Name: Ascend Y300
Brand: Huawei

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Camera

The camera on the Huawei Ascend Y300 is pretty good and impressed us during our review period. The new device from Huawei supports a 5MP camera at the back and a 0.3MP front facing snapper.

For a device that costs this little we were shocked to see the clean albeit slightly fuzzy images produced from a 'budget' camera.

Open up the built in camera app and you are presented with a very iOS looking set up, with the polished chrome looking icons, accompanied by the silver switch to flip between sill pictures and video.

The camera works best in clear daylight where the subject you are shooting is well lit, as the device struggled slightly in low light conditions.

The colour reproduction in the photos we took were bright and clear. The photos were nice to look at however they are a little noisy and dark.

The digital zoom worked well, but again there was noisy all over the picture from the software.

If you are holding the phone vertically you will see a downwards pointing arrow at the top – swipe down and you will be presented with all the options you can tinker with before taking a photo.

Needless to say the notification menu is disabled when in the camera mode so you only see what you are expecting to when you swipe down to access the menu.

Automatic mode works well for a wide variety of situations but if you want to go more in depth you can change the settings for the scene mode, ISO, exposure, picture quality and picture size.

You can also toggle GPS tags, a visual grid for framing, and the timer on or off. Additionally to all the above you have the option to specifically choose the desired white balance for your shot.

There are also a handful of filters which can add some arty effects to your pictures, although it must be stated these are not the trendy Instagram type of filters more like the retro mono and sepia effects that you may have encountered at some point on the first digital point and shoot cameras.

It should be noted that unlike Huawei's sister device the Ascend P2, the option for HDR images is not included on the Ascend Y300.

The camera also sports a panorama feature that worked really well. Don't expect anything ground-breaking in terms of quality, but it will produce an decent picture non the less.

The camera faired less favourably in low light, really struggling to find detail, and blurring pictures even with a relatively steady hand.

The flash was also worrying as the Ascend Y300 was unable to take even half decent photos unless the subject was really close and still.

One thing to note would be the physical noise produced from the camera when focusing and taking pictures. At first we were worried the phone might be malfunctioning, but the clicking noise seems just be the camera physically moving components to produce the image.