Huawei Mercury Ice Review

Introduction:

Despite failed attempt after failed attempt, well-known companies continue to feel that their brand power is strong enough to launch an MVNO. Huge brands such as ESPN and Best Buy have tried and failed, but that isn’t enough to stop Radio Shack from taking their cuts at the MVNO game. While their service is not limited to smartphones, their “unlimited” data and music offerings are certainly geared to those higher-spec’d devices. Radio Shack has turned to Huawei (Waa-way)- another large company looking to make their mark on the US wireless industry- to launch this new service.

The Huawei Mercury Ice is the same device found on Cricket, but with a pearl white paint job that earns it the Ice tag line. For $150 off contract the Mercury Ice will get you a decent 4” display, 8-megapixel camera and Android 2.3. It comes with a 4GB memory card, 3GB of which are dedicated to the Muve Music service offered with Radio Shack’s plans.

Design:

The non-descript white body and silver trim all surround a 4” 480x584 display, with the familiar four Android capacitive keys down below. Overall the phone just feels a bit cheap to us, in no small part due to the creaky, hard plastic. The buttons around the side offer enough travel and feel, but we would prefer that the power button traveled a bit deeper like the volume buttons do.



You can compare the Huawei Mercury Ice with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Display:

With a respectable 245ppi density, the 4” FWVGA display is relatively good for a device of this caliber. It doesn’t stand up to bright light very well however, and unfortunately it was not as responsive as we would have liked.

User Interface and Software:

The Mercury Ice runs Android 2.3.6, and Huawei utilizes aHome themes to allow for customization of the device. The user can also choose the default Android look, though that only applies to the home screen and the app drawer remains skinned. The notification bar features handy toggle switches for popular options.



As you might expect from a cheap device, the Mercury Ice is loaded up with all kinds of bloatware. Some are useful, like Documents to Go and Swipe, others are questionable like some Gameloft games and a security app, while others are just downright unneeded. You’ll find a few Radio Shack apps, as well as the Cricket Storefront (app store) along with the Muve Music App.

It should be noted that the GSM cousin to the Mercury Ice, the Honor, was updated to Android 4.0 more than 6 months ago, so we don’t hold out much hope for an ICS update to the Mercury Ice.

Processor and Memory:

With half a gig of RAM and a single core 1.4 GHz processor, the Mercury Ice does a decent job of keeping up with Gingerbread. There are some 3D elements to the animations, and the Mercury Ice does not hiccup on them. There is 4GB of ROM, and 2GB of internal storage available to the user. The microSD slot can officially accommodate cards up to 32GB.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
Huawei Mercury Ice	2119	4017	3,2
LG Optimus L7	1886	2842	19,2
Samsung Galaxy Ace 2	1953	4095	32,4
HTC Desire V	1807	2866	19,7

Internet and Connectivity:

With the stock Gingerbread browser and Adobe Flash the Huawei Mercury Ice can handle most things the internet will throw at you. Speed, however, is not its thing. Scrolling is choppy and slow, and while double tapping or pinching to zoom both work the whole page reformats when you do so. Third party browsers are available via the Play Store, but options are more limited since the Mercury Ice runs Gingerbread.



The Mercury Ice runs on Cricket’s network, which borrows from Sprint, so the Ice is a CDMA device. It is 3G capable, though only supports the slower EVDO Rev. 0 standard. It has other predictable connectivity options, such as Bluetooth (v2.1+EDR), GOS and Wi-Fi.

Camera:

Huawei has fitted the Mercury Ice with an 8-megapixel camera and LED flash. For a mid-level device like the Mercury Ice the 8MP sensor is fairly high and the results weren’t all that bad. The camera didn’t do so well with details in the distance, but color reproduction, macro and close-up shots were quite good. It didn’t perform as well indoors, even with good lighting. The Mercury Ice can shoot video at 720p and again results were better than expected, though not up to par with higher end devices.


Huawei Mercury Ice Sample Video:



Multimedia:

One of the big selling points of Radio Shack’s new offering is the Muve Music subscription, which allows users unlimited song, ringtone and ringback tone downloads on the handset. The concept is good enough, and the content is respectable though not anywhere near what you’d find on iTunes or Google Play Music. We had some stability issues with the application as well, often receiving a force close when trying to browse the music catalog. The music downloaded only seems accessible via the Muve music player, which annoyingly doesn’t offer a status bar icon or a widget to quickly change tracks or stop music.

Call Quality:

Callers were very displeased with the Huawei Mercury Ice, calling it “one of the poorest” handsets we’ve tested. Their complaints were many, but the biggest issues were echo, hollowness and nasally sounding tones. They noted that they had to concentrate to carry on a conversation with us, even though we were both sitting alone in a quiet room. While the Mercury Ice wasn’t the best phone we’ve ever tested, it was a far cry from the worst as their voice was generally plenty loud with good sound reproduction.

Battery:

The 1900mAh battery is rated for 6.5 hours of talk time, but we found that it drained pretty quickly during our testing.

Service Plan:

One way MVNO’s typically differentiate themselves from the competition is by offering unique services, or discounted rates. Unfortunately Radio Shack offers none of that, and as far as we can tell their plans mirror Cricket plans exactly. Ultimately, this appears to be a re-brand right down to the phone offered (Cricket offers the original, black Huawei Mercury, albeit at $50 more). Unlimited plans are $50 and $60, with the extra $10 bumping you from 1GB of un-throttled data up to 2.5GB and the ability to tether. If you want the Mercury than we can understand going with Radio Shack, as it’ll save you $50, but with identical plans and phones like the iPhone and HTC One V available from Cricket we fail to see what Radio Shack’s play here is.

Conclusion:

In the end the Huawei Mercury Ice is a rather unspectacular phone; its performance is sufficient but the operating system outdated and call quality suspect. At just $150 with no contract the price is right, but in the growingly competitive pre-paid space there are better phones with better networks available on better plans. Some MVNO’s start things off with a bang by offering ultra-competitive plans or high-end devices; Radio Shack chose to do neither with their plans nor the Huawei Mercury Ice. As a simple re-brand this MVNO might be a bit easier to operate, but we have to ask: with no special services or devices, why bother?

Android 2.3.6
Build M886V100R001C431B899SP02

Huawei Mercury Ice Video Review: