A ‘hole’ lot to talk about the Huawei nova 4
The era of the punch-hole smartphone has dawned upon us. Seriously, it was just a matter of time before something like this actually happened in the never-ending battle for display supremacy (if you still haven’t had enough of it). Huawei is among the first to (finally) bring out this innovation into the smartphone market with the Nova 4, its first top-line offering for 2019 that also kicks off another interesting year in the segment (its sub-brand, Honor, also released a similar device, the View 20, which we’ll discuss soon enough as well).
Naturally, the biggest talking point on the Nova 4 is the punch-hole design, as you can see in the image below. That replaces the polarising notch and gives more space to see content. (I remember during the media briefing for the device, Huawei made one very good specific point on one of the cons of notches: on games, it may block enemies just waiting to snipe on an unsuspecting you.) The entire front is practically an all-screen design, save for that teeny-weeny bezel on top and a rather thick one below. Its crisp FullView screen is listed a generous 6.4 inches, and you won’t feel its bulk thanks to its slim build.
Now, to zoom in on the star: that punch-hole at the upper-left corner. That cut-out (yet another name for it) houses a 25MP single-lens front camera, and you’d have to wonder how they were able to cram everything they needed to put in there.
According to Huawei, it took them about 12 months and around
20,000 prototypes before finally arriving at the one we’re experiencing on the Nova 4.
And like the first time we saw the notch on a smartphone, it may not take that long for you to get accustomed to it. It will indeed feel new since we’re used to a notch like the iPhone (or other Huawei devices) or a hole-free upper portion like Samsung’s Galaxy devices. There will still be critics of it — doesn’t feel weird to have a hole floating up there? — but overall I like the idea; personally, putting the punch-hole on the left rather than centre or right seems like the best option for it.
Right behind is a triple-lens camera, which is becoming commonplace and making dual-lens systems so yesterday. It’s a bit of a downgrade from Huawei’s flagship series, having a 20MP primary camera, 2MP depth sensor and 16MP wide-angle lens. There is a version with a 48MP main lens, but that isn’t available in the UAE (why?!).
In favourable lighting conditions, photos will come out as you’d expect it to be: clear and the shots don’t seem to be that overexposed, considering the light-gathering capabilities of smartphones nowadays. As it gets darker, there will be some noise if you zoom in on a picture. The selfie camera also works well, but that overexposure and over-smoothing of faces also come into play here.
Another head-scratcher was the decision to stick with the Kirin 970 processor — the same one used in the Nova 3. That didn’t make sense to me since (a) Huawei’s known to put out in-your-face specs and (b) the Honor View 20 has the Kirin 980 chip used in the Mate 20 series. I was told, though, that this configuration was best-suited for the device. So, yeah; we’re not going to dive into the technical stuff you may be bored to hear, but I think this is more of a putting-the-right-parts-to-make-it-work decision, as well as a move to bring down costs for the masses (the Nova 4 is priced at only Dh1,799, which is a really good deal).
In our standard one-hour YouTube-at-full-brightness test, 12 per cent of juice was sapped out. That’s pretty fair, and it wasn’t until the following morning that I had to dig in for its charger after heavily using it the previous day.
You’ll miss some flagship specs on it, but the Huawei Nova 4 is what exactly it pegs it to be: a mid-ranger that tries to go with the innovation of the times. And it’d make a nice gift on its launch date, Valentine’s Day.