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Huawei promised CNET some 4G LTE action, and with the Huawei Activa 4G, the phone maker is ready to deliver.
If you’re thinking this is the smartphone version of a certain yogurt with bifidus regularis, stop, because the Activa (pronounced “ACT-iv-uh”) is in fact Huawei’s first U.S. phone to get 4G, and it’s available starting today at MetroPCS stores.
The Android 2.3 Gingerbread phone has a 3.54-inch HVGZ touch screen (480×320 pixels), a 5-megapixel camera with flash, and comes with a 4GB microSD that’s preloaded with “Kung Fu Panda 2.” The Activa 4G will also accept microSD cards up to 32GB.
Now for the downsides: it won’t be eligible for an Android 4.0 upgrade, it’s got a slower 800MHZ Qualcomm MSM7627T processor, and weak expected battery life at just a rating of 4 hours talk time.
The price is one silver lining: $149 after a mail-in rebate (for a limited time). That’s the middle of the range for prepaid devices, and the low end of the range for both 4G-ready phones and for Android smartphones.
In truth I was hoping for a faster processor and better battery life, but we’ll have to see how the phone performs in our real-life tests.
