Huawei Y6p Review

Budget smartphones are expected to have just the right amount of deliverable features. As for the Huawei Y6p, it goes a little more with 5000mAh battery, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, and triple cameras at the back for a competitive price of PHP 5,990USD 102INR 8,653EUR 97CNY 743. After spending more time with this device, here’s our full review.

Table of Contents

Design and construction

Large phones aren’t new and bothersome to most users nowadays. Just like other smartphones in the Y-series, the Y6p has a sizable form factor. It has a heftiness to it, but at the same time, it’s easy-to-grip with its curved edges.

It gives a glass illusion, but it’s made out of a polycarbonate matte frame and a glossy back with some wavy S-shaped textures that shines when it hits the light. Yeah, it’s glasstic. It looks fun and edgy, especially in this Emerald Green color that we have. There’s also Phantom Purple and Midnight Black options.

At the back, you’ll find a triple rear camera setup stacked vertically together with an LED flash, a fingerprint scanner, and some Huawei branding. The cameras create a small bump, but it doesn’t make the phone wobble when placed on flat surfaces.

Upfront is an outdated dewdrop notch to house its front camera and earpiece. And it’s protected with a 2.5D glass panel and a pre-installed screen protector.

On the right are its power button and volume rocker. The placement of the buttons is just right, and they’re all clicky as well.

Meanwhile, located on the left is a SIM tray for two nano-SIM cards and a microSD card that’s expandable up to 512GB.

On top is a secondary microphone, while located at the bottom are its loudspeaker, micro-USB port, primary microphone, and a headphone jack.

Display and Multimedia

For the display, the Y6p gets a 6.3-inch TFT LCD IPS screen with a resolution of 1600 x 720px and a screen-to-body ratio of 88.4%. It’s not the best, but despite being an entry-level smartphone, we still get sharp details and natural colors—that’s customizable in the settings if you prefer cooler or warmer tones.

You can still see the display under direct sunlight if you put the brightness to max. However, you’ll notice that some colors will look faded.

And if for some reason, you’re still not a fan of a small dewdrop notch, then you can simply hide it with a black bar in the settings.

Audio-wise, the single downward-firing speaker can get loud. It has a feature called SuperSound to boost audio quality with a maximum speaker volume of 88dB. Under 50 – 75% volume, it’s still loud with highs and mids present. However, turning up the volume to the maximum often lead to tinny or distorted sound, so I don’t find myself using it.

It’s a good thing that the Y6p still has a headphone jack so you can take advantage of it for a better audio experience.

Cameras

The Huawei Y6p has a triple rear camera setup, composed of a 13MP main, a 5MP wide-angle with a 120-degree field of view, and a 2MP depth sensor. Meanwhile, on that dewdrop notch is an 8MP front shooter.

As for photo quality, snapshots from the rear cameras look vibrant and sharp, especially in bright conditions. You’ll notice that there’s some color boosting going on in the background, which is not so bad but can sometimes result in having an edited-looking photo. Colors under lowlight situations may seem to have a muted tone to them, and sadly there’s no night mode available in the camera app.

For selfies, photos look bright, smooth, and fall more on cooler tones. They’re decent enough for social media with some slight amount of noise.

And when it comes to videos, you can shoot up to 1080p at 30fps. Its stabilization isn’t that great, so make sure to have a steady hand. And what’s good is that you can maximize the wide-angle lens while shooting videos.

OS, UI, and Apps

When it comes to software, the Huawei Y6p runs on Android 10 skinned with EMUI 10.1. If you’ve been a Huawei user, then this should all look familiar to you. It has a home screen app drawer, as well as features such as night mode, eBook mode, phone clone, ride mode, and one-handed mode.

And of course, we cannot talk about software without addressing the fact that this phone doesn’t offer Google Mobile Service. Instead, it relies on its version of Google Play Store, which is the AppGallery.

It seems like Huawei is striving to add more in-demand apps to its AppGallery. And for some apps that almost everyone uses like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, it compensates with a web app version. Meaning, it will direct you to the native browser that also allows you to add a shortcut to the home screen.

Honestly, it’s a different experience compared to having the app themselves, but it works! Nonetheless, we found that if you search for Facebook in the AppGallery, it will lead you to an APK link so you’ll eventually get the actual app. But sadly, not all APKs will work well on this device.

Well, at least you don’t have to worry about not having Tiktok since it’s already available in the AppGallery.

Performance

Powering the Y6p is a power-efficient MediaTek P22 MT6762R octa-core processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The combination performs decently smooth with general tasks such as navigating, texting, calling, and taking photos.

Launching too many apps in the background, though, can cause a few stutters, so make sure to optimize the device now and then, especially when playing games.

Speaking of gaming, we were able to play graphic-intensive games smoothly under Performance Mode. However, we did encounter a few frame drops from time to time. And you’ll most likely be forced to use the lowest or default graphic settings to get fewer lags. But what’s frustrating is that you get limited games in general.

Most of the games we play, such as PUBG Mobile, Mobile Legends, and Call of Duty, are still not available in Huawei’s AppGallery, so you’ll have to sideload it from other sources if you want to put those on board. In our experience, downloading APK files isn’t a problem, but when it comes to installing, we encounter parsing errors. Moreover, if the app works, we usually get in-app problems. So hopefully, Huawei can add those to the AppGallery soon. What’s good though is that it doesn’t heat up too much even when you’re playing for hours.

For biometrics, the Y6p has a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and face unlock. Both work pretty well, the fingerprint scanner is snappy and the face-unlock works smoothly but still struggles under lowlight conditions.

Connectivity and Battery Life

It packs the usual connectivity features such as 4G LTE, WiFi, and Bluetooth. We didn’t encounter any problems when using location-based apps. And as mentioned earlier, the Y6p has a dual SIM slot with a dedicated micro SD card space that’s expandable up to 512GB.

When it comes to battery, keeping this phone running is a 5,000mAh cell with a regular micro-USB charger. Under our standard video loop test wherein we loop a full HD movie at 50% brightness, 50% volume, and Airplane mode turned on, the Y6p yielded a total of 20 hours and 9 minutes of playback.

A feature that might come in handy is its support for one-way reverse-charging so you can use it to charge other devices. But as for charging, it took us about 2 to 3 hours to charge it to full.

Conclusion

Finally, let’s talk about price. As I’ve mentioned earlier, the Huawei Y6p is priced at PHP 5,990USD 102INR 8,653EUR 97CNY 743, which is a solid deal considering its massive battery, deliverable cameras, wireless reverse charging support, 64GB of internal storage, and 4GB of RAM when usually, phones on this price range typically have 3GB.

The Helio P22 isn’t that powerful for heavy tasks, but it does the job when it comes to basic day-to-day usage. Of course, not having Google Mobile Services is a big deal, so you’ll be pretty much on your own if you want to install specific apps that aren’t in Huawei’s AppGallery. Now, if not having some Google apps is okay with you, then go ahead and consider this smartphone.

And that wraps up this review. Let us know in the comments what you think about this entry-level Huawei Y6p.

Huawei Y6p specs:
6.3-inch HD+ (1600 x 720) TFT LCD IPS
MediaTek MT6762R octa-core CPU
PowerVR GE8320 650 GPU
4GB RAM
64GB storage
Up to 512GB via MicroSD
Triple rear cameras: 13MP (main) + 5MP (ultra-wide) + 2MP (depth)
8MP front camera
Dual-SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 n
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou
Rear-mounted fingerprint scanner
3.5mm audio jack
Micro USB
EMUI 10.1 (Android 10)
5,000mAh battery
159.07 x 74.06 x 9.04mm
185g
Midnight Black, Emerald Green, Phantom Purple