Huawei Nova 3 review

30 July 2018
The Nova 3 and the P20 Pro are incredibly close in terms of hardware save for the display, the battery and that amazing camera system on the P20 Pro. But the P20 Pro costs twice the money, which makes the Nova 3 look like a steal. But do specifications tell the complete story? And how does it compare against the OnePlus 6? Let’s find out.

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  • N
  • Nova
  • 6Qv
  • 17 Sep 2018

None of the benchmarks contain Nova 3 score. Seems like you just copy pasted from previous article without changing

    • ?
    • Anonymous
    • nx1
    • 12 Sep 2018

    What is the back of Huawei nova 3 made out of?

      • s
      • saim
      • 6Q0
      • 10 Sep 2018

      hay..
      i like huwaie y 7 2018 its good or bad please tell me that was really great and not ....

        • M
        • Moe
        • 8pi
        • 30 Aug 2018

        I have the nova 3, but I am struggling way to much with the face unlock. It's really bad. It doesnt work in dark nor in bright environments. I dont know if it's a software issue or a hardware one. Pls can you further test this feature!!

          GSMarena, Can you please provide us the full review of Note 3?

            • ?
            • Anonymous
            • w6S
            • 25 Aug 2018

            sherif Gaber, 21 Aug 2018is it really that Nova 3 camera is not leica as in mate 10 lite?Correct.

              Ishan, 14 Aug 2018I chose Nova 3 over One plus 6 as my prefernces are storage... moreI have ordered one for my family today....I am satisfied with my Honor 10 in general. I think Nova 3 is similar but with bit higher specifications. I am not seeing any of the mentioned negatives on display color profile(, camera, face detection (Though NOT IR based) etc..Image quality in general is really good in good lighting conditions. AR and AI based cameras really superb, yes it takes a while to get used to maneuvering menus to get some of the options like Stage Lighting. But I think Nova 3 will be a good one. But today, I just saw POCO F1 which seems to be lot more value for money if they could match similar performance and functionalities like Honor 10

                • s
                • sherif Gaber
                • MV3
                • 21 Aug 2018

                is it really that Nova 3 camera is not leica as in mate 10 lite?

                  • I
                  • Ishan
                  • JFB
                  • 14 Aug 2018

                  I chose Nova 3 over One plus 6 as my prefernces are storage and battery life.. ONE PLUS 6 storage for 128 gb and price is 40k and nova 3 128 gb price is 35k..5k differnce is huge and i need a full day battery and one plus 6 battery will die for sure...Front cam of nova 3 is bettr than one plus 6..

                    • A
                    • Anuj
                    • Dkk
                    • 14 Aug 2018

                    Faizal Firdaus, 08 Aug 2018This review is not complete as usual GSMarena review. No s... moreVery well said

                      • A
                      • Aadrian
                      • Sk@
                      • 14 Aug 2018

                      Faizal Firdaus, 08 Aug 2018This review is not complete as usual GSMarena review. No s... moreThe reason why, can be found in the disclaimer on the very first page of the review.

                        This review is not complete as usual GSMarena review.
                        No sunlight legibility, Battery endurance rating, Audio quality and Selfie camera test.
                        Why? Why? Why?
                        This review seems to be a mere comparison between Oneplus 6 and Nova 3. I don't understand why the reviewer compares this with Oneplus 6. Nova 3 is a mid ranger and cheaper interms of price compared to Oneplus 6 which is a flagship. Go compare oneplus 6 with P20 pro, not Nova 3.
                        Please provide the full review, I am a regular GSMarena reader.

                          • P
                          • POW
                          • nUd
                          • 07 Aug 2018

                          Have to agree with a number of other posters and say this review is very poor. I always read your phone reviews and the most important aspects to me are audio quality as I listen to a lot of music, display and black levels, and battery performance.
                          You've missed out all three of these meaning a buyer would be gambling and have no idea how good it is in these areas.
                          This really is a lazy review and nowhere near your usual quality. It certainly doesn't provide anywhere near the information that your typical reader would want, and using performance metrics from another model with the same chip is just wrong. You wouldn't expect a Xiaomi with an Exynos chip to perform the same as a Samsung Galaxy S series with the same chip as the components might be different. Ram speed, thermal management, screen refresh rates etc.
                          Very poor indeed.

                            • ?
                            • Anonymous
                            • 3EJ
                            • 03 Aug 2018

                            "...But do specifications tell the complete story..."
                            Nope, they tell us that manufacturers have AGAIN removed features (IR-blaster in this case) instead of ADDING features.

                            "...This means there's a bit less space now at the top for your icons..."
                            Which actually defeats having a notch in the first place. So as users "demand": Ditch the Notch!

                            "...hidden inside it is a notification LED"
                            Can you please do THIS more? Mention whether a device has a notification LED, thanks!

                            "...which is placed a bit too high up and is a stretch when holding the phone normally..."
                            It's obvious the engineers that designed this thing didn't even bother to actually use it! Typical manufacturer attitude these days. Just make stuff without regards to consumer's wishes, demands or requirements.

                            "...The vertical resolution is a bit more than the Honor 10's 2280, which itself was a bit more than the P20 Pro's 2240..."
                            This is going nowhere. Android is becoming a mess of notch and notch-less designs each with their own stupid resolution. I long for the good days when all phones were simply 16:9!

                            ".. it still ruins the illusion of there not being any display at all that you'd get from an AMOLED."
                            Another reason to ditch the notch. If you can't do it properly then DON'T DO IT, Huawei! No Notch on LCD-screens, period!

                            " The charging speed seems very uniform across its two-hour charge time, which is very odd for a fast charging solution and not really ideal for quick top-up's"
                            Yeah, but it's still reasonable for people whom charge their phones overnight.

                            "..he app drawer design is rather dated, however, and instead of the swipe up to open gesture that everyone else has adopted now..."
                            I expected you to say that. Now that practically everyone FINALLY uses a app-drawer, Google changes the drawer so that the last adopters are again left behind. With EMUI you can either enable or disable the drawer. Despite the drawer being the old generation it still gives users a choice. That should account for something, shouldn't it?

                            "...One problem is that you cannot swipe down on the homescreen to bring down the notification shade, the way you can in OxygenOS or MIUI..."
                            Eh? Are you sure? I thought thatw as standard Android behavior. I can do it on my honor 8 for sure.

                            "Huawei does, however, give you the option to either swipe down on the fingerprint scanner or add a button to the navigation bar at the bottom to bring down the notification shade from any screen."
                            ... just as my own old honor does. Including swiping down from the top. I fail to see why they removed this standard of interacting?

                            "We hope over time Huawei will phase out its own apps, as we don't see Google allowing OEMs to not have its own apps any time soon and having two apps do the same thing just makes things worse for the user."

                            I though giving users more choices is BETTER not worse. And why would they phase out their own apps if they are better than Google's spyware? Secondly Google's (cr)Apps are significantly larger then Huawei's offering. E.g. on my honor 8: Google Photos 42.04MB and Gallery 18.68MB and that is the ROM-based version of Photos without the unnecessary retarding upgrades from Google.

                            "To make things further confusing, there is a more easily accessible option to make apps full screen, which is not the same thing."
                            Care to explain?

                            "...and although the use of white everywhere is overbearing"
                            Funny, I though you, guys, loved all that (blinding) white. I find it disgusting myself since I don't want to wake the entire street when I fiddle with my phone in bed. That's why I loved Holo. I would love to find a proper Holo-icon set to complement my Nova Classic (which also hasn't got the swipe-handle for the app-drawer.)

                            "...Our review unit came with an unlocked bootloader and prevented us from installing any major software benchmark..."
                            The unlocked bootloader is a good thing. The bad thing is that devs should stop being childish as they disallow apps on unlocked and/or rooted devices. Especially benchmark software! This is ridiculous!

                            "...we have decided to reuse our benchmarking scores from previous Huawei devices running the Kirin 970."
                            You shouldn't have done that. It completely undermines your credibility as a reviewer/tech-site.

                            with regards to "face unlock" you first write: "which means it cannot be used instead of the fingerprint sensor " and later on you write: "It would be nice to have the option to use face unlock for things like purchasing apps, making payments and opening apps like password managers that typically work with fingerprint sensors presently. " Isn't that contradictory? Because the things you mentioned are exactly the same things you secure with the fps and therefore you DO want the face-unlock to replace the fps.

                            "...a typical Huawei camera, which means loads of over processed images."
                            Eh? On the Honor 8 review you wrote: "The 12MP color samples came out with more than enough resolved detail and very good dynamic range." and later on: "these are some solid samples." And nowadays Hauwei's typical samples are "over processed images". That would mean that Huawei has deteriorated their camera HW/SW, in favour of the pixel-race, and that this is not typical!

                            "...you can get better results out of the RAW files than with the JPEGs."
                            Indeed the overzealous sharpening is killing the quality. The RAW-photo in this example is overexposed. Unfortunately that makes it hard to objectively compare with the JPEG.

                            "The fact that it costs a bit less and doesn't lose much of anything of importance makes the case for the Nova 3 a bit less airtight."
                            Plus the Honor 10 has the IR-blaster. Strange that Huawei ditched the singleSIM+SD/Dual-SIM-slot on both these models. I would prefer the View 10 instead (microSD+IR-blaster) and it has no notch ;-)

                              This review is lacking something specially in numbers like, loudspeaker test in decibels, battery life endurance rating and the sunlight legibility test.
                              What happened GSMArena?

                                • d
                                • doomsday
                                • XNF
                                • 02 Aug 2018

                                i would totally buy this if its affordable. the plus side for me about this phone is that it has expandable storage. i can put microsd card and save my pictures and videos in it. and can transfer it safely into my pc but that just my opinion. i dont trust cloud storage because when it comes to personal matters, hackers can do anything.

                                  • D
                                  • Disappointed Fan
                                  • UD{
                                  • 02 Aug 2018

                                  prasad-gsma, 31 Jul 2018It has now been added. Nah. To be honest, I'm really looking forward to buy this phone. Eventhough I read and watch a lot of reviews on Youtube and Google but this website is always the best when It comes to detailed review. Since I am more on a camera type person, I am actually looking for the Portrait Modes and some other camera effects reviews on this site but apparently, I think its not gonna happen though. Hopefully, this will not happen again for the rest of the phones that you are going to review specially when you review Nova 3i since that is the one that we are looking forward to. Still , your website is always reliable.

                                    Tech, 01 Aug 2018Indeed, this nova 3 use 2a x 9v which is not a supercharger... moreI understand your point of false information, which is quite shameful for such a reputable site as GSMArena.
                                    But tbh, 18W charging ain't really bad by any means. I mean, my Redmi 5 Plus has a larger 4000mAh battery but only uses a 5Vx2A charger, and only has a microUSB port (slower to charge than USB C) but charging time takes less than 3 hours, which is already impressive for such a battery size.
                                    I think 18W would certainly be enough for most people, but 22.5W and higher should be a bare standard for premium flagships, especially those that cost way more than the typical $800 price tag.

                                      This seems more like a clickbait article. You have NOT captured the essence of the phone in the same precise, informative and detailed way that's become your trademark. Far from it. This is NOT the quality I expected from GSMArena. Guys and girls, if you can't post a complete review, don't post anything at all. This review was a waste of my time, and hugely disappointing.

                                        • T
                                        • Tech
                                        • fFA
                                        • 01 Aug 2018

                                        Indeed, this nova 3 use 2a x 9v which is not a supercharger, normally mate 10 pro supercharge is rated 4.5v x 5a which is 22.5w, I'm curious how this writter get his fact, don't forget he work for gsmarena which are tech source