iPhone from China: Huawei Nova 3E – Pros and cons

March 2018 turned out to be fruitful for the middle and budget classes of smartphones. Take at least the resurrected ruler Desire by HTC. So Huawei has pleased with its novelty from the middle class Nova 3E. This Chinese brand has long been popular on the Russian market due to its practicality, reliability and low cost. By releasing smartphones of completely different classes: from flagship solutions to budget segment models, they remain true to their principles. And recently, Huawei has also been extremely prolific, releasing new phone models almost every month.

This particular Huawei Nova 3E model, called P20 Lite in the Russian segment, turned out to be very controversial. Someone scatters in compliments, someone strongly scolds the novelty for the discrepancy between the price of the filling. In addition, some characteristics may differ depending on the market for which the device is produced. Let's try to figure it all out.

Equipment

Traditionally, let's start with the contents of the box. It contains:

• Power supply for a 9 volt and 2 amp charger;
• Ordinary on-ear headphones;
• Silicone case is a pleasant surprise from the Chinese, which will be useful for a phone with a glass back;
• A clip for a tray for a SIM card and a microSD slot;
• USB Type C cable.

For the Russian market, the kit comes with an adapter for a charger to Russian sockets.

Design

The device looks nice and elegant. Shines and shimmers in the sun, which gives it even more grace. Actually, this is a distinctive feature of all glass phones. And he is one of those. There are 2.5D tempered glass panels on the front and back of the case. They are connected with a metal frame.

On the back of the phone, in addition to the glass panel mentioned above, there is a dual camera and a fingerprint scanner.

The front part is almost completely occupied by a screen with an aspect ratio of 19:9. With this aspect ratio, the phone at first glance has no frames at all and seems to smoothly transition from the screen to the body. At the top of the screen is a cutout, popularly referred to (and not only) as a unibrow. It houses the front camera, earpiece, sensors and an event indicator.

Despite the widespread dislike of users for monobrows, here it fits very well into the design. It is small, despite the significant number of elements placed on it, and is not particularly striking. In addition, with the help of a special setting, you can darken the upper part of the phone so that it is not so noticeable.

On the top panel there is nothing but a microphone for noise reduction. At the bottom there is a multimedia speaker, a spoken microphone, a USB TypeC input and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The volume rocker and the unlock button are placed on the right side. On the opposite side, there is a hybrid slot for two SIM cards. One of which, if desired, can be replaced with microSD. Actually, to say that this is a Dual-sim phone in its purest form will not work.

The dimensions of the phone are: Width - 71.2 mm, it stretched 148.6 mm in height, while its thickness is only 7.4 mm, and its weight is 145 grams.

Everything is fine with ergonomics, except for the fact that glass phones slide slightly in the hands, but here even a silicone case is initially provided for this. The device fits well in the hand, it is comfortable to hold, and due to its low weight, it is almost not felt when used.

The phone came in four colors: Classic black, gold, soft pink and futuristic-looking blue, which we think is the most impressive.

Display

The display of this device occupies almost the entire front part, is 5.84 inches and has a resolution of 2280 by 1080 pixels.

Very high quality display with an excellent IPS matrix. The screen reproduces colors perfectly. Specifically, 96% of the NTSC color space. For the excellent detail, I want to say thanks to FHD +. Blurring and pixelation cannot be seen anywhere.

From any angle, the picture remains clear, bright and saturated. It casts a little blue, but for this there are special settings that allow you to adjust the color scheme.

The screen has a large margin of brightness, so any information will be perfectly visible on it in any weather, even if the sun's rays fall directly on the display.

In general, the display is not inferior to the flagship models of its own company, such as, for example, Honor 10.

Among other things, the phone has a multi-touch for 10 touches.

Main characteristics

Let's quickly go through the main characteristics of the phone, so that you have an idea of ​​​​what kind of model it is, and then we will analyze them in detail.

Sound

The multimedia speaker in the phone is quite loud. All reproduced content is well heard, but the sound lacks depth due to the almost complete absence of low frequencies. It's nice to see that the manufacturer hasn't forgotten to include a 3.5mm headphone jack. Through the headphones, by the way, the sound is heard well, but nothing more. The sound chip in the processor is quite ordinary, without any special features.

But the speaker and communication modules are just excellent here.Your interlocutor is always perfectly audible, and he also always hears you well. This is a nice feature of all smartphones from Huawei. This model was no exception.

CPU

The 8-core Kirin 659 processor with a frequency of 2.362 GHz launches all this beauty into action and maintains its performance. It is used in mid-range phones from Huawei. It is usually used for models costing around $300. It is often compared with the qualcomm snapdragon 625 and even the snapdragon 660. However, the comparison with the 625th will be more correct, since it is obviously inferior to the 660th, despite the seemingly identical power in megahertz.

Kirin 659 is equipped with Mali-T830 MP2 graphics accelerator, it outperforms Adreno in performance, but adreno runs at higher FPS, which allows it to perform better in games.

Mali-T830 MP2 performs a fairly high number of operations per second and copes well with multitasking. However, it consumes more energy than the same Qualcomm with its Adreno. This undoubtedly affects the battery life of the phone.

For active games, this smartphone is not particularly convenient. Despite not the worst AnTuTu performance score of 87,000 points, its graphics accelerator is still not suitable for games. Heavy and demanding games like World of Tanks or PUBG mobile will only work fine on the lowest settings.

Memory

Depending on the model, the phone has 64 or 128 GB of internal memory. You can also insert a microSD card up to 256 GB into the hybrid slot. Again, the fact that there are only 2 slots is a bit disappointing.

The RAM in this model is impressive 4GB.The manufacturer definitely did not deprive the RAM of his new creation. In combination with a processor designed for speed and multitasking, you definitely don’t have to worry about the speed of the firmware.

Camera

One of the highlights of the phone is a 24MP front camera with f/2.0 aperture and a wide viewing angle of 78 degrees. In addition to a fairly high resolution and a rather impressive aperture for a front camera, it is also notable for the fact that it has the latest Sony IMX576 sensor.

This is the very first smartphone on the market with such a sensor. It allows you to capture 20% more light from objects, and thanks to it, the camera can reduce noise in photos by 33% and improve color reproduction by 26% compared to older sensors.

Also in the settings section, when the photo mode is selected, a beauty mode is available that allows you to automatically retouch photos. Despite this, the camera clearly lacks detail, and with the beauty mode turned on, the photos are unnatural. By the way, a similar effect persists even when it is completely turned off.

The rear camera is not as impressive as the front camera. It consists of two sensors: a 16 MP main one with 6 lens optics and a not too good f / 2.2 aperture, which makes the photos look not clear enough. An additional 2MP sensor is used to create a bokeh effect when shooting.

During the day, the pictures from the camera are pretty good, but in low light, and even more so in the dark, their quality drops sharply. There is no stabilization in the camera, which is why the photos are blurry, and autofocus does not always work as it should. The bokeh effect achieved by software is best not to use, because it looks bad.

The camera can shoot video in FullHD, but due to the lack of stabilization, the picture twitches, which noticeably interferes with shooting.

How the camera takes pictures you can see in the examples:

Pictures in low light look something like this:

Battery

This phone is powered by a 3000 mAh non-removable battery. This amount of charge, despite the energy-intensive processor and bright screen, is enough for a day of battery life with active use.

When watching videos from Youtube through the included Wi-Fi at half brightness, 11-12% of the battery is consumed per hour. When the Internet is turned off, the charge consumption is reduced by 2%.

With an average load, the phone has every chance to live a day and a half without recharging.

And in standby mode, the battery practically does not sit down.

For better energy saving, the phone has a Smart Resolution mode. When this setting is activated, the phone automatically switches to a lower resolution to save power.

Software and Shell

The software part is made on Android 8.0 with a proprietary shell EMUI 8.0.

The appearance of the system looks pretty nice, icon shortcuts are saved, work with notifications is well implemented. The system runs smoothly and stably. When testing, you can sometimes notice animation twitches, but this is rather an exception. Nevertheless, the system can hardly be called nimble, except at the very beginning of use.

There is an interesting possibility to choose between two types of desktops:

1. All icons are scattered on desktops;
2. A button appears on the screen that opens a list of all applications arranged in alphabetical order.

Sensors and additional features

The GPS works flawlessly and keeps a stable connection.Definitely you can not be afraid that he will let you down at the wrong time. There is also support for GLONASS.

Of the sensors, there is only a standard kit, which contains everything you need: an accelerometer, a light sensor, proximity and a compass.

They may be few, but they work clearly and reliably.

The fingerprint scanner never failed during the tests and works quite quickly and without any delays.

It also has a face unlock feature. The face scanner works, although not as fast as a biometric one, but still quite fast.

It is worth mentioning that it will be very difficult to use it at night, but nothing prevents you from turning on the parallel operation of both sensors.

Price

In terms of price, the phone is notable for the fact that its cost at the start of sales varied greatly from region to region. So, for example, in Russia it cost about 30% cheaper than in Ukraine. By September, however, prices had generally stabilized in all regions. Except maybe Kazakhstan.

Belarus - 620/750 rubles for 64/128 GB, respectively ($ 310/375).

Russia (P20 Lite) - about 20,000 rubles ($290).

Ukraine (P20 Lite) – about 8,500 hryvnias ($300).

Kazakhstan (P20 Lite) - approximately 126,000 tenge ($335).

• Excellent bright screen with a wonderful IPS matrix and high resolution. The colors are bright and saturated, the image is perfectly visible from any angle.
• There is an NFC function that allows you to pay with your phone instead of a card.
• Beautiful design. Although the phone looks like an iphone, its design is more than attractive. The rear glass panel shimmers beautifully in the sun, and in general the phone looks impressive, especially the ultramarine blue color.
• Good firmware.The firmware works quickly and accurately. Most likely you will not notice those small brakes that were during the test.

• Poor gaming performance. The 3D processor accelerator is absolutely not designed for games, so you can play comfortably only at low graphics settings.
• The cameras didn't live up to expectations. Despite the manufacturer's strong statements about a cool front camera with a new sensor, the pictures from it are so-so, and the rear camera is even worse. Although during the day she shows herself quite worthy.
• A small disadvantage is the lack of an oleophobic coating, as a result of which the phone quickly gets dirty.

Conclusion

Given all of the above, it is worth noting that in general the phone turned out to be good. If you're not into gaming and aren't looking to take professional shots with your phone, this might be a good buy. The firmware works quite quickly and clearly, and there should be no problems with non-gaming applications.