Introduction

Good looks, a glass back, FHD+ screen, 4 Gigs of RAM, 128GB of internal storage expandable to 400GB, a fast AI enabled Kirin 710 processor all in a package that comes at N105,000 or just about $300. This is the Huawei Nova 3i. A mid-range smartphone that Huawei wants to unseat the competition.

Specs and features

Truth be told, at first glance you’d hardly believe this device is a mid-ranger. With its premium looking design and build materials, the Nova 3i easily passes for a flagship device; where you’d find however that this isn’t in the flagship category is in its processor; the Kirin 710 SoC, the GPU which is a Mali-G51 MP4 GPU also in the packaging. It comes in a regular white box that’s hardly befitting of the device. In the box we have

• The Phone
• A second compartment that houses the
  • Sim Ejector tool
  • The user guide
  • A screen protector
  • a clear TPU case

Digging deeper into the box we have a USB A to Micro USB cable, A 5v – 2A charger and a pair of earphones.

Packaging aside, I got the black variant of this device. Really wanted the pearl white, but, never mind the black looks quite good. Let’s run through the features of this device, The Nova 3i comes with four cameras. Two in front and two behind and they all integrate AI capability thanks to the Kirin 710 processor.

The primary front facing camera is a 24MP f/2.0 aperture camera and the second camera is 2MP and is used for depth sensing camera. Photos I took with the selfie cams were good and sharp although I noticed the beauty mode was a bit on the high side. The rear cameras are 16MP f/2.2 and a 2.0 MP depth sensing camera and I can tell you straight up, for a mid-range smartphone they take very decent photos. Photos are sharp and well detailed. Although mostly saturated. This high saturation is due to the AI functionality in the cameras. I noticed every time I used the AI feature the pictures come out quite saturated. Turning the feature off, provides a more balanced color profile.

Still on the AI feature, it works well recognizing sceneries and adjusting for lighting and exposure almost instantly. It’s recognizes amongst other Plants, Food, the sky, groups etc

HDR worked quite well keeping details in the shadow and highlight well balanced. Pictures of the sky look beautiful and detailed. Fact is, if you do your browsing mostly on a mobile device the pictures taken with the Nova 3i will look astonishing and you’ll get questions from friends on what camera you’re using. If you have products for sale or you’re a beauty makeup artist, the cameras on this device should give you great images every time.

It’s also got a local FM radio built in which may is always welcomed.

Performance

The bundled Kirin 710 processor performs fast. I didn’t notice any problems while using the device for extended periods. It handles video shooting and day to day app usage like a champ. I haven’t tried games on the device yet, that would come in in another video.

The included 2340X1080P FHD+ screen looks great and its colors are beautiful. Everything on screen looks crisp and you’d be hard pressed finding issues with this screen. It’s an IPS LCD screen and it’s got some decent blacks although not as black as what you have on the OLED screens, but this is simply nit- picking. It’s a stretched out 19.5:9 aspect ratio display which is great for media consumption. The device is also quite difficult to manage in one hand and it’s quite a stretch to get to the top, thanks to the stretched-out nature of the device. The screen gets bright, very bright in direct sunlight for easy readability and we’ve also got the famous notch up top.

For those of you who hate the notch, there’s an option to hide it in the device setting so you have a more symmetrical look to the phone. Videos look great on the display and the speakers are loud and ok. Although some distortion may occur if your volume is too high.

Other Features

There’s a fingerprint scanner to the back of the device, a 3.5mm earphone jack, a micro USB port, microphone and speaker grilles to the bottom, power button and volume rockers to the right, a second noise cancelling microphone at the top and nothing to the left of the device.

You get a 128GB Big storage in this phone which is more than enough for anyone. A Non-removable 3340 mAh battery which in my tests to about 2hours+ to go from 0 – 100% with the included non-fast charger. The device comes with all the bevy of sensors you could imagine and supports the following network bands (GSM/CDMA/HSPA/LTE)

• 3G: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 2100
• 4G: LTE band 1(2100), 3(1800), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 2(1900), 38(2600), 40(2300), 41(2500)

Software

The Nova 3i run on Android 8.1 with Huaweis’ EMUI 8.2 skin on top of android. EMUI allows the option of having an app drawer or simply having all your apps in grids on the home screens.

EMUI isn’t bad but I always like my device looking clean so i always slap on Nova Launcher on my devcies.

Conclusion

This is a good phone, a very good phone at the price of N105,000 ($291). It launches on the 2nd of November here in Lagos, Nigeria and pre-orders are from the 31st of October – 6th of November SLOT and the 2nd of November to the 6th of November on Jumia.

The #HUAWEInova3i is now available for Pre-Order on Jumia Nigeria and Slot Limited Stores!! Guess what, Huawei Mobile Nigeria will be giving the first 120 People that Pre-Order between today and Nov 6th N10,000 vouchers !! Click the link in bio to Pre-Order and WIN!!

If you have any questions on this device leave them in the comment section and also hit me up on social media if you’d like to know what I’m up to. Hit the subscribe button and to help me reach 20k subs before the end of 2018.