Huawei Nova Plus review: Bigger, better, but a touch too much

For years phone manufacturers, with the honourable exception of Sony, have been releasing smaller versions of their flagship handsets, but slyly scrimping on the stuff that made them so great in the first place. It’s a sensible, if somewhat cynical, strategy: most people won’t notice or care, so why not save a few quid?

Huawei gets this all mixed up: the Nova Plus doesn’t look very much like the smaller Nova, at all, but inside for the most part, the same components end up running the show. That means for an extra £46, you’re getting broadly the same package in a bigger, different looking frame. Is it worth the extra – or does it, like its little brother, simply get flattened by the continued incredible value of the OnePlus 3?

Huawei Nova Plus: Design

I don’t want to overstate the differences between the handsets’ appearances, because all phones look kind of the same, and it’s not like the Nova Plus has three screens or a BlackBerry style keyboard. But put them side by side and you wouldn’t think one was a miniature version of the other as the name suggests.

While the 5in Nova looks like a dinkier version of the Nexus 6P, right down to the black camera bar along the top and circular fingerprint reader, the Nova Plus’ rectangular camera juts out of the handset slightly further down. The fingerprint reader sits just below it – and it’s also squared off. Even the front facing selfie camera is flipped onto the other side, sitting to the right of the top speaker, rather than to the left.[gallery:2]

I don’t really see this as a problem, it’s just confusing. Both handsets feel nice in the hand, and I actually have a slight preference for the 5.5in Nova Plus. Its unibody metal chassis and smooth finish feels properly premium – right up there with anything Samsung or Apple have slaved away on in recent years.

The fingerprint reader is quick and responsive, and while the location is down to your personal preference (I like Sony’s choice of the side of the handset), an index finger on the back of the phone feels natural enough. As with the Nova, you’re looking at USB Type C port for faster charging and data speeds, but as per usual this extra utility comes with the caveat that you’re inevitably going to find yourself short of the right cable at some point, in a world flooded with micro-USB cables.

Huawei Nova Plus: Screen

To make matters a touch more confusing, the screen on the Huawei Nova Plus came out slightly worse than the Nova’s in our tests. To be clear, we’re talking about the kind of differences that the average human eye would struggle to pick up, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

So to begin with, both the displays are 1,080 x 1,920 in resolution, but since the Nova Plus’ display stretches those pixels across a larger expanse of glass, its absolute resolution is lower at 401ppi compared with 441ppi. In other words, it’s less sharp, albeit only be a fraction.[gallery:4]

Both use IPS LCD technology and look great, but curiously they come out differently in our tests. Here’s a table with our results, alongside the OnePlus 3 and a couple of other similarly priced handsets comparison.

So the Nova Plus has the brighter screen, but with weaker contrast and a slightly lower percentage of the sRGB gamut covered. As comparisons with other phones in the price bracket should show, however, it remains no slouch.

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Huawei Nova Plus: Performance

The Nova Plus performs pretty admirably in day-to-day use as you’d expect any brand new Android handset to, but the speed at which it pops up the homescreen when it detects a fingerprint is particularly impressive. Multitasking is fine and most games run smoothly – even the intensive Sky Force Reloaded plays with hardly a frame dropped in even the busiest dogfight.[gallery:5]

As mentioned, however, almost every Android handset feels slick out of the box, which is why we have to dig deeper into performance with benchmarks. Here we go again, with the same handsets as highlighted above:

As you’d expect, the two Novas score at a similar level, given their identical innards. Elsewhere, the OnePlus 3 continues to blow everything in the price bracket (and the one above it) completely out of the water, but the Novas are no slouches. An average result of 10fps in the GFXBench Manhattan 3 test may sound weak for games, and it clearly isn’t great, but bear in mind this is a deliberately demanding test designed to push smartphones to the limit. We’ve seen handsets struggling to break single digits before.

Battery life is the biggest let-down. The larger frame of the Huawei Nova Plus allows for a bigger battery (3,340mAh compared to the Nova’s 3,020mAh unit), but this doesn’t seem to be reflected in our tests at all, with the Nova Plus having considerably less stamina than its little brother. While the Nova Plus lasted 11hrs 7mins in our standard test – a looped movie played at 170cd/m2 brightness with flight mode engaged – the diminutive Nova achieved a whole extra 2hrs 25mins.[gallery:7]

Suffice it to say, the OnePlus 3 has the upper hand here again, stretching out to 16hrs 56mins when undertaking the same task.

Huawei Nova Plus: Camera

At this point, you may be wondering why on earth you’d consider spending an extra £46 on the Nova Plus when the Nova does exactly the same things, but with better stamina. The camera makes a last ditch attempt to win back the value argument, and it does so compellingly.

While the smaller Nova has a 12MP camera, the Nova Plus’ has a 16MP snapper with a nice, bright f/2.2 aperture. Image quality is excellent, with photographs that appear sharp, detailed and, most significantly, are a big improvement on its smaller sibling. Colours look rich, and shots that look markedly more detailed.

The larger model also benefits from optical image stabilisation, which was an unfortunate omission from the Nova. What this means in layman’s terms, is that in low light the impact of shaky hands is considerably reduced, leading to clearer, more usable pictures.

Arguments of whether or not a bulkier phone makes for more awkward photography aside, the Nova Plus won’t let you down in the photo department.

Huawei Nova Plus: Verdict

The Huawei Nova Plus is a very nice handset. It looks stylish, feels pleasingly weighty in the hand, has a super camera and the kind of screen that will make the most out of the photos you take with it. In any other year, this would get a solid endorsement from us.

But this isn’t a normal year. The OnePlus 3 has disrupted the mid-to-high end market, producing a smartphone that beats everything else in its price bracket by a huge margin, then undercutting them a touch on price into the bargain. The £368 Huawei Nova Plus can’t compete on any single metric.[gallery:8]

Huawei shouldn’t feel bad about that. It isn’t the first manufacturer to be shown up by its Chinese neighbours, nor will it be the last. But the bottom line is that while these two handsets retain their respective prices, it’s simply no contest.

If you can source a good deal, you’ll find the Nova Plus a brilliant companion that will get the kind of admiring glances usually reserved for higher priced handsets. It’s just too bad the OnePlus 3 gets those too.