Huawei's latest mid-range smartphone, the Huawei Nova 3i, was just recently launched here in the SEA region. We've had it for a few days and put it through its paces. Before I talk about what we thought about the phone and its usage, let's go over the specs:
Build
Dimensions: 157.6 x 75.2 x 7.6 mm (6.20 x 2.96 x 0.30 in), which makes it bigger than the P20 but slightly smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus and the Nokia 7 Plus.
Weight: 169g - It's lighter than both the Nova P20 and iPhone 8 Plus.
Resolution: 1080x2340
PPI: 409 - higher than the P20 or the Nokia 7 PlusHardware
Processor: HiSilicon Kirin 710, octa-core. 4 with 2.2 Ghz, and the other 4 with 1.7 Ghz
GPU: Mali-G51 MP4
RAM: 4GB. The P20 has 6GB
Internal storage: 128GB, expandable with a Micro-SD card up to 256GBCamera
Rear: Dual
Maximum resolution: 16 megapixels. The Huawei P20 can do 40 (which is insane). The Nokia 7 Plus can do 13.
f/2.2
LED flash
HDR
Panorama
Video at 30fps, 1080pFront: Dual
Max resolution: 24 megapixels
HDR
Video at 1080pFeatures
3.5 mm jack HUZZAH!
Loud speaker, which is decently loud and clear if a little thin sounding
WiFi 802.11
Bluetooth 4.2
Micro-USB 2.0 BOO! C'mon it's 2018. That's 2007 technology. Even the Nokia 7 Plus has USB-Type C now.
Fingerprint sensor on the back where it should be. And it's snappy and very accurate.
Accelerometer
Gyro
Proximity Sensor
Compass
Battery: 3340 mAh, non-removable
SIM 1 and 2 - Nano
3G
4G/LTESoftware
Android 8.1
EMUI 8.2Comes in black, pearl white, and a blue/purple gradient
First off, just from the looks of the phone, it doesn't look like a budget phone. It actually looks like a flaghship model with the aluminum body and glass back. It looks absolutely gorgeous and it feels super premium in your hand. But because it has a glass back, you have to make sure to never, ever drop it. It's scratch resistant, but I doubt it'd survive a high fall onto a hard surface. And it is a massive fingerprint magnet. And the NTC sticker is ugly as sin. That said, you're probably going to put a case on it. The case that comes with it is clear so you still see the beautiful glass back but of course, it won't feel its premiumness.
As with all phones these days, it does have a notch. It does take some getting used to, but it isn't deal breaking even if you were using a notchless phone for the longest time. There are apps that don't play well with the notch just yet.
One of the major decision-making points of today's smartphone consumer is the camera quality. Thankfully, the Nova 3i camera is good enough as a daily driver. It's decent, especially for the price. With bright lighting, the images turn out fine. When your room isn't very well lit, everything turns grainy and blurry and colors get kinda flat.
We know that the Huawei P9 also has two cameras but the main difference is on the P9, one camera is an RGB sensor and the other is a monochromatic sensor. The reason being the monochromatic camera primarily deals with the amount of light of the image because it doesn't care about color. That's the RGB's camera's job. So the P9's cameras can work in tandem with much more information to enhance the images. The iPhone 7 has two cameras for depth mapping, pretty much. We don't know how the Nova 3i utilizes its dual cameras but it's likely similar to the way the iPhone 7 utilizes dual cameras. And it works pretty well, giving your pictures real depth (AKA blurs everything that you're not focusing on).
There's are pro-like camera options for those who really want to fine tune their mobile photography experience. We personally tend to stick to the auto modes, and those images turned out a little too oversaturated, but because you've got pro feature options, you can fix that right up.
If you're not the type to fiddle with these settings but want a more customizable experience, you can download presets directly from the phone app, which I kinda find amusing. We downloaded a "good food" preset and took some oversaturated pictures of Hot Star chicken.
The dual front cameras are interesting. They exist just for the stereoscopic functionalities. This enables the AR lens, which admittedly does a lot of impressive things. It has the standard face filters, but it also has animated faces called 3D QMoji, similar to what Apple has on the iPhone X. But to me, by far, the most impressive is the extremely quick background removal. I've seen high end webcams for streaming that has more trouble handling background removal. Sure, the Huawei background removal isn't very clean but the fact that it can do it at all is very impressive.
Charging up to 100% from about 10% took 3 hours. The charging symbol placement is really weird, right smack dab on that notch. I didn't even know that had any kind of display.
Overall usability, with EMUI 8.2, is fairly decent. For a couple years now, my daily driver has been a Huawei P9, whose default EMUI sucked so much. I had to use a 3rd party launcher that had an app dock. The Nova 3i does have the option to make use an app dock and that has me sold immediately.
Apps launch fairly snappy. You can take a picture from a closed phone in about 3.37 seconds. For gaming, the phone really surprised me. Framerates were really good. Gameplay was smooth and the phone was respnsive.. Pokémon GO performs decently, even though the GPS gets lost every now and again. Games like Tekken Mobile and Mobile Legends performed flawlessly with no noticeable drops in framerate. I haven't tested PUBG yet because the phone seems to be incapable of downloading the games. Anything over 1GB times out. It could be our net though. Thanks, PLDT.
All in all, for the price, it's a solid midrange phone. It has a decent camera and has some really fun features, and it looks gorgeous. The Huawei Nova 3i really does impress.