Honor Nova 3 Review

Huawei in the recent past have been coming with some of the best devices in the market especially with the Honor 9 – series with Honor 9i, Honor 9 Lite, and other devices. Honor’s best device in the past I can recall is the Honor 6 which was the best one against the OnePlus One. In current days we are having the Huawei coming with latest devices every day, today we are having Honor Nova 3 which was launched a couple of days ago, let us see if Huawei can do some miracle with the device in the review ahead.

Design & Build

Honor decided to keep the style statement of the Honor Nova 3 according to the latest in the trend. The device checks all the marks with the 18:9 ratio display, notch, and over 90% screen to body ratio. The rear of the device speaks in the design with its color changing back, which for sure makes it look premium and upmarket.

Materials of choice by Huawei have been the best when it has a glass back with a fingerprint scanner, dual camera setup on the top left corner on the back, Huawei branding on the bottom left. The device comes surrounded by metal all around. On the front, we have the notch on the display which has all the sensors, front camera, and the earpiece. Even on the bottom, there are not many bezels which give the phone an overall premium feel.

Display

The display of the Huawei Nova 3 is a 6.3 – inch panel which is an IPS panel. The resolution of the display is dull – HD+. The display is capable of producing a great color pallet which is vibrant and the color gradients in the picture are quite smooth. On the front side, we lack any kind of protection, but from the price point, we think that the phone at least has a third party protection both at the front and at the back. Still, you must use a screen guard and a case to protect both the glasses on the phone.

The phone looks a lot like the iPhone X due to the notch and the form factor of the device. The screen is not affected much by the notch, as on the software side Huawei have taken care of the areas which might be affected in the application wherein the 18:9 ratio helps. There are not many issues in the display and we can easily look at the display especially in the daytimes, while during the pitch dark situations due to the IPS LCD panel the display is not able to go much dark and hence can be hurting to the eyes.

Performance

Honor Nova 3 comes with the best performer of 2017 the Kirin 970 which competes with the Snapdragon 835 SoC. Although the chipset is old, it can easily handle most of the games such as the PUBG, Asphalt 8, and other games. The phone gets a GPU turbo feature which is made with the help of AI. The device is offered with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

In real-world performance, the Honor Nova 3 is a capable performer where it can easily stand against the top of line products. The device can easily multitask with more than 6 – 7 apps and no issues foreseen. Although if you go above 6 – 7 apps then reloading issue is observed, which is not a nice factor.

The phone is capable of handling most of the situations at ease, and we have all the games playing the best. But the real issue comes when we see the device against the top of the line devices in 2018 where it is not able to compete up to the mark with the Snapdragon 845 powering them. But if you will be using the phone for casual games, and for usual office work than the phone is going to perform really well.

Camera

In the camera department, we have dual camera setup both at the front and at the back, this makes the phone another device with quad camera setup. Talking about the digits on the front unit we have a 24MP primary unit while another 2MP unit which will be used for depth data. Rear digits are quite similar with the primary unit being 16MP color sensor while the second sensor is a 24MP unit which is basically a Monochrome sensor.

Images both from the rear setup and the front setup come out quite great and we have a good amount of saturation on the images. The HDR mode does quite well and makes the device work the best in terms of dynamic range. The pictures especially with the Monochrome sensors turn out quite well and helps you to capture the best in class images.

The device lacks OIS which makes it a tad behind in terms of low light images. During the night both the front and rear camera produces some good images, but they tend to be shaky and you need to have the best of stable hands to get the best images. The device is even capable of recording 4K resolution videos both from the front and rear camera units.

Battery

Nova 3 rocks a 3750 mAh battery which handles all the different duties. The device can easily be stretched to a full day with nominal usage, but if you are going to game on the phone then you will have to top up the phone at the end of the day, while if you play games like a real maniac then you will for sure be having a charger connected always, as the phone will barely last above 4 & ½ hours on constant gaming.

Verdict

Huawei Nova 3 is a device with a good camera unit, best in terms of design, battery life is average, but lacks a bit in performance. Overall the phone is a nice package keeping the price in the mind. The phone basically targets the last year flagships which will be around this price tag after the price cut. What do you think about the Nova 3? Will you prefer the Nova 3 over other devices? Do let us know in the comment section below.