Huawei Nova
€399 (£TBC) consumer.huawei.com/uk
Huawei has gone from strength to strength in the UK, with recent releases, including the flagship Huawei P9, proving popular – but it isn’t done yet. Here we look at its latest offering: the Nova.
Design
Sporting 2.5D glass and a curvy body this doesn’t look or feel like a mid-range smartphone. The display meets the aluminium unibody perfectly,
providing users with a seamless design that allows for smooth swipes from the edge.
This isn’t a large phone, measuring 141.2x69.1x7.1mm and weighing 146g. It has incredibly thin bezels and since it doesn’t have any physical buttons, the display takes up a larger portion of the front. The Nova’s brushed metal finish on the side and sandblasted rear feels great in the hand. On the back users will find a circular fingerprint scanner similar to that found on the Honor 8, and it is a step away from the squareshaped reader used on the Huawei P9.
In terms of colours, the Huawei is available to buy in Apple-esque shades of ‘Mystic’ silver, ‘Titanium’ grey and ‘Prestige’ gold.
Features
The crisp and vibrant 5in full-HD (1920x1080) IPS display performs well in low-light conditions due to the inclusion of a blue light filter. It’s similar to Apple’s Night Shift functionality and, while it does a good job, it’s a little less subtle than Apple’s offering with a noticeably orange tint. We would also like to be able to automatically turn it on at sunset and off at sunrise, because manually toggling it on and off on a daily basis isn’t ideal.
In terms of power, the Nova has a 2GHz octacore Snapdragon 625 processor, coupled with 3GB of RAM. During testing, we didn’t experience any lag when swiping between menus, scrolling through Facebook or browsing the web.
That’s not to say we didn’t have any issues with performance. While it’s fine for basic tasks, the limitations of the built-in tech become clear when
playing games, especially more graphically intense titles such as Assassin’s Creed Pirates. It handles standard 3D platformer titles such as Crossy Road without any problems, though.
While the Snapdragon 625 provides a snappy user experience, it’s not the only reason Huawei decided to use it: the firm says it offers users 30 percent longer battery life than the Snapdragon 615. This, coupled with a substantial 3020mAh non-removable battery, easily lasts a full day. It’s charged, like most other Huawei-branded smartphones, via USB-C.
With regards to storage, you get 32GB out of the box, which is expandable thanks to Huawei’s ‘Hybrid slot’, which offers either microSD (up to 256GB) and Nano- or dual-SIM capabilities, depending on your requirements.
Performance
As with all the phones we review at PC Advisor, we put the Nova through various tests. The first of these was Geekbench 4, which measures a smartphone’s general performance. This benchmark has recently been updated though, which makes it hard to compare performance with the majority of phones we’ve tested using Geekbench 3.
What we can compare it to, however, is the Xiaomi Redmi Pro. The Huawei Nova scored a slightly disappointing 842 in single-core and 3048 in multi-core: the Redmi Pro recorded 1764 and 4539 respectively. It’s a similar story with Sony’s latest smartphone, the Sony Xperia XZ (page 20), which scored 1582 and 3807 respectively. Huawei’s
processor is enough to get by, but it’s not the top of the pile by a long shot.
Our next test is GFXBench, which tests a smartphone’s graphics performance. The Nova scored 23fps in T-Rex and 10fps in Manhattan. In this respect, the Huawei is just behind the
mid-range Redmi Pro, which recorded 35- and 15fps respectively, but has been blown out of the water by the similarly priced OnePlus 3, which scored 59and 46fps respectively.
Finally, we test JetStream in Chrome to ensure a fair test (it doesn’t have to run in Chrome). Android smartphones are generally slower than iOS devices when browsing, as the iPhone 7 scored a whopping 160.2. With this giving you some idea of what a high-end smartphone can offer, the Nova scored 30.2, putting it in the same league as the Sony Xperia XA (26.5) and the Nextbit Robin (29.7).
Features
The Nova’s cameras are decent for a mid-range smartphone. The rear-facing offering is a 12Mp snapper with 1.25μm pixels and an aperture of f/2.2.
As you can see from our example (opposite) photos are good, as long as you have got sufficient light. The picture of St Pancras Hotel was taken on a dull and rainy day. Colour reproduction is decent, although could be improved in places, but the amount of detail is impressive. You can see individual bricks on the hotel walls, and can even read the street sign. There’s no motion blur either, despite people walking along the street.
The front-facing camera isn’t to be sniffed at either – an 8Mp camera with f/2.0 and similarly decent results in low-light conditions. While there’s no dedicated front-facing flash like on other Huawei smartphones, those that need more light can simply use the Nova’s display as a flash. Note that doing so may leave you with an extremely white,
reflective face. The quality is decent though, and will suffice for the likes of Skype and Snapchat.
In terms of video recording, the mid-range Nova surprisingly offers 4K at 30fps – Huawei opted against including it in its P9 and P9 Plus handsets. The quality isn’t mind-blowing, though. We’d recommend sticking to 1080p as this takes in more colour, making videos lighter and much smaller in size.
Software
The Nova comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow complete with Huawei’s own Emotion UI (EMUI for short) overlay. While some aren’t fans of skins that redesign Google’s OS, we like it from the
timeline-style notification centre to the circular icons used throughout the operating system, although it does take some getting used to.
Verdict
The Nova is an underwhelming phone: the processor isn’t as quick as similarly-priced handsets, the graphical capabilities aren’t great and the quality of low-light photography is less than expected. What we do like is the design: it’s sleek, gorgeous and extremely comfortable to use. It definitely doesn’t look like a sub-£350 smartphone. However, with companies such as OnePlus dominating the mid-range scene with high-end internals, it’s hard to recommend this distinctly average Huawei.
Specifications
5in (1920x1080) IPS display Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor Adreno 506 GPU 3GB RAM; 32GB storage 12Mp main camera, dual LED flash 8Mp front-facing camera 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.1 4G LTE Nano-SIM GPS 3020mAh battery 141.2x69.1x7.1mm 146g