200 & Noir A2 perform reasonably well as far as sound quality is concerned, the sound is loud and clear and the hands free included in the package performs better than it looks, hence listening to songs can be fun and you can get a branded hands free if you really love to listen to songs on your phone.
Both Noir A2 & Huawei Y200 feature a 3.2 megapixel camera with no flash, snaps are taken by tapping the on-screen button as there is no hardware camera button. The pictures taken during the day are pretty good but those taken in dim light are below par as expected. Both the devices feature a stock Android Gallery which offers features like sharing via Facebook, Messaging, Twitter, Mail, Bluetooth etc. and setting a picture as wallpaper or a contact picture. Noir A2 has an added advantage of a secondary front facing camera which can be used for video calling on Skype, the VGA camera performs reasonably. A hardware camera button would have been a nice addition in both the devices.
Call &Messaging
The stock messaging app is nice but switching to an alternate solution like Handcent SMS or Go SMS Pro is recommended because features like pop-up incoming messages and blocking messages from unwanted numbers/ contacts are missing. The keyboard on QMobile Noir A2 is nice and smooth and you can type quite accurately if you are used to typing on touch screen phones with capacitive screens but the built-in keyboard on Huawei Ascend Y200 is not up to the standard as it seems less responsive and an alternative keyboard from Google Play Store will suffice.
Call quality on both the devices is good but Y200 edges A2 slightly in this aspect. The stock dialer on both the devices is nice and the soft keys well-spaced. On Y200, you can dial a number or start punching keys as the phone automatically searches for contact names and numbers as you are punching the keys, this search is fast and accurate. On Noir A2, you can dial a number or start punching keys as the phone automatically searches for contact names and numbers as you are punching the keys, this search is flawed as contact names are searched seamlessly but we were amazed to note that the smart search totally ignores the phone numbers stored while searching. This problem can be fixed with a software update by QMobile, which i am sure they probably have done it by now.
Contacts & SNS Integration
We have discussed this in detail in separate reviews of both devices. QMobile and Huawei fall short in real SNS integration, I was really amazed to see SNS integration being written in the specs of Huawei Ascend Y200 in one of the biggest specs sites on the internet but the device allows nothing more than manual joining of contacts which is awful but puts one over QMobile as it doesn’t even allow manually joining contacts.
Apps
QMobile Noir comes with a lot of pre-installed apps which at one hands seems pretty helpful but actually cuts down on precious internal storage which can be used according to the taste and preferences of the owner of the device. Both the devices support Play Store completely and you will find no problem with downloading any compatible app. Both the phones would have been benefited by more internal storage. QMobile Noir A2 comes with Skype which ironically doesn’t sign-in without updating as Skype keep updating the software. However, it signs-in smoothly after updating (i.e. effectively reinstalling the app from Google Play Store) and video calls can be made without any glitch. Huawei Y200 does not support video calling.
Misc
Manufacturers like HTC have customized menu icons to enhance the user experience. HTC Explorer, a device similarly priced to Huawei Y200 offers customized menu icons but both QMobile and Huawei seem to lack this depth as this has not been done. It is interesting to note that information about the phone’s hardware is simply missing from this menu which poses a big question mark to QMobile’s claim of 1 GHz and Huawei’s claim of a 800 MHz processor. The devices did not disappoint as far as the battery is concerned and provided around two days of uptime when used with 5-6 hours of Wi-Fi connectivity per day. This is a real plus as other devices in the higher price range fail to last longer than a day.
Conclusion
We have prepared a tabular comparison to help you choose between QMobile Noir A2 and Huawei Ascend 200:
QMobile Noir A2 is the winner according to our analysis due to its superb hardware, Dual SIM support and better value for money. I can bet my money on the fact that aggressive marketing campaign by QMobile will also result in Noir A2 being much more popular than Huawei Y200 in the local market.
