Huawei Ascend Y300 is a Galaxy S III Mini competitor priced from £59.95 on PAYG, hits the UK tomorrow

If you’re in the UK and really like the specs of the Samsung Galaxy S III Mini but don’t want to shell out that much cash for it, here’s something for you. That is, if you don’t mind not buying a Samsung, and if you’re OK with some specs being a little bit different (though not by much). On the other hand, you’ll be paying a lot less. Interested?

Good. Meet the Huawei Ascend Y300. First announced last October in Brazil, it’s now made its way to the UK, where it will be available to buy starting tomorrow. Carphone Warehouse will be offering it, and for pretty amazing prices. You’ll need to pay just £69.95 to get it on Pay as you go, and that amount includes a £10 top-up. If you’re upgrading an existing prepaid account, it will only cost you £59.95.

That’s incredibly cheap for any phone. For a smartphone with decent specs, though, it’s a really good deal. So what do you get for that amount of cash?

• 4-inch 480×800 Touchscreen
• 1 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Processor
• 5 MP Rear Camera
• VGA front camera
• 512 MB of RAM
• 4 GB of Internal Storage
• MicroSD Card Slot
• 7.2 Mbps HSPA
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• GPS
• A 1,730 mAh Battery
• It Runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Compared to the aforementioned Galaxy S III Mini, the only big downside is the amount of RAM, which is halved. But, if you can live with that – say you don’t multitask that much – everything else is certainly bearable. The chipset architecture is Cortex-A5 and not Cortex-A9 like in the S III Mini, so performance probably won’t be 100% identical, but it should be close enough. The amount of internal storage is half that in the Samsung, but with a microSD card slot readily available, that shouldn’t matter too much. Oh, and the Y300′s battery is 230 mAh bigger than that in the Galaxy S III Mini, while they run the same version of Android (4.1 Jelly Bean).via