Huawei Nova 2 Plus Review – Impressive performance on both selfie and gaming

Huawei has been working on improving their phones in many aspects especially on camera and performance, and we could see that they are getting better at it. A few weeks ago, we are introduced to their newly launched product in Malaysia – Huawei nova 2 Plus, which we got a review unit.

What is in the box

The Nova 2 Plus package comes with the phone itself, a phone cover, a pair of earphones, the charger and USB cable along with a Quick Start Guide.

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The phone model we get is in an attractively-looking Aurora Blue. Its design is lovely with a metal unibody pleasingly grained to the finish, while the layout is looking quite similar to the Huawei P10 Plus.

It has a 5.5-inches display (a great screen size for gaming) with a piece of 2.5D glass curling over the top. A fingerprint sensor is mounted neatly on the back of the phone, the dual-lens rear camera is placed at the top of it. The phone is thin and lightweight too, with only 6.9 mm in thickness and about 169 grams in weight.

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Nova 2 Plus Specifications:

OS	Android 7.0 + EMUI 5.1
Color	Aurora Blue, Graphite Black, Prestige Gold
Display	5.5-inches Screen Texture: LTPS Screen colours: 16.7 million Resolution:1920*1080 Screen Pixel Density:400
CPU	HUAWEI Kirin 659 CPU Octa-core 4* Cortex A53 2.36 GHz + 4*Cortex A53 1.7 GHz
Battery	3340 mAh(typical value)
Camera	20MP Front Camera 12MP + 8MP Dual-lens Rear Camera
Storage	4 GB RAM + 128 GB ROM Extend Memory(maximum): microSD 128GB
Connectivity	WiFi:802.11b/g/n,2.4GHz Bluetooth: BT4.2, support aptX USB 2.0
Size	Dimensions: 153.9 x 74.9 x 6.9 mmWeight: about 169 g
SIM slot	Main SIM card: 4G TD-LTE: B38/B39/B40/B41(2555MHz ~ 2655MHz) 4G LTE FDD: B1/B3/B7/B8 3G WCDMA B1/B5/B8 CDMA CELL(CDMA 800): 824MHz～849MHz(UL), 869MHz～894MHz(DL) 2G GSM:2G GSM:B2/B3/B5/B8Secondary SIM card (Only support voice communication): CDMA: BC0(800MHz), only for China Telecom 2G GSM: B2/B3/B5/B8
Fingerprint	Yes
Audio	Audio File Formats: mp3, mp4, 3gp, ogg, amr, aac, flac, wav, midi Dual MIC noise reduction technology AKM4376A Hi-Fi Chip HUAWEI Histen Audio Algorithm
GPS	GPS, AGPS, Glonass Positioning
Sensors	Fingerprint Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Detector Gyroscope, Gravity Sensor, Compass
Output	9V, 2A

Display and Camera

As we mentioned earlier, the phone features a 5.5-inches IPS LCD display. The screen quality is excellent, bright and has vivid colours.

Nova 2 Plus is said to be Huawei’s best selfie smartphone ever, and I am agreeing with it. The dual rear camera comes in 12MP + 8MP resolutions while the front camera gets a whopping 20MP resolution. Its low-light performance is truly exceptional, not to mention that it has a bokeh effect (for selfie) too, which I had a blast playing around with it. There are also a few interesting modes such as 3D Panorama, Good Food mode and the Moving Picture mode (which works like a GIF, similar to Apple’s Live Photos mode).

Huawei Nova 2 Plus — Photo captured in low-light condition

Performance and Battery Life

Huawei Nova 2 Plus uses Kirin 659 Octa-core Processor (sounds like a big step-down from P10 series’ and Honor 8 Pro’s Kirin 960) but so far the performance (especially on gaming) is great. The phone pairs with 4GB of RAM that smoothly runs Android 7.0 Nougat with Huawei’s EMUI 5.1 over the top, and could run any mobile game available on the market now seamlessly.

Other than the performance, battery life has become relatively important for the mobile gamers. Nova 2 Plus equips a 3340 mAh battery, slightly weaker than Honor 8 Pro’s but still enough to get you through a whole day. I tried using the phone for one hour of non-stop gaming and this is the result:

One hour of Mobile Legends and only 13% of the battery is gone, which means with 100% battery you could play Mobile Legends for at least 6 hours! The phone doesn’t really heat up as well even after one hour of non-stop gaming.

While for the phone’s storage, Nova 2 Plus comes with 128GB internal storage originally. If these are still not enough, you can add a microSD card to the second SIM card slot too. Taking the average mobile game size which is 67.7 MB, you can store more than 800 games even after deducting the amount of storage taken by the system itself.

Conclusion

To say the truth, Huawei Nova 2 Plus is basically a lower-specs and cheaper version of Huawei P10. Comparing to Honor 8 Pro (which is having the same pricing), Nova 2 Plus loses at most of the specs but throw its opponent behind on the camera and internal storage aspects.

Huawei Nova 2 Plus is priced at RM1, 999.00 (around 467 USD) in Graphite Black, Prestige Gold or Aurora Blue. You can find it at most Huawei retail stores now, or visit their official website for more information.