Huawei Nova Plus review: Bigger is better

Plus-sized smartphones normally have quite a lot in common with their diminutive counterparts, but the DNA running through Huawei’s Nova and Nova Plus handsets couldn’t be more different. Whereas the regular Nova looks like a miniature Nexus 6P, the Nova Plus actually has more in common with Huawei’s Mate 8 and Mate S handsets.

Indeed, Huawei’s shifted the Nova Plus’ camera down a little so it’s in a more central position on the back of the phone, and the rear-facing fingerprint reader is now much squarer. It still has a metal-crafted body, though, and its high-end construction feels much fancier than the regular Nova.

Huawei Nova Plus: Display

Fire it up and you’re welcomed by its gorgeous 5.5in, 1,920 x 1,080 IPS display. That’s the same resolution you’ll find on the regular Nova, which technically means the Nova Plus is less sharp than its little brother. However, you’d be hard-pushed to see the difference if you held each phone up side by side, as icons and text looked equally sharp on both phones from a normal viewing distance.

It’s an impressive display, too, as its IPS panel covers 96.5% of the sRGB colour gamut. While slightly lower than the Nova’s perfect score of 100% coverage, colours still look rich and vibrant across the board. Coupled with its high peak brightness of 498cd/m2 and excellent contrast ratio of 1,265:1, images really shine, with colours popping right off the screen.

Huawei Nova Plus review: Performance

The one thing the Nova Plus does have in common with its little brother is its underlying hardware. Powered by an octa-core 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor and 3GB of RAM, the Nova Plus is an admirable mid-range performer. With Geekbench 4 scores of 833 and 3,021 for single- and multi-core tests respectively, this phone is perfectly suited for pretty much any performance-hogging application you throw at it. It was swift and responsive in general use, and web browsing was pretty nippy as well, with a score of 827 in the Peacekeeper JavaScript test.

Gaming performance was similarly impressive. A 10fps average in GFXBench GL’s onscreen Manhattan 3 test might not sound like much, but in real-world use, its Adreno 556 GPU managed to run almost any game I threw at it, with titles such as Sky Force Reloaded performing as intended, without any hiccups even during heavy bouts of frenetic dogfighting.

The only mildly disappointing thing about the Nova Plus is its battery life. With a huge 3,340mAh battery at its disposal, I was expecting it to far exceed the Nova in our continuous video-playback test, but it only managed a fairly average 11hrs 7mins when I set the screen brightness to our standard level of 170cd/m2 – two hours shorter than its little brother.

That's a shame, as I was hoping the Nova Plus would have enough stamina to compete with its similarly priced rival, the OnePlus 3. Alas, it falls well short of the OnePlus’ 16hrs 56mins, making it less reliable over the course of a day.

Huawei Nova Plus review: Camera

Luckily, the Nova Plus redeems itself somewhat with its excellent 16-megapixel camera. The regular Nova only had a 12-megapixel sensor, and having tested both, I’d say the Plus’ was definitely worth the extra price of admission. With a reasonably bright aperture of f/2.2, outdoor picture quality was excellent. Shots were sharp and detailed, and switching on HDR only made them better.

The Nova Plus also has another advantage over its smaller sibling: optical image stabilisation (OIS). This helps minimise the effects of hand-shake, particularly when taking pictures in low light, and it really showed in my indoor test photos. Putting both phones head to head, the difference is striking. Shots taken on the Nova Plus are far more detailed than the regular Nova, and colours looked much richer too.

Huawei Nova Plus review: Verdict

The only thing standing in the way of the Nova Plus is the price. UK pricing had yet to be confirmed at time of writing, but it’s currently slated to cost €429 in Europe when it launches later this month. That roughly equates to around £390, but I’ll update this review with official pricing as soon as it’s available. 

Even so, that puts the Nova Plus at a bit of a disadvantage, for while its screen, performance and camera are all fantastic, the OnePlus 3 does everything a lot better for less. I’d definitely recommend the Nova Plus over the regular Nova, but if you’re looking for a great mid-range phablet, the OnePlus 3 is still the way to go – not only is it considerably faster, but its battery life is also significantly better.