After Honor unveiled Honor 9N in India this week, Huawei launched two new premium smartphones in the country to boost its presence in the midst of intense competition. Huawei Nova 3 and Nova 3i are the latest additions to the company's smartphone portfolio in the country, which bring top-of-the-line features at mid-level prices to target the youth.
Huawei Nova 3 is the higher end variant than the Nova 3i. Both smartphones will be available exclusively on Amazon India. As for the pricing, the Nova 3 costs Rs 34,999 while the Nova 3i is priced at Rs 20,999. The Nova 3i sale goes live on August 7 and the Nova 3 sale begins August 23 onwards.
With these pricing, the Nova 3 is competing against handsets like Asus Zenfone 5Z, OnePlus 6 and others. If you're wondering what you get for the price, below are the features and specifications of both Nova 3 and Nova 3i.
Huawei Nova 3
Huawei Nova 3 features a 6.3-inch Full HD+ display with 19:9 aspect ratio and 85 percent NTSC colour gamut. The camera setup is likely to impress many as the Nova 3 sports dual rear cameras with 16MP (f/1.8+PDAF) and 24MP (f/1.8) sensors and a similar dual camera setup on the front with 24MP (f/2.0) and 2MP sensors. The Nova 3 has borrowed AI scene recognition feature from the P20 Pro flagship, which we found to be quite impressive, and if you love Apple's Animoji then the Nova 3 comes with its own 3D Qmoji.
The interesting camera configuration and design, the Nova 3 doesn't compromise on the performance. It comes loaded with Kirin 970 chipset paired with 6GB RAM and offers 64GB and 128GB expandable storage options.
Huawei Nova 3 also packs a reliable 3,750mAh battery, a USB Type-C port, 4G VoLTE support, a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, Face Unlock feature and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Interestingly, the Nova 3 comes with Huawei's GPU Turbo technology, which is optimised to deliver a great gaming experience. For instance, there are about 10 different vibrations for 30 different scenarios like shots, explosions and quakes within the game. Overall, gamers will find the Nova 3 to be a great handheld device for your favourite games like PUBG and Asphalt.
But Nova 3 is dealing in a dangerous territory in terms of its pricing, where popular choices like OnePlus 6 and Asus Zenfone 5Z have a strong following.
Huawei Nova 3i
Huawei Nova 3i is a toned-down version of the Nova 3. The Nova 3i shares more than one similarity with the Nova 3, such as 6.3-inch Full HD+ display with notch and front dual cameras, overall design and fingerprint scanner at the back.
Besides lower price tag, Huawei Nova 3i gets treated with HiSilicon Kirin 710 chipset, which is paired with 4GB/6GB RAM and 64GB/128GB storage models. The vertically-stacked dual cameras at the back boast 16MP+2MP sensors, which seem like a major downgrade from the Nova 3. We will be testing both the phones to see how they stack against each other as well as their competition.
Under the hood, the Nova 3i has a slightly smaller 3,340mAh battery and runs the same Android 8.1 Oreo-based EMUI 8.2 as all other Huawei and Honor smartphones. Stay tuned for our reviews of both the phones shortly.
Huawei, for its Nova 3 series, has partnered with Amazon for more than its e-commerce sales. The handsets come with AI Shopping, which enables a new shopping experience where users can point their phone camera on a product and seamlessly find it online.
