Huawei launched the Huawei Nova Smartphone in 2016, and to meet the customers’ demand, the new successor – Huawei Nova 2 – is now available in 2017. Huawei Nova 2 comes with a dual camera on the back and a 20 megapixel selfie camera, and the design has been slightly changed. The compact design and the 5-inch display have remained.
The body of the Huawei Nova 2 is 142.2 millimeters long, 68.9 millimeters wide and 6.9 millimeters thick. It is almost entirely made of metal, weighs about 143 grams and is available in black, gold and blue. The black version made a very high-quality impression in the test, the case is very good in the hand due to the rounded edges. The workmanship is impeccable; the Nova 2 has a very high quality. Positive: the enclosed case made of transparent plastic (rubber).
The two camera lenses on the back are slightly out of the case, but that does not bother. On the bottom there is a USB Type C connector and a 3.5mm jack, also you will find below the speaker and a microphone. The SIM card is inserted in the Nova 2 on the side, a small tool for removing the SIM card slide is included. Incidentally, the Nova 2 is dual-SIM capable, so you can use two Nano-SIM cards as needed. You can also use one of the slots to insert a MicroSD memory card.
Good display and fast software
The screen of the Huawei Nova 2 is 5 inches tall and has a Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels, 443 PPI). Colors are reproduced vigorously and the display is very bright if desired, so that even in sunlight everything is still easy to read. For the software, Huawei has decided for Android in version 7 with the EMUI 5.1 user interface, which adds some important features in addition to a special design. The main memory is 4 GB, and the internal user memory is 64 GB. The processor used is a Octa-Core HiSilicon Kirin 659 with 4x 2.36 GHz and 4x 1.7 GHz.
The battery of the Huawei Nova 2 is about 2,950 mAh strong and has held out a full day of normal use in the test. For users who only use WhatsApp occasionally and do not use the device that much, there are certainly two days left before the device needs to be charged again.
Huawei Nova 2: camera with zoom
For the camera, Huawei has significantly upgraded compared to the first Nova. On the back there is now a dual camera with two sensors: one for wide-angle photos and one for telephoto photos. Means: with one camera you have a very wide image and can capture many elements at the same time, with the other camera, it has a zoom and a much smaller image detail. The resolution is 12 or 8 megapixels in 4: 3 format. The picture quality was very neat in the test. Huawei has many different image modes installed, especially with the portrait mode can take beautiful pictures. What unfortunately noticed negatively: the built-in camera LED on the back is quite dark compared to many other current smartphones.
The front camera is especially heavily advertised on the Nova 2 (“Selfie Star”), because Huawei has installed a 20 megapixel sensor here – something that is not normally the case with other smartphones. The picture quality is good, especially compared to other, similarly expensive midrange smartphones.
Weaknesses in the WLAN
The Huawei Nova 2 can reach speeds of up to 300 Mbps in the downlink via the LTE mobile network, which corresponds to Category 6 LTE Advanced (LTE Cat6) and is currently standard on mid-range smartphones. Reception and voice quality were neat in the test, there was no reason to complain. However, the Nova 2 supports WLAN only in the frequency range around 2.4 GHz, the 5 GHz WLAN and the fast WLAN ac are not supported.
Huawei Nova 2: Conclusion
Huawei Nova 2 is a worthy successor to the Huawei Nova from the year 2016. The case has been significantly improved, which fits perfectly in the hand and thus leaves the Nova 2 ever a positive impression with the potential buyer in any case. The camera has an interesting concept with the two different focal lengths and especially the very high-resolution selfie camera should convince many. Otherwise you get the usual standard equipment for a mid-range smartphone, with a slight weakness in the WLAN.
Overall, Huawei Nova 2 is highly recommended, but there is tough competition in the price range: the Samsung Galaxy A 2017 series with the Galaxy A3 2017 and the Galaxy A5 2017, the Honor 8, the Honor 9 and the Xiaomi Mi 6 are just some of the competitors.