Huawei IDEOS X5 available from Dick Smith for $349

Posted by Buzz Moody on February 18th, 2011 4:43 PM | 49 Comments

Update: Huawei OZ were nice enough to offer us a review unit as soon as they can get one. So you’ll hear our thoughts in the near future.

A little over 2 months ago Huawei Australia announced they would be launching their new IDEOS X5 & X6 Android smartphones here. Now you can head into your local Dick Smith store (as the X5 isn’t available online) and purchase one of the fruits of their labour. The IDEOS X5 is only available from Dick Smith for a reasonable pricetag of $349. Huawei have always said they’d provide the best specs they could for an acceptable price and the IDEOS X5 is living up to that promise.

HSPA+ 900/2100MHz
Android 2.2
3.8″ TFT Capacitive Display (800×480)
2/4GB Internal Memory
5MP Camera
720P video recording
800MHz Qualcomm Scorpion CPU w/ Adreno 205 GPU
WiFi b/g/n

We’re not going to lie, those are some amazing specs for $350. What do you think?

Thanks: Edwin

Dick Smith

Huawei

IDEOS

IDEOS X5

Launch

squidgyg

Ill be getting one…. hopefully….eventually.

iidna

looks like cj are selling it according to there twitter page : Huawei X5: there are less than 300 available in stock across all stores, so get in quick. Call your closest store: http://goo.gl/iC5od

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1350786733 Jacob Bullen

Ugly.

Dylan

How so?

http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Anderton/504726871 David Anderton

if these come out cheap on virgin i think they will sell bigtime
Griff

Damn! What a bargain!

http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

I reckon. Bloody ripper!
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Anderton/504726871 David Anderton

is that completely outright or is it a prepaid deal?

http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

Outright

Grunger

Cool bananas!
Not bad specs at all. Almost as good as my Desire Z.
http://www.facebook.com/the.chaotic.djentleman Ilija Vrtaric

very nice looking phone, decent specs……. I’d buy one!
Annoying Old Fart

One of those rare occasions where something twice the price is twice as good… I’d buy one, but I’m still enjoying my Ideos.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1332994767 Dylan Waghorne

amazing value for money
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1624724299 Brodie Daff

Just wondering how this company we’ve barely heard of compared to the big names can bring out devices at prices you’d expect to attempt at rivaling the Wildfire. With hardware like this, the price would have it rival nearly anything on the market.

http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

Actually..

Huawei parts are in heaps of phones on the market today, they’re a silent market leader. They’ve just decided to make their own devices with their company name. Sure they’re not the best looking devices, but their prices are much lower than the competitions.

We’ll find out just how good it is when we review it.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1651837329 Tomas Donovic

It is sort of like what HTC did, back in the day….
Edit: They also do lots of stuff in the infrastructure side of things as well.
MaxP

Any word on that review, Buzz?
http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

Nope

Anonymous

Unfortunately, the pricing will also have a lot to do with labour conditions in China…

Jake Oliver

Heh, bring on the australian release of the x6

http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

It’s coming in Q2
Anonymous

This is the phone that I’m waiting to see…

EtherSpin

great move Huawei .. keep it up and you’ll be up there with the big boys, this is a very tempting deal.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1624724299 Brodie Daff

Just noticed it’s stated as QVGA on Dick Smith’s website. Wups.

http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

Haha, nice catch. They’ve most likely just copied that page from another phone and added the specs they know and missed the screen type.

Because 480*800 != QVGA, not even close.

Jcocks

Well, with this baby at $349…. I’d imagine the X6 will (when it’s released) retail for about 450 – 500 bucks…and that may well be my next handset. I only just got my ideos tho, and am loving it….so not in a hurry to upgrade…

http://www.facebook.com/people/Lopao-Lopaolo/100000693322209 Lopao Lopaolo

500 bucks for an X6 isnt a bargain. I would rather buy an overseas stock SGS or Desire HD for that money

AM

Great phone for $349! Any idea if they will upgrade these to 2.3 and then Ice Cream

http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

Not 100% sure on future upgrades, I’ll find out ASAP

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1332994767 Dylan Waghorne

I’d think GB would be a possibility, not sure about ice cream, though.

http://twitter.com/ponzored Richard

If they upgrade this to Gingerbread, I would sell my Nexus S and use this instead! Great price, will really put pressure on other prepaid ranges at carriers – eg. who would buy a 3.2″ Android 2.1 with 240×320 res (HTC Wildfire @ Telstra for $299) when you can buy this?
Yianni

Awesome phone specs wise. Arguably the best phone in the ~$350 range.

The only show stopper is the lack of WiFi Hotspot on launch but with the promise of adding it via an update in May. This is what the NZ version says so I’m assuming the Aussie version will be the same? I hope I’m wrong though.

When you guys get the phone for review could you please look in to the WiFi Hotspot feature and check if its there and if its not find out why it’s not available on launch.

http://www.ben.geek.nz/2011/02/2degrees-huawei-ideos-x5-review/
Initially I couldn’t find the settings for Android 2.2′s much publicised WiFi hotspot function, so I put in a call to the PR company to ask about it. They politely informed me that within the PR material (that I never read, but really should), was a note saying that hotspot functionality will be coming in a software update by the end of May 2011.
http://twitter.com/gfieldew geoff fieldew

Was at Dick Smith Watergardens yesterday and they didn’t have any. Looks like it’s a great, low cost, introduction to android fone – assuming it has the full ‘with Google’ experience and not to much skinning.

Hey

It’s sort of uncertain at the moment.
A preview done by a foreign tech blog stated that it had a custom skin.
They provided a video proving that.
The uncertainty comes from the fact that only the ‘carrier’ ones will have this skin.
Regardless of software, excellent buy.
http://ausdroid.net Buzz Moody

The ones demoed late last year were plain Android 2.2.

The Dick Smith I went to yesterday also didn’t have any, whether stock is only just being sent out?

Hey

A guy on Whirlpool called Dick Smith regarding the release of the X5 and the response he got was that it would be available early March.

Padoo

Is it possible to root this phone and install custom rom? Sorry not very familiar with this brand.

Hey

We don’t know for sure but………………………….
Huawei doesn’t have a history of locking down their phones.

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Grunger

Hi guys, I’m not too sure if this is the correct thread to mention that Crazy John is also getting them from next week and will be selling them for $349 unlocked as well.
Pingback: Huawei X5 heading to Crazy John’s stores tomorrow, $349 outright or $29 cap | Ausdroid
Silent_Fang

Does anyone know if the wifi issues reported with the early pre-release models has been fixed? I would hate to buy it and find out I can’t use wifi properly…

ben

yes they appear to have a lot of wifi issues but some work perfectly so it probably depends on your wifi modem or connection settings.
dshan

I initially had bad WiFi problems with my X5 – every time it went to sleep it lost its WiFi connection. I was ready to take it back to Dick Smith. But then I found out there’s a hidden Android setting in WiFi settings that by default is set to disconnect whenever it goes to sleep… (Of all the dumb defaults!) It’s in Settings>Wireless & Network settings>WiFi Settings>[menu button]>Advanced>WiFi Sleep Policy.

Once I changed that to “never” disconnect WiFi the WiFi-disconnect-on-sleep problems stopped and WiFi is now much better. (But not quite perfect, it still sometimes, not often but occasionally, loses its WiFi connection in the middle of web browsing or somesuch, but it usually picks it up again by itself almost immediately.)

I notice there’s a new Android build for the U8800 (X5) available on the Huawei site as of 23/3/11, but the docs on installing it are written in Chinglish and don’t seem to work anyway. It’s unclear (no documentation I could find) what this new build is (2.2.2?, 2.3?, something else?) and what things it fixes, hopefully it’ll be distributed over the air soon.

Josh_au

hello dshan, i’ve just come home with my X5 – it’s going to be my international roaming phone when I go OS and i was just about to tear Huawei a new one re: the WIFI!! Woo hoo – now it’s fixed , thanks heaps!!

Ben

yeah it will be in the dick smith warehouse by the 1st of March and then will be distributed to all there stores which would take a couple of days or weeks depending on location.

Billyld

i was emailed by dick smith that it will be available for purchase at a large rang of stores on 1/3/2011. i guess might hit main stores right on March 1st, anyway i will give a try here in gold coast.

Revamped

Don’t buy this phone. While I haven’t had any of the WiFi issues that many other’s have complained about, mine have been worse.

I picked up the X5 yesterday at a Dick Smith in suburban Melbourne, charged it up and started setting up & customising (no wifi at this point) only to find the unit would randomly, and often, crash & reboot, regardless of what I was doing. Hell, it would happen even when idling or on power-save. I’d be walking along and all of the sudden I’d feel it vibrate, then I’d have a look to find it rebooting.

So returned the unit to Dick Smith for a replacement assuming it was a one-off hardware issue, only to find the replacement unit crashed as well – maybe not as much, but still enough to make it unuseable.

Tried firmware update, says it’s up to date.

Contacted Huawei, they told me I needed to go to return it to the retailer for repairs.

A very frustrating episode, and I’ve lost faith in Huawei, especially after similar bugs with their wireless internet interfaces and impossible to find updates.

Moral of the story is – you get what you pay for. I was so looking forward to these good-value specs and feeling a bit let down, especially since I enjoyed everything the phone did offer minus the fatal flaws.

http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Anderton/504726871 David Anderton

take it back, third time lucky..

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