Huawei has been steadily bolstering their budget phone lineup, which starts with the Y9 2019 to the Y7 Prime 2019 and all the way down to the Y5 Lite. The Y6 Prime 2019 is nearer to the Y5 Lite in this regard and it has managed to make itself standout from the crowd thanks to its unique traits.
Specifications
Huawei Y6 (2019) Specifications
Display Type IPS LCD
Size 6.09"(~79.2% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution 720*1560 (19.5:9)
Protection -
Platform Operating System EMUI 9.0 on top of Android 9.0 Pie
Chipset Mediatek MT6761 Helio A22
CPU Quad-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU PowerVR GE8320
Memory RAM 2GB
Internal 32GB
External microSD, up to 512GB
Network Technology 4G LTE
SIM Dual SIM
Camera Main 13 MP
Front 8 MP
Battery Size 3020mAh
Type Li-Ion
Colors Amber Brown( faux leather design), Midnight Black, Sapphire Blue
Features Rear fingerprint scanner but there's facial ID
Price Kes 13,499
Design
The Huawei Y6 Prime 2019 has a unique styling that is starkly different from what we saw with the Y7 Prime 2019, Y9 2019 and the Y5 Lite.
The display is a 720p IPS unit that looks pretty good at first glance. It has great viewing angles and the colours pop. It has the characteristic water drop notch that we have seen before and you get used to it after some time.
However, the back is what sets the Y6 apart. It is a faux leather plastic back that seeks to emulate how a leather back would look like. It is coarse to the touch which is great for gripping and for hiding fingerprints. I have the Amber Brown variant, but you can also get it in Sapphire Blue and Midnight Black.
I like this design better than the glossy scratch prone design of the Y7 Prime 2019 and Y9 2019. The design reminds me of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 that had a similar faux leather plastic back cover.
User Interface
The Huawei Y6 Prime 2019 runs on EMUI 9.0.1 that is on top of Android 9 Pie. It is kinda great that Huawei shipped this phone running Pie out of the box so that you don’t feel left out of the update game initially.
EMUI still looks the same as before, except for some additions which is mostly thanks to Android Pie. There is the Digital Balance setting that comes with Android Pie that shows you much you spend on your favourite apps.
The volume slider has been flipped to be vertical instead of the old system of having a horizontal volume slider.
There is also the new app multitasking menu that shows apps in a horizontal card format instead of the previous carousel card format.
Finally, you can also decide to ditch the old three key navigation settings that we have had on Android for long and embrace the gesture system that was made native on Android Pie. I’m not a fan of the gesture based system (iOS is better here in my opinion) but it is good we can still use the old navigation system.
Also, for some reason, Huawei removed the Google Now feed integration from EMUI 9.0.1 which I’m not a fan of. It is present on EMUI 8.2 and offers an easy access to news that are personalized to my taste, and I missed that greatly.
However, this is generally the same user interface we are used to on Huawei. It will be familiar to a previous Huawei user but it will seem a bit strange to a person who used a phone from a different manufacturer.
Performance
The Huawei Y6 Prime 2019 has a Mediatek MT6761 processor which is a 4 core CPU which is stylized as the Helio A22. This is how it performs on Geekbench.
It also has 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage plus the provision to add additional storage via microSD.
Performance is what I expect at this price range. Opening the settings tab and swiping through the interface is nice and zippy.
However, thanks to the 2GB of RAM, Android and EMUI is still not yet good at maintaining a lot of apps in the background. This usually leads to app closures in the background. You can only multitask between a few apps and if you exceed, it will reload the apps again.
Camera
The Huawei Y6 Prime has a pretty standard set of cameras that we have seen on budget phones.
The primary camera is a 13MP unit with a bright f/1.8 lens which sounds pretty good at this price range. The selfie camera is an 8MP unit with an f/2.0 lens.
The photos from the camera are what you expect at this price range. They are good during the day but they tend to suffer during the night. However since the Y6 Prime has a f/1.8 lens, this lens will let in more light than normal f/2.0 or f/2.4 lenses you see on cameras on budget phones. This means it will shoot relatively cleaner photos than those phones.
Huawei’s camera app has a lot of options that includes photo, video, beauty and more. My favourite is the Pro mode under the ‘more’ tab that allows for more precise control over the camera’s controls like shutter speed, ISO and more. This usually lets me take clean shots at night where I can drop my ISO to make sure that I don’t get those grainy shots and switch on the flash In terms of video, the Huawei Y6 Prime 2019 shoots 1080p video using the front camera and the back camera.
Battery life
The best thing about this phone is the battery life. It has a 3000mAh battery and I did not have huge expectations about it.
I’m not sure how they did it, but this phone has the best battery life I’ve ever experienced for a 3000 mAh battery wielding phone.
I was getting a consistent 5 hours of screen on time with my heavy use that ranges from listening to music, using social media apps, GPS on throughout and playing games like Words With Friends.
Conclusion
For Kshs 13,000, you can’t really go wrong with the Huawei Y6 Prime 2019. Here are the pro and cons.
Pros:
- Cool faux leather design back
- Good screen
- Excellent battery life
- Has Android Pie
Cons
- Multitasking performance is much to be desired
- Camera defaults to beauty mode, which is not desirable at all
