The Huawei Ascend G330 is a fairly uninspiring phone, but is designed to appeal to those that want to spend only a little on a smartphone. These people may want something more than a £70 effort from the bargain bin, but won't break the bank.

Which makes the G330 a little bit of an oddity, especially when compared to the barnstorming Ascend G300 predecessor, which rightly holds its place in our top mobile phones list.

When it was first announced the G330 was touted at being around 60% more than the G300 – although the specs have been given a boost to compensate - but the Chinese firm now expects it to land at around £100 SIM-free.

This means we're looking at a dual-core 1GHz processor, a 5MP camera and Ice Cream Sandwich on board as standard.

It's also rocking a nice 512MB of RAM to help out that meatier CPU, and also packs 4GB of internal storageand a 1,500mAh battery.

But enough of the internals – what's the phone actually like in the hand? The same 'uninspiring' term pops up again here, as it's got some fairly cheap (if acceptable) chassis effects.

The plastic shell feels OK in the hand, the top-placed power and lock button is easy enough to hit (although could do with a little more travel) and the three soft keys to control the Android 4.0 OS are pleasant enough to hit.

There's also a slight attempt at an overlay here, although it's not the fancy-pants Emotion UI that we're going to be getting on the more impressive Huawei handsets.

The Ascend G330 allows you to control some of the connectivity elements from the pull-down notification bar, which we're a big fan of as it's much easier to pop on Bluetooth or turn off mobile data this way.

Early Verdict

We're not sure how we would recommend this phone. It reminds us of the ZTE Grand X, which is a misplaced handset if ever we saw one.

It's going to be fighting with the likes of the HTC Desire C, and that's not a fight you'd want to enter into with the might of the name and Sense UI on board.

Some people might like the fact most of the Ascend G330 is stock Android, as the Holo Theme is actually pretty cool. But for us, there's nothing to really write home about here – although we will be testing the gaming prowess Huawei is so proud of, thanks to the Adreno 200 GPU on offer.

The Chinese firm is mounting an assault on the budget end of the market with the Ascend G330 landing in the UK at the start of December.

The Ascend G330 builds of the successful Huawei Ascend G300 which offered impressive specs for a smartphone sporting a £100 price tag.

TalkTalk will be the first, and only, network to offer the Ascend G330 before the year is out, with other carriers promised in the new year.

Reasonable

Contracts will start at a reasonable £10 per month, including a free handset, and Huawei expects retailers to offer the Ascend G330 for around £100 SIM-free.

The Ascend G330 packs a 4-inch 480x800 display, 1GHz dual-core processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, 5MP camera, microSD slot and comes running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Huawei announced the G330 alongside the larger Ascend G600 at IFA 2012 in Berlin, although there's currently no word on when (or if) its big brother will come to Britain.

This microphone connects to your iOS device's 30-pin dock connector. Though it mimics the iPhone 4's aesthetic, its plastic silver trim doesn't immediately scream quality.

On the bottom edge is a headphone socket to take input from devices - including musical instruments - with a line out. On the right side is a mini USB port, through which your iOS device can be kept powered up from an external battery. But the port isn't wired for syncing data with a PC or Mac, so you'll need to detach Mikey to connect a different cable for that.

The mic pivots through more than 180° to face the source of sound. The only physical control is a three-position gain switch.

Auto mode proved extremely sensitive when surrounded by noise. Even a light brush of the iPhone's body triggered a light show from the three red LEDs that indicate the input is being clipped. Setting the gain switch to deal with loud noises fixed this by lowering the input's gain.

Even speech next to a busy road was clear, though it inevitably became much quieter in the process. Make sure you have an app such as GarageBand in case you need to boost it in post-production.

It's designed for iPhone 4 and 4S, fourth-gen iPod touch running iOS 6, and iPad 2 and 3. Blue doesn't mention iPhone 5, but we had no trouble using the mic with Apple's £25 adaptor.

Inevitably, that makes the mic protrude further from the phone, and while that's ungainly, it isn't a bothersome issue in practice.