Tag: Huawei smartphone

Huawei Honor Play 4G Smartphone Test

Huawei presented a new smartphone recently in Europe and the new LTE smartphone name is Honor Play, which is aimed especially at users who want to play games in their smartphone. The device has integrated a powerful processor with “GPU Turbo” and offers a very large display. Today, we will check details about the Honor Play and the technology that offered by Huawei in this smartphone.

Good display and quick unlock

The display of the Honor Play is comparatively large with 6.3 inches. The resolution is very high at 2340 x 1080 pixels, so the presentation is always sharp. The positive feature in the test is the very good display brightness. The frame around the display is pretty narrow, in this area of the display, for example, pictograms can be displayed.

The Honor Play not only offers a fingerprint sensor to unlock but also a face recognition. Both methods work reliably and quickly. The fingerprint sensor is positioned well on the back and works faster than the face recognition, but overall, the face recognition with sufficient light left a very good impression.

Enough performance for the gaming smartphone

Honor Play uses a HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset, which is the first chipset used in the Huawei Mate 10 in 2017 offers a maximum clock rate of 2.36 GHz per processor core and has 4 GB of RAM available. In addition, the “GPU Turbo” technology is used. According to Honor, this brings up to 60% more power and up to 30% less power consumption for certain games optimized for this purpose. However, if you play a game that is not optimized for the GPU Turbo, then you can only get the regular performance.

 

Dual camera with decent picture quality

The Honor Play features two camera sensors on the back, one with 16-megapixel resolution and the second sensor with 2-megapixel resolution. A kind of “artificial intelligence” (AI), so a software mechanism, is to improve the image quality. In the test, the image quality was usually neat, but could not compete with more expensive smartphones like the Huawei P20 Pro or the Apple iPhone 8. Unfortunately, the colors were often a bit pale. If you turn on the AI photo function, you often get very unnatural looking pictures. Colors are overemphasized and edges – for example, buildings – too sharpened.

 

Modem, voice quality, battery and more

The battery lasted in the test pleasingly long, about 2 days were possible with moderate use and about a day with normal use. Charging is via USB C fast charging function, wireless charging via Qi standard does not support the device unfortunately.

The modem made a good impression, up to 240 Mbit/s could be measured via LTE in the downlink. The reception and voice quality was good in the test.

 

Conclusion

The Honor Play offers great value for money. The display is not only huge, but also offers a very good presentation quality and a great brightness. The system speed is very good thanks to Kirin 970 chipset and the Android software offers many features. With the EMUI user interface, Honor Play would like to use fewer colors. Often the system is overloaded and confusing due to the many menus and apps. Also, many third-party apps are preinstalled, which fortunately can be uninstalled.

The Honor Play is a very good smartphone for the price of just around 400USD. One thing has to mention is that Honor Play is an explicit gaming smartphone. Of course, you can play well with the Honor Play – but that works just as well with many other smartphones. For example, if you value Turbo on the GPU, you can buy an Honor 10 or a Huawei P20 which have the same performance.

 

Huawei Nova 2 Smartphone Test

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.