Initially, Y was a purely low-cost series of smartphones without a twist. A kind of option for parents who have decided to leave feature phones behind, but are not completely sure of the ability to curb a modern smartphone. Pushing through the crowd of “state employees” is another challenge, so at the beginning of 2018, Huawei changed the vector and began to produce youth smartphones under the “Y” flags.

Instead of the expensive and boring grey-black bricks that filled the store shelves at that time, the Chinese brand was marked by a couple of nice devices with a frameless design that was fashionable at that time and unusual leather-like backs. We have already seen this design in Huawei Mate smartphones, but those were flagship smartphones with Porsche design, and here we are talking about the entry level. It is worth noting that in modern models released in the second half of 2020, there are fewer such frills, and the appearance of the devices began to resemble P Smart models with their mother-of-pearl panels.


But in the ranks of representatives of Y you can find a device with NFC. For hundred-dollar smartphones, this is a curiosity. Otherwise, these are well-balanced, but unremarkable devices with basic hardware (low-cost Snapdragon / Mediatek processor, 2-3 GB of RAM), simple IPS displays and the most ordinary cameras with 2 or 3 modules. This is a purely everyday smartphone for schoolchildren and students who want a boring bright gadget, but are not ready to overpay for it.

The Y line is constantly changing and evolving, so it would be wrong to classify all models with the same brush. At the beginning of 2021, the Huawei Y lineup has 15 models, which are easier to divide into 3 categories. The first will be old models of 2017 and 2018, which are not of particular interest today. The "designer" models like Y5 and Y6 are sent to the second group. Well, in the third most recent group, the boundaries have blurred, the design has become universal, and the range has expanded. It has become more like another popular Huawei P Smart line.