Build and Design
When it comes to the build and design, the Y5 Lite manages to look great despite the plastic back. The metal frame gives some heft to the device, weighing in at 142gms and makes up for a good in-hand feel. To the back, we have an 8MP camera and a flash. The power button and the volume rockers are located to the right. To the left, we have the SIM card slot; this one can take in two SIMs and a micro SD at the same time. To the top, we have the 3.5mm headphone jack and we have a micro USB port to the bottom, accompanied by the microphone to its left. To the front, we have a 5.45-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1440 x 720 pixel (HD+) which translates to 18:9 aspect ratio and the overall look of the phone doesn’t seem outdated. The display quality is good with decent colors and good viewing angles. There’s a 5MP front-facing camera with flash the earpiece on top of the display.
Software/UI
The device runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with Huawei’s custom skin on top. Huawei has tweaked the way the icons look, other than that the UI is pretty much stock-ish with the settings menu and even the notification drawer left clean. The UI feels quick and responsive for the most part but starts to lag down and you might as well notice some app crashes here and there. However, being an Android GO device helps a lot, considering the fact that Android GO has been launched for the devices with 1GB or less RAM. Android GO brings shrinked down version of Google apps to the Y5 Lite like maps GO, youtube GO, and even Google Assistant is not that taxing to the low powered internals of the internal smartphones.
Camera
It has an 8MP rear camera with single LED flash and f/2.2 aperture which can produce some nice images when there’s ample amount of light. The pictures look good, but the details in the pictures are lacking when you zoom in (or it might just be me, peeping into the pixels). And sometimes it even refuses to focus during low-lighting condition, which could be quite annoying.
The same story translates to the front, the front 5MP camera can click some good selfies, and provided with a supportive flash for the front camera as well you can also click selfies in the night. A little less light and you might look like a plastic. To say the least, it’s there.
Audio
Talking about the audio, the earpiece is the primary and the only speaker on the device and it sounds tiny. But when it comes to calling quality, the earpiece serves well. The presence of 3.5mm headphone jack is a relief so that you can enjoy watching videos and listening to your favorite music through your favorite headphone.
Security
Being an entry-level smartphone, the Y5 Lite sticks to the basics of security. Which means you just have to choose between the old school pattern, PIN and a password to unlock this device. However, security patch updates seem promising with the device currently running on October security patch in our review unit.
Performance
The MediaTek 6739 underneath the hood powers this baby up. This is a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.5GHz. The performance is decent and for the most part, the device manages to perform well. But under heavy loads or while multi-tasking, this hardware inferiority bugs down the device and a part of that is also because the device has only 1GB of RAM which is simply not enough to keep the performance smooth. Apart from that, day to day tasks like web browsing, social media, calls and messaging, surfing YouTube, the device can easily get through that.
Gaming
With the low-powered internals, you can do a bit of casual gaming on the device but forget running 3D games and graphics-intensive games on this one. Even if you manage to install them on the device, you will be prompted by “the device is not supported message” once you’re in the game (P.S. I actually installed and tried to run PUBG on this one).
Battery
The device packs in a 3020mAh battery that can easily last you an entire day and even more on a single charge. The device takes about 1hr and 55 minutes to fully charge up. This might serve you well as a backup phone if you’re looking for one.
Verdict
This device is definitely not for everyone. But this is what an entry-level smartphone brings, isn’t it? This is for those who are starting out with Android, or for people like us who are power users and just want a backup device which runs Android. For the price of NRs. 13,900 this is what you can get.
