Why You Can Trust CNET Huawei Valiant (MetroPCS) review: Despite its shortcomings, good for the price
MetroPCS' Huawei Valiant is one of the better $80 off-contract Android smartphones, despite some notable drawbacks.
For $80 off-contract, MetroPCS' Huawei Valiant is an affordable Android 4.1 handset. However, set your expectations accordingly. This phone has strong call quality and consistent 3G speeds over T-Mobile's GSM network (since T-Mobile purchased Metro). However, 4G LTE connectivity is absent, and the camera's lack of autofocus could be a deal breaker for some, even though image quality is high for a 3-megapixel shooter. My device also showed signs of software instability that made apps like the camera, gallery, and Google Maps flicker.
Huawei Valiant (MetroPCS)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
If you can look past the stunted camera and moments of instability, the Valiant is a decent ultrabudget performer. However, if you can afford to spend a little more, I recommend scoping out the Huawei Vitria and Samsung Galaxy Exhibit, both $130 options with LTE.
Design and build
The Valiant has a simple, but comfortable, design, mostly due to its rounded spines and corners and soft-touch backing. While the phone's face is glossy black (and quite thick of bezel), its navy-blue posterior shakes up the usual basic black.
With dimensions of 4.96 inches tall by 2.51 inches wide by 0.45 inch thick, the Valiant has a hearty build that's nevertheless comfortable to hold, pocket, and stow in a blazer, bag, or purse. The 4.94-ounce weight is certainly heavier than some, but its solidity fits with the phone's proportions.
Most of the $80 Android phones you can buy today sport 3.5-inch screens. The Valiant cranks it up a notch with a 4-inch display that's colorful and bright, despite its smaller color palette (262K instead of the 16 million you'll find in higher-end phones). Most eyes won't notice an appreciable difference when looking at Web sites, photos, and navigating around. The 800x480-pixel resolution is just fine for the screen's dimensions.
Huawei's usual three capacitive navigational buttons rest below the display. Press and hold the Menu key to bring up recent apps, and the Home button to invoke Google Now. You'll take a screenshot by pressing and holding the power button on the phone's crown and the Volume Down button on the right spine. Charging takes place on the phone's left edge.
A 3.2-megapixel camera lives on the back, and the microSD slot, capable of holding 32GB in external storage, lives below the back cover. Incidentally, the back panel is easy to take off and put back on thanks to a helpful indentation at its base.
OS and apps
The Valiant has the upper hand over its $80 rivals because of its more up-to-date Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system; others use Android 4.0. Huawei more subtly makes its presence known through a lighter customized layer than manufacturers like LG, HTC, and especially Samsung use.
You'll see Huawei's custom four-directional lock screen that lets you swipe to unlock the phone to the camera, dialer, and message inbox in addition to the home screen. There's some styling on app icons, the notifications menu, and the settings options, but other than that, Huawei's version of the OS is fairly straightforward and easy to navigate around. For a more artistic look than the wallpapers present, Huawei's Themes app gives you a few other options.
If you're familiar with Android and with MetroPCS, then you won't be at all surprised at the apps you see preinstalled. Google's regular bucket includes mainstays we've cone to rely on, like its Maps and Navigation, search, Chrome, and YouTube. There's the Google Play store for content purchasing and downloads, and an option to jump onto Google's social network, Google+.
MetroPCS loads on a bunch of carrier-specific apps to help you manage your account and use visual voice mail. Of course you've also got essentials in the calendar and calculator, the music player and file manager, and a handy FM radio. There's a sound recorder preloaded, too.
Although you won't see it in the app tray, the Swype virtual keyboard is another preinstalled app that you'll use every time you go to type anything. With it, you can trace words in addition to typing them out with your thumbs and fingers. You can disable Swype if you'd like, adjust its settings, and use Google's voice dictation.
Cameras and video
The camera is one major area where Huawei had to compromise in order to hit the lower price point. Color reproduction is strong on the 3-megapixel shooter, but where it falters most for me is that it's fixed-focus. That means if you're not so hot at judging distances and sharpness, you're going to be snapping a lot of blurry photos.
You should also be aware that there's no flash here, which isn't unusual for an entry-level smartphone committed to a starter price. A front-facing camera isn't in the cards, either. However, phone owners will find a handful of booster modes and filters in the native camera app, including panorama, geotagging, and white-balance presets.
The controls are easy to use, at least, and switching from camera to camcorder requires a simple onscreen flick of the finger. Low-resolution VGA video capture is your best choice; the other option is to limit the clip length for multimedia messaging.
Both the native camera and gallery apps acted rocky at times, flickering more than once while I was reviewing or taking photos, and not responding to my gestures. Rebooting the phone or app fixed the problem, but the instability occurred more than once during my testing process. It didn't really get in my way, but it was an annoyance.
It's possible this was an isolated incident that affected just my review unit, but I also had some issues with the Huawei Vitria as well. At the very least, you should be aware of possible bugginess.
You can check out photos from other smartphones in our comparison gallery.
Call quality
I tested the Valiant in San Francisco. Due to MetroPCS's merger with new parent company T-Mobile, the Valiant is a GSM phone (850/900/1800/1900MHz bands) instead of a device that uses CDMA technology.
The network switch works to the Valiant's favor. Call quality was very strong overall for both sides. Volume sounded loud enough at about 80 percent of maximum levels, but that's when I was inside a fairly quiet office. I'd have a harder time hearing with more aural competition. Voices sounded rich and the line was clear during the vast majority of my calls. The only weirdness cropped up once in the form of feedback that echoed my voice back to me for a few seconds before righting itself again.
My main test caller praised the Valiant's audio quality for its clarity and volume, but noted that my voice distorted on peaks. He graded it a B+/A-.
Huawei Valiant call quality sample Listen now:
Speakerphone was also impressive when I held the phone at hip level, but once again that was with volume cranked up to the limit. This caused voices to sound a little "hot" and the phone to buzz slightly in my hand. Other than that, audio was surprisingly natural, and completely clear.
Performance: Data, processor, battery life
Although there's no LTE support for the Valiant, the move to T-Mobile's network does give it faster 3G than you'll find on other MetroPCS phones. You might not guess it from looking at the Speedtest.net diagnostic numbers, though. Those consistently ranged between around 0.5Mbps and 1Mbps down and under 1Mbps up. Real-world tests were better, with even graphically rich Web sites like CNET's full desktop site loading in about 45 seconds.
Sure, that's pretty long when you compare it with 4G LTE speeds, but other phones I've tested have dragged on for long minutes, so this is acceptable for the patient.
On the processor side, the Valiant has a 1GHz dual-core CPU. It isn't very peppy. In real-world tests, I sometimes tapped a screen icon twice because I wasn't sure that my gesture had registered the first time. Apps loaded more slowly, and it takes at least a full second for the screen to rotate from portrait to landscape mode. Apps also load noticeably more slowly than on midrange and premium phones.
In diagnostic scoring, the Valiant got a 2,379 Quadrant score, compared with around 5,000 for the unlocked midrange ZTE Nubia 5 and about 23,000 for the high-end Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
Remember that instability I mentioned before? It also affected the game Beach Buggy Blitz, which wouldn't completely load. I'd hear the music, but it took a (very short) reboot each time to get the graphics to appear. The game looked sharp, clear, and responsive when I played it, but I noticed that other popular titles like Temple Run and Riptide GP 2 didn't appear in the Valiant's Google Play store.
| Huawei Valiant | MetroPCS (3G) |
|---|---|
| Install CNET mobile app (5MB) | 36.6 seconds |
| Load up CNET mobile app | 11.6 seconds |
| CNET mobile site load | 11.3 seconds |
| CNET desktop site load | 43.4 seconds |
| Boot time to lock screen | 11.6 seconds |
| Camera boot time | 3 seconds |
| Camera, shot-to-shot time | 1.5 seconds, no autofocus |
The Valiant has a rated battery life of 10 hours and a standby time of 23.3 days on its 1,750mAh battery. Anecdotally, it lasted from morning until night before needing a charge. During our official battery drain test for continuous talk time, it lasted 8.95 hours.
Storage is sparse on this handset. You'll get 4GB total, which means you'll have only about half that, 1.9GB, to yourself. I strongly suggest investing in a microSD card for storage. The phone will accept up to 32GB extra. As for radiation level, the FCC measures a digital SAR of 0.60 watts per kilogram.
Buy it or skip it?
Phones that cost just $80 are few and far between, and when you weigh the pros and cons, the Valiant stands out as the best of an admittedly meager bunch. The larger screen size, in-hand feel, and call quality are solid for the low price, and 3G speeds, while not the fastest, are at least consistent. However, I have a hard time moving past the fixed-focus camera. It's reasonable for an entry-level phone to shuck luxuries like a front-facing camera and flash, but without at least touch focus, image quality is much more of a crap shoot. In addition, the phone's bouts of instability make me nervous.
If you want to stick very close to this price, the Kyocera Hydro with Cricket and Boost Mobile at least has a flash. The older Kyocera Rise with Virgin Mobile and the Kyocera Milano with Boost Mobile also cost about the same, but have their own set of problems and a smaller screen.
If you absolutely need to stay in this price range, go ahead and get the Valiant. However, if your budget can stretch a little more, keep shopping.