When it comes mid-range series, Huawei is known for making waves with their Nova series and recently, the company has launched the Huawei Nova 3 series and the affordable one is the Huawei Nova 3i which features a mid-range hardware and also a price that is tempting for everyone – Php15,990. Want to know more about the smartphone? Check it out on our review below.

Design and Hardware

One of the things that Huawei is proud of with the Huawei Nova 3i is its design. First, they started the gradient color on their smartphones and with the Huawei Nova 3i, we got the Iris Purple which features a same feel of the gradient color of the Huawei P20 Pro but this one is more striking and more eye-catching.

Both sides of the smartphone smartphone is made up of glass with metal frameswhich has a pretty solid and premium feel however the back is flat which makes the smartphone a little harder to hold compared to the Huawei Nova 3 which has a curved back but don’t worry, the smartphone doesn’t really slip in my hand.

The smartphone basically got everything that you need. Inside the smartphone is the hybrid card slot which can house two sim cards or a single sim with a MicroSD card slot. Thankfully, the smartphone still have a headphone jack and then there’s a Micro USB port which is a little bit disappointing as most smartphones are now utilizing a USB-C port.

There’s the fingerprint scanner on the smartphone at the back which is pretty fast but in case you’re not a fan of doing that then you can just use the face unlock which works pretty well on the smartphone too.

The speaker grill of the smartphone is located just beside the micro USB port and It wasn’t that great but it wasn’t bad either. Just decent and normal speakers that you can find on a mid-range smartphone. But hey, at least there’s headphone jack on this one.

Display

One of the features that Huawei is proud of their Nova 3i is the display. This time, the Huawei Nova 3i comes with a 6.3-inch IPS LCD with Full HD+ resolution. There’a notch too which is already common on all price range of Android smartphones these days.

If you’re worried about the notch, well, you don’t really have to because you can actually remove it on the settings and when it comes to quality, the Huawei Nova 3i’s display is great for its price range. It might not be as good as the one on flagship smartphones but the Huawei Nova 3i’s display is vibrant and it’s really usable outdoors.

Software and performance

When the Huawei Nova 3i was announced, one of its intriguing features is the Kirin 710 processor inside. This is a big upgrade from the predecessor and then there’s the 4GB of RAM which is pretty plenty whether you’re a casual smartphone user or into productivity. There’s a spacious 128GB of Internal storage too which is probably more than enough for most users.

Here are the scores that we got from different benchmarking applications

Antutu

GeekBench

3D Mark Slingshot Extreme

You can check out the GameBench Benchmarking app at (https://www.gamebench.net)

You can also download the app at the Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gamebench.metricscollector)

One of the things that the Huawei Nova 3i is proud of is GPU boost but we’ll be able to get that feature soon. Huawei promises that it will boost games such as PUBG Mobile and also Mobile Legends once the GPU Turbo update is out but right now, here’s the gamebench benchmarks that we got on the smartphone.

Battery life

There’s a decent juice on this one as the Huawei Nova 3i packs a 3340mAh of battery inside which translates to a day of my average use with the mobile data running most of the time. When it comes to PC Mark, I got a score of 7 hours and 59 minutes which isn’t that bad.

Camera

One of the features that Huawei Nova series is known for is the quad-cameras. With the Huawei Nova 3i, we got here a Quad-Camera setup which is composed of a 16-megapixel + 2-megapixel for the back camera and then there are the 24-megapixel + 2-megapixel sensors for the front camera. The additional 2-megapixel cameras of the smartphones are used for depth sensing for better bokeh and also for better AR effects.

Thankfully, the amazing AI features that we’ve seen on the Huawei P20 series will also arrive in the Huawei Nova 3i which is now easier to turn on and off. However, I noticed that the AI functionalities of the Huawei Nova 3i aren’t as good as the one on the Huawei P20 series but its job well on producing better photos in different situations. There’s no AI image stabilization on this one, unlike the P20 series which is why you can’t do the same night mode that we’re doing on the Huawei P20 series.

One of the things that I love on the Huawei Nova 3i is the AR Lens which features 3D Qmoji which works similarly to Apple’s Animoji but as expected, it wasn’t as good as that and then there are the backgrounds that let you change the backgrounds and also add some effects.

When it comes to the camera, well, you’ll be the judge on the shots that I took using the smartphone.

As expected, the colors were fine however when using AI, it tends to be oversaturated at sometimes. So I suggest that you use the AI mode depending on the conditions and the front camera still gets blown out sometimes but overall, the camera is just fine for me especially for a mid-range smartphone.

Verdict

The Huawei Nova 3i is a great mid-range smartphone. It might not be a perfect smartphone but it performs well in almost all aspects. If you’re coming from a Huawei Nova 2i then this one will be a big upgrade for you. Not only that it has an upgraded camera from the predecessor, we’re really happy with its design and performance especially its large storage.

The Huawei Nova 3i is now available for Php15,990