Huawei Nova review: A OnePlus 3 killer? Not quite

Huawei smartphone launches seem to be a regular occurrence these days. We’ve already had three handsets this year, and now we have the intriguingly well-specced Huawei Nova, alongside its plus-sized brother, the Nova Plus.

Here, I’m looking at the smaller Huawei Nova, and it’s uncommonly suave for a mid-ranged smartphone. With its glossy front, minimal screen bezel and slightly textured metal back, it’s wonderfully good looking, even if it is a little tricky to keep a grip on it.

There’s something oddly familiar about the Nova. It looks just like any old smartphone from the front, sans home button, but from the rear, memories of the Nexus 6P come flooding back, especially with that circular fingerprint reader and the inset strip surrounding the camera. It’s not a bad archetype for starters, and not surprising, given that the Nexus 6P is another Huawei-made phone. Altogether, it’s a smarter look than much of the mid-range competition these days.

Switch it on, and the Huawei Nova continues to impress. With its ultra-high contrast ratio of 1,494:1, the 1,920 x 1,080 display is not only sharp but exudes impact and pops right off the screen. The IPS was able to display 100% of the sRGB colour gamut, too, ensuring, rich, vibrant colours across the board.

Peak brightness wasn’t quite so impressive at 428cd/m2. It’s moderately usable outside in the autumn sunshine, bringing it roughly in line with the AMOLED-based screen of the OnePlus 3, but I have few complaints with it otherwise. The screen is exceedingly easy on the eye.

Performance

Performance is more tricky to judge definitively. We’ve again had some issues with Huawei sending locked-off review units that refuse to run our usual benchmarking apps.

That means I’ll have to return and update the review once our unit is unlocked. I was able to run the Peacekeeper JavaScript benchmark, however, which returned a respectable score of 818, and first impressions are of a reasonably nippy smartphone.

The Nova speeds through menu screens during typical use, and launching and flitting between apps feels super responsive. Exactly what I’d expect from an Octa-core 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor paired with 3GB of RAM, in other words.

I wasn’t able to run the gaming-specific GFXBench GL GPU tests either, but the  Snapdragon’s Adreno 556 GPU coped with all the games I threw at it. Sky Force Reloaded played without the slightest hitch, even when the action got a little frantic and I had no issues playing simpler games such as Threes! and Angry Birds 2.

The Huawei Nova does a decent job at squeezing the most juice out of its 3,020mAh battery. It lasted 13hrs 32mins in our continuous video-playback test with the screen set to a brightness of 170cd/m2 and flight mode engaged. Translated to real-world use, that’s more than enough to coast through the entire working day, and it beats the larger Nexus 6P by more than an hour. If you’re looking for more battery oomph, though, the OnePlus 3 lasts even longer in this test, at 16hrs 56mins.

Camera

The Nova’s 12-megapixel rear camera is possibly its weakest area. Although the specifications look decent enough – it has phase-detect autofocus, and a reasonably bright aperture of f/2.2 – its image quality isn’t the best.

In outdoor shots, shadows looked excessively dark and the phone’s HDR mode failed to fix the problem. Shots would have benefitted from optical image stabilisation, a feature only available with its bigger brother.

With indoor shots, things looked up. Images were reasonably crisp and clear, with noise in shadow areas handled particularly well. Take a look at the stuffed bear in our low-light test shot and you’ll notice a little bit of fuzziness around the ears, but other than that, low-light shots looked fine.

Either way, it can’t match the quality of either the OnePlus 3 or the Nexus 6P, both of which produce more detail-rich shots, with less obvious noise and over-processing. The Nova isn’t a phone for the avid photographer, but it serves the purpose for the occasional snaps.

Emotion UI

It’s worth mentioning Huawei’s Emotion UI Android overlay at this point. It’s been a little too intrusive for my tastes in the past, but it isn’t anywhere near as offensive as it once was.

For instance, where once all homescreen icons were surrounded by an obtrusive ugly box, that restriction has now been lifted, and its overall look is much cleaner and easier on the eye as a result.

I’d still rather Huawei offer the choice between its own software overlay and stock Android at installation. The notifications menu is still dreadful, and I don’t much care for the stripping out of the app drawer, but at least it seems that the firm is taking feedback on board.

Verdict

Despite the niggles, there’s plenty to like about Huawei’s latest Nova handset. With its vibrant, curved-edge screen, smooth performance and battery life that will last you a full working day, it should serve you well, but the problem is it’s up against some pretty fierce competition in this price bracket.

The one advantage it holds is its more pocketable size, but at £335, I’m of the opinion that the slightly cheaper OnePlus 3 is the better buy, while the Nexus 6P is the better option if you’re after the best camera quality.