Obi’s black Wolverine can sure beat Huawei’s colourful Ascend

In our endeavour to provide smartphone users in Kenya with insights about various smartphone brands and models, we have this time picked up devices from two players, including an established player, Huawei, and a rather new entrant in the African smartphone market, Obi Mobiles. While the Chinese company Huawei has already carved out a name for itself in Africa, Obi Mobiles is trying to capture the attention of African smartphone users with its recently introduced smartphone range named after wild animals, the animal series. The models that we have picked for the comparative review are  Huawei’s Ascend Y530 and Obi’s Wolverine S501 for reasons that would become obvious the review progresses. 

In general, Huawei's Ascend Y530 stands out as a smaller and lighter device than Obi's Wolverine S501. While Wolverine is 144x73x9.6mm and weighs 167gm, Ascend is significantly shorter (132.5x67x9.3mm) and also weighs lighter (145gm). Also, Huawei’s device comes with 4.5 inch LCD auto-rotate (G-sensor) display where as Obi’s device has a 5 inch TFT IPS Screen with capacitive touch. Both the smartphones have a screen resolution of 480X854 pixels. The Ascend has its volume keys on the left side of the phone while as in Wolverine you have the feasibility of controlling volume through keys that are rightly placed on the back side of the phone, just below the camera. Furthermore, Huawei’s Ascend Y530 comes in red, yellow, black and white (plastic back) variants where as Obi’s Wolverine comes in impressive black, leather-like cover that protects the device from cracks and scratches. At this stage, the key distinguishing features include the display screen size, the location of the volume keys and the colour options.

When it comes to operating system (OS), Obi’s Wolverine S501, in sync with technology, runs on Google Android KitKat (4.4) that gives the smartphone an accelerated touch screen and superior performance while as Huawei’s Ascend Y530 lags behind as it runs on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean that is fading as the preferred choice of smartphone users. However, Ascend is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon^TM Dual-Core 1.2GHz processor where as Wolverine by 1.2GHz Dual-Core Processor by MTK, which may give Ascend the advantage of popular perception. Furthermore, Ascend is equipped with 512MB RAM and an internal storage space of 4GB that can be expanded up to 32GB via MicroSD card. On the other hand, Wolverine comes with 1GB RAM and external memory support up to 32GB via a MicroSD card. At this stage, the key distinguishing features are a more advanced operating system and larger RAM.

To cater to users’ photography needs, Obi’s Wolverine sports a 5MP primary camera placed in the middle of the device and comes with a LED flash. It also has a 0.3MP secondary camera. Similarly, Huawei’s Ascend also comes with 5MP of primary camera in the back with a flash and 0.3MP of secondary camera. Furthermore, Obi’s Wolverine is equipped with a 3.7Li-on removable battery with 1500mAh capacity, where as Huawei’s Ascend carries a Li-on battery capacity of 1750mAh, which is advantage Ascend. However, Wolverine comes with two SIM slots, both 3G enabled, where as Ascend offers space for only one, mini SIM card. Both the phones serve the purpose by offering Bluetooth 4.0 version, WiFi and 2.0 USB slots. At this front, the distinguishing features are the battery capacity and SIM slots; if Huawei has a slight edge in battery capacity, Wolverine takes lead in terms of SIM slots.

In the spec-to-spec match Obi’s Wolverine does take lead on many important counts such as display screen size, operating system and RAM, double SIM option while slightly lagging in battery capacity. However, the biggest distinguishing point between Huawei’s Ascend Y530 and Obi’s Wolverine S501 is the the price tag that the two devices carry in Kenyan market. While Huawei’s Ascend is priced around KSh14,000, Obi’s Wolverine is a steal at little over KSh 9000, if one is ready to go with impressive black.