Getting the right Smarts for 2021
Huawei P Smart 2021
The Huawei P Smart series has always been an easy phone to recommend thanks to its budget pricing and top-notch hardware. This year’s model is no different, however, the current lack of Google services make it a little difficult to recommend outright unless you use alternative apps and services.
The P Smart 2021 is a great looking phone with a polished plastic back and a vertically stacked quad-camera setup. The latter does have a small bump but nothing and I love the chrome trim around it which sets it off against the black of my review unit.
The right edge has a volume rocker and a power button that doubles as a reliable and fast fingerprint sensor. On the left is the slot for the MicroSD memory and dual SIM tray. On the bottom are the USB-C port, 3.5mm headphone jack and bottom-firing speaker grille.
The P Smart 2021 is a large phone with a massive 6.67-inch full-HD display, which is IPS rather than OLED as you’d expect for a phone at this price. For an LCD screen, the colours are nice and neutral while peak brightness is also decent but you will struggle to see it under direct sunlight.Â
In the settings, there are lots of options including an ebook feature which turns the screen to black and white making it less of an eye strain while reading books.
Viewing angles are excellent and the punch-hole cutout for the front selfie camera is small enough not to be too intrusive. You can, of course, choose to hide it all together by darkening the surrounding area via an option in the display settings.
The main camera is 48MPand features a ½-inch sensor which is excellent for taking in more light for night photography. As you’d expect from a Huawei handset, the camera’s AI capability squeezes the most from the hardware by combining multiple-frames to reduce noise and improve clarity and detail.Â
As well as the main shooter you also get a 120 degrees 8MP ultra-wide camera, 2MP macro camera and 2MP depth camera. I’m not a fan of low-resolution macro cameras on smartphones because macro photography is all about detail and colour.Â
However, the second dept sensing camera does hep produce excellent portrait shots. Around the front is a decent 8MP selfie camera which also comes with a portrait mode.
The Huawei P Smart 2021 comes with 128GB of internal storage, 4GB of RAM and the option to expand this via the memory card slot up to 512GB. It’s powered by the more than capable mid-range Huawei Kirin 710A Octa-core CPU and Mali G51-MP4 GPU, which has no problem running even more demanding games.
It comes with a large 5,000 mAh battery that will easily see you through a full of use. I was often able to get up to two-days on a stretch thanks to the large battery and excellent memory and software tweaks that keep the system in tip-top shape. Huawei says the P Smart is capable of up to 23 hours of video playback.
The Huawei P Smart 2021 comes with 22.5W Huawei SuperCharge that’s capable of two hours of video playback from a quick 10 minutes of charging. In general use, the P Smart feels smooth and fast to open apps and scroll through social feeds.
Out of the box, you’ll get Huawei’s EMUI 10.1, which comes with AppGallery pre-installed. It’s important to understand that you won’t get any Google apps or services, so no YouTube, Gmail, Google PlayStore and so on. The AppGallery does have a lot of apps but you won’t find all the apps there. To get access to more apps you need to use Huawei’s Phone Clone app which will transfer the apps from your old Android phone. I found most of these apps will be installed with some exceptions. You can also search for apps using Petal Search which will look in other apps stores for app APK downloads. However, some apps will install but not run due to a lack of Google services. For some users, these workarounds will be fine, but for others, no Google is a dealbreaker.
The Huawei P Smart 2021 is a fantastic phone with excellent hardware including a good camera setup, plenty of storage for apps and media, but the lack of Google services will put some off the purchase of what would otherwise be another easy P Smart recommendation.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
