Monday, June 8, 2020

Huawei Nova 7SE 5G In-depth, Hands-on

The entire mobile industry is working towards a 5G world, but I don’t think anyone is pushing harder than Huawei. When we think of 5G-capable smartphones, we usually assume it’s a flagship, but for the Huawei Nova 7 SE 5G, that’s not the case.

Author’s note: The package we received is not the retail unit for the Philippines, so we might see some changes from when it officially arrives in the country.

This is a mid-range phone carrying the Kirin 820 5G chipset, a big display, a bunch of cameras, lots of memory, and a sizable battery. Check out our unboxing and hands-on video below:

Checking out the phone itself, for our unit, we get the same color as last year’s Mate 30 Pro — Space Silver, which absorbs the ambient color of the environment. However, it’s a pure dust and fingerprint magnet.

Here at the back, we find the quad rear camera module along with the LED flash.

On the front, it features a sizable screen at 6.5-inches. This one’s an LTPS IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 and comes with HDR10 support. Like the Nova 7i, the Nova 7 SE 5G has its front camera in a punch hole on the upper left of the screen.

The display quality is solid, as we get crisp details, vibrant colors, and wide viewing angles. Brightness is also great for outdoor usage.

Moving to the rest of the body, on the left side, is a dual nano-SIM card tray, with one of the slots also supporting a Huawei NanoMemory card up to 256GB.

On the right side, we have the power button that doubles as the fingerprint scanner as well as the volume rocker. I don’t know if it’s only going to be people like me with big hands who will feel this way, but the volume rocker runs a bit short, making it slightly tricky to get a correct up or down press on the first time.

Anyway, at the bottom, we have the headphone jack, primary microphone, USB Type-C port, and the loudspeaker. Up top is the secondary microphone.

All in all, the design and build quality are very premium, pretty much like a flagship phone. It feels solid and is of metal and glass construction. There’s a slight curvature to the back panel, which, along with the curved sides, allows for a comfortable grip.

The Nova 7 SE 5G is powered by a HiSilicon Kirin 820 5G chipset with a Mali-G57 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of internal storage. For the battery, the device is powered by a 4,000mAh battery with support for 40W Huawei SuperCharge. This setup provides reliable performance, as evidenced by our excellent benchmark scores here:

• AnTuTu V8 – 355,324
• PCMark Work 2.0 – 7,942
• 3DMark SSE – 4,091 (OpenGL), 2,481 (Vulkan)

Heavy tasks such as high graphics gaming and multitasking should pose no issue, and essential productivity, navigation, and social media tasks are smooth.

We also took some sample photos with the Nova 7 SE 5G’s cameras. Shots are generally good thanks to beautiful detail and popping colors, but the dynamic range here is an issue. Highlights are overblown even in environments that seem to be evenly lit.

Though, this might be because this unit is a demo sample, and the camera software may not be final.

Software-wise, it’s running Android 10 with EMUI 10 on top. It’s equipped with Huawei Mobile Services, and as such, you’ll be using the Huawei App Gallery to get your apps, of which there are a lot.

With solid specs including 5G connectivity, the Nova 7 SE 5G is shaping up to be an exciting addition to a competitive mid-range market. But we’ll share with you our final verdict in our full review after a week.

The Huawei Nova 7SE 5G is priced at PHP 19,990.

Huawei Nova 7SE 5G specs:
6.5-inch FHD+ (2400 x 1080) LTPS IPS display
Huawei Kirin 820 5G 2.36GHz octa-core CPU
Mali-G57 GPU
8GB RAM
128GB storage
Huawei NM card support
Quad-rear cameras:
• 64MP main
• 8MP ultra-wide
• 2MP depth
• 2MP macro
16MP front camera
Dual-SIM
5G, 4G LTE
WiFi
Bluetooth
GPS, A-GPS
USB Type-C
3.5mm audio jack
Fingerprint scanner (side-mounted)
EMUI 10.1 (Android 10)
4,000mAh battery w/ 40W SuperCharge
162.31 x 75 x 8.58 mm
189 g
Space Silver, Crush Green