With Huawei continuing their successive releases with the nova 5T and the Huawei Y7, the company is once again releasing another model particularly for those that want something on the lower mainstream side of the price spectrum. With a relatively decent processor and an attractive feature set, the Huawei nova 7i is looking to fill this role for consumers providing a nice mix of a mainstream processor and a great camera for less than its Kirin 980 brethren.
Specification
CPU: HiSilicon Kirin 810
MEMORY: 8GB of RAM
DISPLAY: 6.4-inch full HD+ display with punch-hole notch, 1080 x 2340 resolution display
Cameras: 48-megapixel rear camera with f/1.8 aperture lens, 16-megapixel wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture, 2-megapixel macro lens with f/2.4 aperture, 2-megapixel depth camera
Storage: 128GB built-in, Huawei NanoMemory support
Network: Dual SIM, 4G
Connectivity and others: WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, side-mounted fingerprint scanner, USB Type-C
Battery: 4200mAh, supports 40W SuperCharge
Price: Php13,990
Unboxing
https://www.facebook.com/back2gaming/videos/2762734563808938/
Closer Look and Design
Huawei includes a 3.5mm headset with the Huawei nova 7i.
The nova 7i has a 6.4″ screen and comes in at around just a hair or exactly 9mm. Its a hair thicker than the nova 5T but barely noticeable unless you’re really looking. For this release, Huawei is offering Sakura Pink, Crush Green and Midnight Black for color options. There’s always that one flashy model in the release colors and the Sakura Pink that we have for our sample is definitely a nice standout.
The Huawei nova 7i is continuing the design principle of Huawei’s recent releases: smooth edges and a clean back with cameras in a single area, is a nice modern touch. The nova 7i features a metallic frame which gives the phone its structural integrity. This rounds off to the back which plateaus to that smooth glass back.
Moving over to the side, we spot the volume rocker and power button. The power button features an integrated fingerprint scanner and is quite fast like the 5T. As a hardware scanner, its is significantly faster than the P30 Pro’s onscreen optical scanner. Its recessed to the frame and Huawei is obviously aiming to reduce usage of the actual button as the fingerprint alone is so fast to wake the device versus pressing the actual power button.
All phones should really come with Type C port. There is simply no reason to retain the older microUSB standard given the versatility of Type C. The Huawei nova 7i, thankfully, has a USB Type C port and surprisingly, a 3.5mm audio jack.
Huawei prides itself in its success with its camera and the nova 7i has a nice set of camera that are simply impressing at this price point: a 48megapixel primary camera followed by an 8megapixel wide cam as well as a 2megapixel macro lens gives the phone much versatility for shooting scenarios with a 2 megapixel depth sensor assisting in certain shooting settings like portraits for the bokeh effect.
I’ve come to appreciate these full screen designs and the punchole design really helps that undisturbed look. The Huawei nova 7i features a more modest 16-megapixel front camera and you won’t really miss anything unless you’re really obsessed with selfies and happen to be a pixel-peeper as well.
The screen of the nova 7i is clear and quite decent. As Huawei P30 Pro user though, the colors are definitely slightly off with colors having a slightly stronger cooler (blue) bias.
First Impressions
Without revealing too much before the nova 7i’s embargo, from a value-based perspective, there’s really a lot of good things going on for this phone. Its hard not to like unless you’re really nitpicking. The gist of the situation though is the software environment itself. Going forward 2020 while Huawei faces a rocky situation, they do have their own library of apps for you to access and Huawei has really done well keeping local apps, at least for the Philippines, well covered especially for services we’ve come to use more often particularly Grab, Lalamove, Gcash and Paymaya. Outside of those things, social media like Facebook, Twitter and rising apps like Tiktok are also in there. Games are a bit of a predicament though and while not marketed as a gaming phone, the nova 7i is quite a capable performer for games as well. We’ll cover this more in our full review soon.
On the flipside, this means so much reduction in bloatware that Huawei puts into this phone which means this is as stock as stock can get for Huawei phones sans their support services. Other than that, out-of-the-box Android 10 is a nice touch but at this point, doesn’t add a whole lot to much of the phone in the market right now. Still, if you feel like you’re missing Google apps from the Play Store and you need the services to go along, we’ve made a separate article to guide you on how to install Google apps on your Huawei phone via the Play Store. And it’s so friggin’ easy I’m gonna walk you each step just to waste bandwidth.
With that out of the way, this phone proves to be a convincing addition to Huawei’s mainstream offering. Feels good on the hand with decent battery life, as an SMS and call phone this is definitely good with a great camera to back it up. Whichever route you go for the software side, its still a decent phone and Google is at least doing something to improve the situation for a more uniform ecosystem for their clients. As it is, I’m comfortable with the nova 7i and proves to be a good, midrange option and the camera is definitely something to appreciate. Stay tuned for our full review.
Huawei nova 7i Pre-Order Details – Philippines
First 100 to pre-order will receive Php8,669 of items including Freebuds lite, Band 4e, small fan and a colorful speaker. First 20 receive 50% cashback vouchers online via Lazada Shopee. For in-store pre-orders, Huawei Freebuds Lite, +50GB of Huawei Cloud storage for 3 months, P100 Gmovies voucher, total value Php5,200.
Pre-order: Deposit Php500 between March 12 to 22, 2020 for down-payment. Full payment at March 23 – 24, 2020.
10 Comments
O tukso layuan mo ako
Ghera Casilla
Heilah Joy Gensaya Logronio
So nice
Nova 7i I love it so much
Available pba
Hi can someone help me how to put fb messenger on my Huawei Nova 7i
And bpi apps pls
Extended promo??? Kindly advise
Oooh I bought Huawei nova 7i really I fed up to make backups very confusing phone no Google play store please don’t buy behind me