As more people move to smartphones,it means more people are constantly hooked to the Web. In such a scenario,it is only natural to abandon local storage and live off the cloud. Enter Huaweis cloud phones Sonic and Ideos X3,which come with 16GB of cloud storage. Compare this with existing services like Dropbox,which offer only 2GB of free storage. Both the phones come with similar cloud-based features. To get your 16GB of online storage,you only need to register once with a user name and password in Cloud+,which is Huaweis cloud storage app. You send files to the cloud using this facility. The app is well-designed and should be easy even for beginners. Folders like photos and music are already available,and new folders can be created easily. On 3G,the folders took around two to five seconds to open. This can get a little annoying,but it is no worse than waiting for any Webpage to load in the browser. Once you begin uploading files,they appear in the file transfers section of the app. Managing uploads and downloads is also fairly straightforward. One can also synchronise contacts and back up ones system using the cloud application. Another feature is Message+,which allows you to chat with your friends over the internet for free. The most interesting feature of Huawei is the phone-finder,a service that allows you to track a lost phone and erase all personal data. The process is simple,users need to log into www.hicloud.com. The phone-finder option allows users to remotely password-lock the phone,backup and delete data and scare thieves. You can send a pop-up message on the phone with an alarm,which beeps and vibrates for two minutes. The service managed to track this unit and even showed its exact location on Google Maps. All this will work only if the phone is connected to the internet. Suppose the phone was stolen by a smart thief who disconnected the internet,then it will be a good time to buy a new phone. Huawei Sonic The Huawei Sonic is bigger than the Huawei Ideos X3. It is light and fits nicely in ones hand or pocket. The 3.5 inch capacitive screen is good for most content but its 320 x 480 pixel resolution is not as good as some of its competition like the Dell XCD35. Below the screen are four capacitive buttons,which is a good move considering how hard buttons wear off over time. The phone comes with Androids Gingerbread (version 2.3.5) and Huawei has got the user interface right. Without installing any additional applications,the user-interface is slick,something which many other phones cannot boast of. Huawei has also wisely bundled popular applications like Facebook,Twitter and even an office suite Documents To Go,which costs around Rs 700 in the Android market. Most users will be happy with the apps that are already provided and wouldnt feel compelled to buy more. The messaging app deserves mention as it provides the option of marking each message or thread for deleting. Several messaging apps lack this option,which makes bulk deleting difficult. However,users should look elsewhere for a good camera as the Sonics 3.2 megapixel camera is average. Also,the speakers are not great for music. There were no problems with call clarity or signal reception. The phone enjoys an above-average battery life and will last more than a day and a half on medium use. The Huawei Sonic costs Rs 9,229 Huawei Ideos X3 Software-wise,the Ideos X3 is identical to the Sonic. The difference lies in the design and hardware. The X3 is smaller than the Sonic. In this budget,there is a paucity of Android phones with a front camera. For the video-calling crowd,this is a good choice. Unlike the Sonic,Ideos X3 comes with one physical home button and the rest are capacitive buttons. The cameras are not great but the phone feels solid and stable. Ideos X3 has a smaller 1200 mAh battery. Like many other Android phones at this price,the X3 suffers from poor battery issues. Go for this phone only if you like its size. The Sonic outperforms it in almost all departments. One minor issue with both phones is that the charger ports are placed at the bottom. A side port would have been more convenient. It costs Rs 10,229. Both these phones are good choices in this price range. They make a good impression with their cloud services and friendly user-interface. Huawei may not have its competitors brand value,but these phones certainly pack a feature-powered punch.
