The Huawei Snap 2: A Budget Smartphone with a Surprisingly Great Experience

I recently had the opportunity to test out the Huawei Snap 2, a budget smartphone that promised to deliver a great experience at an affordable price. The phone's snap tube was surprisingly great, and I was excited to see how it would perform in everyday use.

One of the standout features of the Huawei Snap 2 is its battery life. The battery is just 2200 milliamps, but I found that it lasted throughout my entire day, which started at 7:00 a.m. and ended at 1:00 a.m. the next day. I was able to get in around 5 and 1/2 hours of screen on time without any issues, which is impressive considering I was using the phone extensively during that time. The battery life is definitely a strong point on the Snap 2, and I appreciated the power saving modes available in the system settings. These allowed me to customize the phone's behavior based on how long I wanted it to last, from normal smart mode to endurance mode.

The Huawei Snap 2 runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat with Huawei's Emotion UI 2.3, which is not too far removed from stock Android but does come with some notable changes. One of the most noticeable differences is the pre-installed launcher, which does not have an app drawer. This may be a disappointment for some users, who are accustomed to having access to their apps via an app drawer. However, it's easy to download a third-party launcher like Google Now if you prefer that look.

The notification shade also has its drawbacks, with some users finding the quick toggles at the top of the screen less intuitive than they would be on other devices. Additionally, the app icons are not particularly appealing, and the icons used for setting items continue this trend. On the plus side, the phone does come with the actual Google keyboard, which is a nice touch since it allows users to change the theme to Material Light or Material Dark in the settings.

The recent app switcher on the Snap 2 is also worth mentioning. While it's similar to the stock app switcher found on other Android devices, Huawei has added some useful features such as individual close buttons and a OneTouch clean button. The lock screen may not be visually appealing, but it does allow users to quickly swipe for phone, messaging, or camera apps, as well as open tools like calendar, calculator, flashlight, and clock.

One feature that I particularly enjoyed on the Snap 2 is its ability to change each volume profile by pressing the setting button after adjusting the volume. This may seem like a small thing, but it's actually a very useful feature that makes a big difference in terms of ease of use. Unfortunately, not all Android phones have this feature, and I found myself getting frustrated with other devices that forced me to navigate to the system settings just to adjust my volume.

Huawei also offers users the option to disable apps from running when the screen is off, which can be a big help in terms of battery life. This feature is particularly useful for power-conscious users who want to extend their phone's lifespan. Finally, there is a notification manager that allows users to customize which apps can send them notifications, which is another great feature.

However, not everything about the Snap 2 was to my liking. One of the most annoying features on the device is the default notification sound or music that plays whenever I received a notification from an app like Snapchat or Gmail. The phone would play a song for up to one minute, which I found to be excessive and confusing. While users may appreciate this feature, it really got under my skin.

In terms of design, the Huawei Snap 2 is available in black or white with 8 GB of internal storage for $180 on Amazon or G huawei.com. The price is a good one, but I'm not sure that this is the best option for the average user. While the Snap 2 does have some strong selling points like LTE support, a good speaker, and incredible battery life, its display performance and camera are less than impressive.

Overall, while the Huawei Snap 2 has some notable strengths, it's not necessarily the best budget smartphone on the market. Other options like the Moto G 2nd generation and Asus Zenphone 2 are just better overall devices that offer more features, better performance, and a more polished user experience. That being said, there may be users out there who would find value in the Snap 2's unique features and benefits.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enoutside of the United States there are many budget smartphones available from a wide variety of Manufacturers although the worldwide budget smartphone market is pretty competitive many of the phones intended for worldwide markets do not fully support US carriers manufacturers have found it difficult to enter the US market with budget smartphones due to the low cost of subsidized on contract phones this is left avoid in terms of what you can officially buy for under $200 in the US Huawei is trying to fill this void with a Huawei snap 2 A1 80 smartphone with support for both AT&T and T-Mobile 4G LTE so is the snap 2 worth your budget smartphone buying Buck this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my full review of the Huawei snap 2 when it comes to design the snap 2 takes a fairly simplistic approach the device is made completely a map plastic and the rear cover has a leather-like texturized finish the Finish does make the Foam feel pretty nice in the hand for budget device the edges taper ever so slightly and the leather finish makes its transition to smooth plastic the glossy plastic wrapping around the edges of the display looks nice and goes well with the smooth edges both the power and volume buttons are on the right side of the phone and have a similar glossy finish both buttons are responsive but don't feel incredibly satisfying the 5 megap rear camera is positioned towards the top right on the back of the phone right above the flash the Huawei logo appears at the center and the speaker is on the bottom left the micro USB port is on the bottom right of the phone next to the device's primary microphone the headphone jack is at the top Center slightly to the right and the secondary microphone is on the left on the front of the phone you can see a bit of Huawei branding on the bottom chin and a 2 megapixel front- facing camera at the top right there is a notification LED at the top left corner which I really appreciated there does seem to be a considerable amount of bezel especially considering that the phone uses onscreen buttons at 9.14 MM it is on the slight thicker side and it's also an average 150 g taking off the rear cover you'll find a single micro SIM slot and micro SD card slot you can expand the device's 8 GB of internal storage by using a Micro SD card up to 64 GB unfortunately you can't access the 2200 milliamp battery there's nothing all that special about the design and it's clear that Huawei has instead focused on the devices internals rather than its design that's not necessarily a bad thing but if you're looking for something more aesthetically pleasing you'll likely be disappointed the snap 2's 5- in 720p display looks okay but there is a lack of contrast and the viewing angles are not very good once you hit about 45° the brightness and quality drop significantly sunlight readability also is not very good as I had trouble reading text while Outdoors it's also kind of a fingerprint magnet despite my best efforts to keep the display free of smudges it still managed to collect fingerprints with a quad core Snapdragon 400 processor collect at 1.2 GHz and just 1 gig of RAM the phone does feel a bit sluggish when it comes to Everyday performance the benchmark scores accurately reflect the actual performance of the device as the phone scored a 17,9 51 andn 22 and 343 single core 1,150 multi-core and geekbench the phone is certainly usable but it's slowed to the point where the slowness is not only noticeable but also sometimes annoying for example the pre-loaded Google keyboard rarely kept up with what I was typing when doing Simple tasks like composing text messages this is an incredibly frustrating issue that is annoying and inconvenient there were also times when I would open an app and then go back to the launcher to find that the system removed it from memory this caused about a 2 to 3 second delay for all of my app ions to reappear the 1 GB of RAM really does hinder the performance when opening more than a couple of apps the adreno 305 GPU performs well while playing games however graphic intensive games like Asphalt 8 had lower frame rates and the occasional stutter what sets the Huawei snapch apart from similarly priced devices is its support for GSM 4G LTE networks in the United States the snap 2 supports quadband GSM 50 1900 2100 AWS for HSPA plus and LTE bands 24517 and 12 this means that the phone supports up to 4G LTE on all GSM carriers in the United States including AT&T T-Mobile and their respectable mvnos the snap 2 also has the usual GPS 80211 n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 support the rear speaker on the snap 2 sounds pretty good actually I wasn't expecting much out of a budget device but I was pleasantly surprised to find good sounding audio the speaker is fairly loud and it isn't as distorted as some other budget devices one drawback of the position is that it's easily blocked when set on a flat surface the 5 megapixel rear camera on the Huawei snap 2 did not perform well one of the key features of the snap 2 is the ability to press the volume down key twice to take a picture this is a really handy feature but the camera itself isn't very good the pictures it took were consistently out of focus and lacked sharpness the camera app is easy to use with a few different shooting modes to choose from you can manually adjust weight balance and ISO battery life on the snap tube was surprisingly great although the battery is just 2200 milliamps battery life is incredible my day starts at 7:00 a.m. and ends at 1:00 a.m. the next day and I had no trouble getting the phone to last through a full day of use and then some it's not that I wasn't using the phone during that time either as I was able to get in just under 5 and 1/2 hours of screen on time battery life is definitely a strong point on the snap 2 and I did appreciate the power saving modes in the system settings you can set it to normal smart or endurance based on how long you want the phone to last the Huawei snap 2 runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat with huawei's emotion UI 2.3 it's not too far of a departure from stock Android but Huawei did make a few notable changes the pre-installed launcher does not have an app drawer which may annoy some users you can always download a third party launcher like the Google Now launcher if you wish the notification shade also looks kind of ugly in my opinion although I do think that putting the quick toggles at the top instead of on a separate panel was a good choice the app icons don't look very good either and the icons used for setting items continue this trend Huawei did ship the phone with the actual Google keyboard though not just the AOSP Keyboard but the actual Google keyboard This is nice because you can now change the theme to material light or material dark in the settings which is what I prefer the recent app switcher is pretty similar to the stock app switcher although Huawei has added individual close buttons and a OneTouch clean button the lock screen may not be visually desirable but it does let users swipe for phone messaging or camera you can also quickly swipe up to open tools including calendar calculator flashlight and clock that's nice and all but I still prefer being able to see my notifications quickly and easily so I installed AC display which sort of emulates the Motorola active launcher I did really enjoy the ability to change each volume profile by pressing the setting button after adjusting the volume I really wish that every Android phone had this feature as it's extremely annoying to have to go into the system settings on other devices there are a few pre-installed apps that come with the Huawei snap 2 but it's not bad and you do have to keep in mind that you'll be free of any carrier bloatware Huawei does give users the options to use a simple home screen mode if you prefer to have a cleaner looking launcher I did really enjoy the ability to disable apps from running when the screen is off and I think this helps with battery life quite a bit finally there is a notification manager so you can change which apps can send you notifications this is again a really great feature that I'm glad Huawei brought to Android 4.4 the ability to tune out that annoying game that keeps sending you reminders to to play is great on the downside I wasn't very happy with the default notification sound or should I say music whenever I received a notification from apps like Snapchat or a Gmail the phone would play a song I think that's kind of excessive and I'm very confused as to why this would be the default setting I see how some users May appreciate the option to have the phone play a one minute song for their occasional text messages but for someone who receives notifications quite frequently this got annoying really quickly luckily you can change this in the settings you can pick up the Huawei snap 2 in black or white with 8 GB of internal storage for $180 on Amazon or G huawei.com that's a pretty good price but I'm afraid that there may be better options available for many users while the snap 2 does have some strong selling points like LTE support a good sounding speaker and incredible battery life I don't think that this is a good choice for the average user buying a budget smartphone officially with LTE support in the US is great but you really have to ask yourself whether you're willing to give up a lot of what makes a smartphone good the snap ch's display performance and Camera are all pretty disappointing and that makes the phone a tough sell put simply there are similarly priced options like the Moto G 2 generation and Asus Sun phone 2 that are just much better phones overall that's not to say that there isn't a market for the Huawei snap 2 but I wouldn't recommend it over the above mentioned devices thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you found it helpful or informative also please make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content and feel free to leave a comment below finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Androidoutside of the United States there are many budget smartphones available from a wide variety of Manufacturers although the worldwide budget smartphone market is pretty competitive many of the phones intended for worldwide markets do not fully support US carriers manufacturers have found it difficult to enter the US market with budget smartphones due to the low cost of subsidized on contract phones this is left avoid in terms of what you can officially buy for under $200 in the US Huawei is trying to fill this void with a Huawei snap 2 A1 80 smartphone with support for both AT&T and T-Mobile 4G LTE so is the snap 2 worth your budget smartphone buying Buck this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my full review of the Huawei snap 2 when it comes to design the snap 2 takes a fairly simplistic approach the device is made completely a map plastic and the rear cover has a leather-like texturized finish the Finish does make the Foam feel pretty nice in the hand for budget device the edges taper ever so slightly and the leather finish makes its transition to smooth plastic the glossy plastic wrapping around the edges of the display looks nice and goes well with the smooth edges both the power and volume buttons are on the right side of the phone and have a similar glossy finish both buttons are responsive but don't feel incredibly satisfying the 5 megap rear camera is positioned towards the top right on the back of the phone right above the flash the Huawei logo appears at the center and the speaker is on the bottom left the micro USB port is on the bottom right of the phone next to the device's primary microphone the headphone jack is at the top Center slightly to the right and the secondary microphone is on the left on the front of the phone you can see a bit of Huawei branding on the bottom chin and a 2 megapixel front- facing camera at the top right there is a notification LED at the top left corner which I really appreciated there does seem to be a considerable amount of bezel especially considering that the phone uses onscreen buttons at 9.14 MM it is on the slight thicker side and it's also an average 150 g taking off the rear cover you'll find a single micro SIM slot and micro SD card slot you can expand the device's 8 GB of internal storage by using a Micro SD card up to 64 GB unfortunately you can't access the 2200 milliamp battery there's nothing all that special about the design and it's clear that Huawei has instead focused on the devices internals rather than its design that's not necessarily a bad thing but if you're looking for something more aesthetically pleasing you'll likely be disappointed the snap 2's 5- in 720p display looks okay but there is a lack of contrast and the viewing angles are not very good once you hit about 45° the brightness and quality drop significantly sunlight readability also is not very good as I had trouble reading text while Outdoors it's also kind of a fingerprint magnet despite my best efforts to keep the display free of smudges it still managed to collect fingerprints with a quad core Snapdragon 400 processor collect at 1.2 GHz and just 1 gig of RAM the phone does feel a bit sluggish when it comes to Everyday performance the benchmark scores accurately reflect the actual performance of the device as the phone scored a 17,9 51 andn 22 and 343 single core 1,150 multi-core and geekbench the phone is certainly usable but it's slowed to the point where the slowness is not only noticeable but also sometimes annoying for example the pre-loaded Google keyboard rarely kept up with what I was typing when doing Simple tasks like composing text messages this is an incredibly frustrating issue that is annoying and inconvenient there were also times when I would open an app and then go back to the launcher to find that the system removed it from memory this caused about a 2 to 3 second delay for all of my app ions to reappear the 1 GB of RAM really does hinder the performance when opening more than a couple of apps the adreno 305 GPU performs well while playing games however graphic intensive games like Asphalt 8 had lower frame rates and the occasional stutter what sets the Huawei snapch apart from similarly priced devices is its support for GSM 4G LTE networks in the United States the snap 2 supports quadband GSM 50 1900 2100 AWS for HSPA plus and LTE bands 24517 and 12 this means that the phone supports up to 4G LTE on all GSM carriers in the United States including AT&T T-Mobile and their respectable mvnos the snap 2 also has the usual GPS 80211 n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 support the rear speaker on the snap 2 sounds pretty good actually I wasn't expecting much out of a budget device but I was pleasantly surprised to find good sounding audio the speaker is fairly loud and it isn't as distorted as some other budget devices one drawback of the position is that it's easily blocked when set on a flat surface the 5 megapixel rear camera on the Huawei snap 2 did not perform well one of the key features of the snap 2 is the ability to press the volume down key twice to take a picture this is a really handy feature but the camera itself isn't very good the pictures it took were consistently out of focus and lacked sharpness the camera app is easy to use with a few different shooting modes to choose from you can manually adjust weight balance and ISO battery life on the snap tube was surprisingly great although the battery is just 2200 milliamps battery life is incredible my day starts at 7:00 a.m. and ends at 1:00 a.m. the next day and I had no trouble getting the phone to last through a full day of use and then some it's not that I wasn't using the phone during that time either as I was able to get in just under 5 and 1/2 hours of screen on time battery life is definitely a strong point on the snap 2 and I did appreciate the power saving modes in the system settings you can set it to normal smart or endurance based on how long you want the phone to last the Huawei snap 2 runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat with huawei's emotion UI 2.3 it's not too far of a departure from stock Android but Huawei did make a few notable changes the pre-installed launcher does not have an app drawer which may annoy some users you can always download a third party launcher like the Google Now launcher if you wish the notification shade also looks kind of ugly in my opinion although I do think that putting the quick toggles at the top instead of on a separate panel was a good choice the app icons don't look very good either and the icons used for setting items continue this trend Huawei did ship the phone with the actual Google keyboard though not just the AOSP Keyboard but the actual Google keyboard This is nice because you can now change the theme to material light or material dark in the settings which is what I prefer the recent app switcher is pretty similar to the stock app switcher although Huawei has added individual close buttons and a OneTouch clean button the lock screen may not be visually desirable but it does let users swipe for phone messaging or camera you can also quickly swipe up to open tools including calendar calculator flashlight and clock that's nice and all but I still prefer being able to see my notifications quickly and easily so I installed AC display which sort of emulates the Motorola active launcher I did really enjoy the ability to change each volume profile by pressing the setting button after adjusting the volume I really wish that every Android phone had this feature as it's extremely annoying to have to go into the system settings on other devices there are a few pre-installed apps that come with the Huawei snap 2 but it's not bad and you do have to keep in mind that you'll be free of any carrier bloatware Huawei does give users the options to use a simple home screen mode if you prefer to have a cleaner looking launcher I did really enjoy the ability to disable apps from running when the screen is off and I think this helps with battery life quite a bit finally there is a notification manager so you can change which apps can send you notifications this is again a really great feature that I'm glad Huawei brought to Android 4.4 the ability to tune out that annoying game that keeps sending you reminders to to play is great on the downside I wasn't very happy with the default notification sound or should I say music whenever I received a notification from apps like Snapchat or a Gmail the phone would play a song I think that's kind of excessive and I'm very confused as to why this would be the default setting I see how some users May appreciate the option to have the phone play a one minute song for their occasional text messages but for someone who receives notifications quite frequently this got annoying really quickly luckily you can change this in the settings you can pick up the Huawei snap 2 in black or white with 8 GB of internal storage for $180 on Amazon or G huawei.com that's a pretty good price but I'm afraid that there may be better options available for many users while the snap 2 does have some strong selling points like LTE support a good sounding speaker and incredible battery life I don't think that this is a good choice for the average user buying a budget smartphone officially with LTE support in the US is great but you really have to ask yourself whether you're willing to give up a lot of what makes a smartphone good the snap ch's display performance and Camera are all pretty disappointing and that makes the phone a tough sell put simply there are similarly priced options like the Moto G 2 generation and Asus Sun phone 2 that are just much better phones overall that's not to say that there isn't a market for the Huawei snap 2 but I wouldn't recommend it over the above mentioned devices thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you found it helpful or informative also please make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content and feel free to leave a comment below finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Android\n"