Gadgetory

hi I'm Kent German senior managing editor here at cnet today we're to take a first look at the qua way pal this is a new phone for metro pcs now I know you're looking at this phone and you're thinking is this really 2013 am i showing you this well it is and you know this is metro pcs so the carrier tends to go a little lower end on their phones and I know that not everybody needs a device it's really fancy you don't need and not everyone need something that does a million things has all this stuff on it so there is a place and a time for a phone that just makes calls and sends messages but I really don't think the Huawei pal is the one you want it doesn't make very good calls actually and that really is its primary and pretty much only function it is just way too basic it takes that simplicity and runs with it way way way way way farther than it should so now I will talk about the design for a minute though it is a very simple candy bar it's really from another decade actually it has a very small display not much bigger than kosis stamp its color I don't know actually how many hues is on it and but it is simple i mean it's serviceable the menu system is deadly easy it's just got icons on the first page and in a list based menu system inside you'll be very very familiar if you use the phone for a lot of years it is very light in the hand it's so small i could almost close my hand completely around it you almost you really don't notice it's there below the display there's a big navigation array i kind of liked it it is it has a nice retro feel it reminds me of something when i first started reviewing phones here at CNN like 10 years ago and as circular navigation toggle it's really big it's raised above the surface of the phone so it's very easy to use there's an ok button in the middle a couple of soft keys one you can program as a shortcut to a feature of your choice or the talk and ends power buttons there's a clear button and then there's a dedicated speaker feel control so again spacious very easy to use simple to master keypad buttons down below you know there is no out there is no keyboard there's no physical keyboard there's no / g board so you're going to be texting using only this new health and america keep it up on the top there's a 3.5 millimeter headset jack over on this side there's a micro USB charger port that is only used for a charger doesn't have USB sinking not that you're in there's really much to put on this phone anyway but just keep that in mind there's no dedicated volume rocker so when you're on a call you're going to have to use that navigation targul to change the volume and interestingly this isn't a huge deal but just thing I noticed interestingly you actually have to go side to side to raise the vault raising lower the volume not up and down so it's a little counterintuitive on the back there's a single speaker actually pretty good output but a call quality isn't that great as I said inside the phone there's no camera there's just a few megabytes of memory there's a 1000 contact phone book and you can pair of contacts with photos but how are you going to get photos on the phone and that's another matter you're gonna have to actually have somebody text them to you since you can't there's no memory card slot there's no camera and there's no USB sinking there is a web browser so that of course is deadly sim pode only is going to serve up the really most stripped-down mobile web pages I'm navigating around with that toggle it just really felt like I was living 10 years ago but it is there so you can use it this phone way too simple is easy to use but just two simple as far as features in design I'm Ken German here are the first look at the far away Powell for metropcs