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Huawei has successfully put together a solid mid-range phone that offers great performance for its price.

The Huawei Mercury is the best prepaid smartphone in America right now.

The Mercury is nevertheless a nice package for Cricket's off-contract customers, and the price is comparable to what you'll find on other similar carriers.

I was expecting another run of the mill Android smartphone for the budget crowd like their previous devices. I couldn’t have been more wrong ... I quickly realized this was a much better phone than I’d thought.

Of course, some people will have limited budgets, and need to consider a handset like this, but our advice is to look elsewhere. You'll get something more inspiring second-hand than you will new here.

It is a nonetheless a good smartphone, if you don’t mind much about games and video playback. The user experience is fluid, and it never slowed down on me, except when I started to push the graphics or the CPU in benchmarks. For the rest (email, browser, user interface…) it has done well.

On one hand, the Honor is a fairly solid mid-range device. On the other, battery life was disappointing, as was the camrea. And those are pretty big negatives.

It can be bought for about $370 off contract, and at that price point, no other brand name company would be able to match its specs. However, you get what you pay for, so you will have to get used to its not-so-sensitive display and hope that your camera is free of glitches.