Huawei recently launched its two new smartphones under the Nova series. The two smartphones are Nova 3 and Nova 3i. The former takes the head-on challenge with the OnePlus 6 while the latter is under 20K budget. Talking about the Huawei Nova 3, company has added everything they can offer under the 30K range like Dual Camera setup on both back and front with AI, Fast Charging,6.3-inch, 2340×1080 19.5:9 IPS LCD Display and much more. Let’s check how the new Huawei Nova 3 performs and where it stands among the list of those.
Design and Build:
The design section resembles the most of Huawei and Honor smartphones we’ve seen in 2018. A glass back with Purple color finish offering a shiny two colors reminiscent. Although the shiny glass makes a delightful impact.
The front panel is same as most of the smartphone with small bezels and a notch at the top. A small LED is hidden beside the earpiece grille. The edges around the smartphone are of metal but have a glossy paint.
The rear panel has a vertical dual camera at the top along with LED flash and AI Camera engraved. A Huawei logo is also placed at the bottom and to maintain a design all the written piece are vertically aligned.
Overall the design is catchy but the glass back made the smartphone a bit slippery. Thanks to the additional rubber cover provided by the company one can use to overcome the free falls.
Display:
Huawei Nova 3 offers a 6.3-inch IPS LCD FHD display with 2340×1080 resolution and 2.5D curved glass. The color reproduction we got on the device is pretty crisp and vibrant. The brightness is okay but needs to set as per the choice. The sunlight readability is good and it can also be viewed from different viewing angles.
Hardware and Software:
Huawei Nova 3 is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC (4x Cortex-A73 at 2.36GHz + 4x Cortex-A53 at 1.84GHz) with Mali-G72 MP12 GPU. It also has 6GB of RAM and 128G of inbuilt storage. It’s a dual SIM smartphone which offers 4G VoLTE connectivity on both the SIM. Other connectivity options are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, Type-C USB OTG and GPS.
Talking about the software section, Huawei Nova 3 runs on Android 8.1 Oreo-based EMUI 8.2 on the top of it. The skin offers decent options for customizations to the users. It’s fast, responsive and easy to use. The only drawback is it comes with few bloatwares like Amazon, Games and more.
Performance:
The paired chipset with the 6GB of RAM offers super fast response and usage. The multitasking ability great and the smartphone was able to tackles tons of apps running in the background.
We played the current trending games like PUBG Mobile and Asphalt on it and the gameplay was smooth. We also didn’t find any type of lag, frame rate dropping or heating issue while using the smartphone.
The Face Recognition system on this smartphone is fast and can unlock the smartphone instantly. Surprisingly the face recognition worked under the low light conditions and its great. The fingerprint sensor also helps a lot but with face recognition, it was very less used.
The benchmark performance of the smartphone was great. Despite not being a flagship, the smartphone’s scores were comparable to the high-end smartphones like OnePlus 6 and Asus Zenfone 5Z. It scored 1919/6608 on the Geekbench SIngle-Core/Multi-Core. The AnTuTu score was 204141.
Apart from all, the most used connectivity options worked very well. There was no call drop issue or connectivity issue while using the smartphone with Airtel 4G. The audio and video quality on the smartphone was good.
Camera:
Huawei Nova 3 sports a Dual Camera setup of a 16MP primary sensor with f/1.8 +and 24MP secondary sensor of f/1.8 monochrome. The dual lens is supported by a single LED flash. The rear camera captured beautiful images in daylight as well as low light conditions. The captured images have a good amount of details but the brightness level seems bit high. The rear camera also captures 4K video with 30 fps.
On the front, its sports a 24MP primary sensor with f/2.0 along with a 2MP secondary depth sensor. The front dual camera setup also captures beautiful selfies with natural color tone. And I found that the front camera has better color reproduction than the rear one. The front camera can capture up to 1080p videos with 30 fps.
All the four camera is under with AI settings which helps the user to capture perfect images. It can sense different environments and suggest the mode which can be helpful. The AI also offers several additional modes and filters like the Snapchat and Instagram.
Battery:
The Huawei Nova 3 is backed by 3750mAh battery with support for Huawei’s SuperCharge feature. The battery offers a full day battery with moderate usage which is great. The phne does come with an SuperCharge support but the given charger only offers fast charging. If you want the Supercharge feature, you’ll need to buy the charger additionally. It also offers several battery saving mode options to the users, so they can use it for the longer period than normal by cutting out some features and services. But unfortunately, Super Charger is to be brought separately as it doesn’t pack in the box.
Gizmoverdict:
At a price point of Rs. 34,999, Huawei Nova 3 offers a powerful configuration enhanced with the four AI cameras. It covers all the section starting from design, performance, features, camera, and battery. In the fight of high-end smartphones offers by OnePlus, Vivo, Oppo, Honor, Samsung and more, it holds its position strongly. Its one of the best all rounded smartphone one can go for.
