Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! - REVIEW

Time: 05/Dec By: kenglenn 421 Views

I have been using this Huawei Nova 8i for about 10 days. Surely we are dealing with a good product, but unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, it's totally out of price. The market today offers better competitors under some circumstances at a very similar price range.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

Design

Huawei Nova 8i looks at least aesthetically like a baby Mate 30 Pro. The aesthetics can be liked or not of course. But at least Huawei always tries to differentiate itself from other smartphone manufacturers. On the back cover, in our case in a very particular Moonlight Silver color that gives off really interesting plays of light in the light, we find the rounded sides, the large porthole that contains the four lenses that make up the main photographic compartment with the LED flash positioned outside of the porthole and the Huawei logo.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

In the frame on the right there is the power button with the fingerprint sensor embedded which works quite well, but by now we can define it as a well-established technology. It would be a problem if it didn't work after all these years of testing. Immediately above it is the volume rocker. How to know I dislike when manufacturers opt for volume keys on the right.

At the bottom there is the USB-C input, system speaker and trolley that contains two physical SIMs, above we find the 3.5mm jack for the classic headphones, which are not included in the package. The right side however, is completely clean.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

Read Also: HUAWEI brings the Nova 9 – VIDEO to Italy

The front of the smartphone is obviously as usual now mostly occupied only by the display. Interrupted by a rather important hole that we will analyze later. The frames around the display are, once again, not symmetrical with each other, as the lower one is a bit thicker.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

For me, it was quite difficult to use this Nova 8i with one hand due to its weight of 191g. Also thanks to the general dimensions of 74.7 mm x 161.85 mm x 8.58 mm.

Overall, it's a well-built smartphone that doesn't creak in the hand and offers a nice touch and feel. If you are afraid of breaking it following a bad fall, however, I advise you to take advantage of the transparent silicone cover present in the package.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

Display

I really liked the display mounted on this Huawei Nova 8i. On paper it is not a panel that makes you cry out for a miracle, but you know it by now, I don't like to dwell only on the technical data sheet. Unfortunately, however, I have to give you some data. We are talking about a 6.67-inch IPS screen in FHD + resolution (2376 x 1080). I really liked the colors. They are managed very well and are saturated at the right point. Blacks are very deep. In short, I'm not saying it's like having an AMOLED, but we're really close.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

If overall I liked this screen, but using the smartphone for 10 minutes was enough to find it a big problem from my point of view (which doesn't necessarily have to be yours too). The screen stops at 60 Hz, and today, it is unthinkable to offer a smartphone on the market with a display without a refresh rate equal to or greater than 90 Hz. Also because a higher refresh rate helps the user experience a greater sensation of fluidity . And I already anticipate that in this smartphone it would have been useful.

Hardware

To move everything we find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 (octa-core CPU 4 x Cortex A73 at 2.0 GHz + 4 x Cortex A53 at 1.8 GHz) flanked by the Adreno 610 GPU .

No need to make fun of us, and I'd say let's get straight to the point. In this price range, the market offers alternatives that are certainly a little more performing. I will not hide from you that during daily use I have encountered various slowdowns, sometimes even quite annoying. Ok, the 6GB of RAM are certainly an adequate quantity to guarantee noteworthy fluidity, but evidently here due to an imperfect software optimization it brings these bugs and various slowdowns.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

Let's understand each other, nothing transcendental and nothing that compromises the usability of the smartphone, but here, it seems fair to me to point out that in this price range there are smartphones that are a little more performing.

That's why I said that a higher refresh rate would help make up for this deficit.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

I played a bit with this Nova 8i and the performances were quite satisfactory if you accept the compromises mentioned above. The display helps in these circumstances, as it is really excellent, but objectively with this processor, a refresh rate of only 60 Hz and with mono audio, playing is not exactly the best

The internal memory available to the user amounts to 128 GB. But be careful because it is not expandable.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

Connectivity

When using it as a phone, I have nothing negative to report. Fast to hook up the signal, it does not support 5G networks, the volume is loud and clear in calls and the interlocutor has always heard me well.Huawei Nova 8i: beautiful, but does not dance! – REVIEW

Present Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, AGPS, Glonass, BeiDou, Galileo. And be careful, NFC support is present unlike what is reported in other reviews.

Software

When I took this smartphone out of the box I expected to find anything but this software version. Huawei Nova 8i mounts Android 10 with EMUI 11 and security patches updated to July 1, 2021.

Will it update to Android 12? Let's hope so. Will it update to HarmonyOS? Probably not. As Huawei Nova 9 mounts the EMUI 12 and not yet HarmonyOS.

App Gallery has improved a lot over time. By now the apps are practically all present. With the exception of the Google suite of course, but otherwise we can consider it a well-established store.

It goes without saying that if apps such as Instagram are not present directly on the App Gallery, it will still be possible to download them through third-party stores.

Camera

We talked earlier about the porthole that contains the cameras, and now it's time to go into a little more detail:

The photos are good, comparable to other smartphones in the same segment. However, it seems to me that the photos taken are always a little darker than the environment in which the photo itself is taken. There is HDR yes, but it does not help to solve this little problem. Definitely solvable via software update, but in the meantime you will have to waste time illuminating the photos a little in post-production.

The wide-angle lens does what it has to do and gets enough in optimal light conditions. When the light goes down, obviously better not to use it.

The two 2MP lenses are used to enhance shots with bokeh effect and to make macro shots. Here too nothing negative to report, I don't particularly like seeing a physical sensor for the macro, but so be it.

The front camera is 16 MP and offers standard selfies, easily usable for social media if taken in daytime. But when the light goes down, the smartphone really struggles.

Battery

An aspect that surprised me a lot is the one related to the autonomy of this Nova 8i. To support the workload we find a battery from 4300 mAh which may seem few, but they are not. The absence of Google services benefits all Huawei's HMS smartphones a lot. Because Google Mobile Services really suck a lot of battery from smartphones. Closing a day of intense use with this Nova 8i is really simple.

In the package we also find a 67W charger that recharges the smartphone from 0 to 100% in just 40 minutes. Truly a godsend when you go on a trip out of town maybe and you find yourself taking lots of photos and lots of videos. Being able to recharge the phone so quickly can make a real difference for some.

Be careful though, because as long as this technology works, you must always have the original power supply and cable. So pay attention to this detail.

Price and conclusions

So, what can we say about this Huawei Nova 8i? Surely I like the design a lot especially in this colorway. The display is also nice, I remember being an IPS, but that is really close to the quality of an AMOLED. But I have to admit that from a performance point of view, more had to be done, as well as for photographic quality. And then, there had to be a refresh rate of at least 90Hz. What about the absence of Google services? Well now I would not consider it a big problem anymore as practically all the apps can be downloaded without problems.

To bring this Huawei Nova 8i home, you have to shell out 350 euros and you also have the Huawei FreeBuds 4i as a gift. As mentioned, the market offers more interesting products in this price range, and until this model suffers a drop in terms of price, I find it difficult to recommend it.

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