Christian Collado HuaweiShare

Huawei is once again pulling one of the best mid-range phones out of its sleeve, but once again it's hard to recommend.

I very rarely get the feeling that addiction to Google services can be a problem in my daily life as long as a Huawei phone does not pass through my hands.

Huawei nova 9 has everything you need to become one of the smartphones of the year: modern and pleasant design, power reserve, a very good camera and a price that, even beating the competition, does not go too far than usual in its category.

But once again, the problem is the lack of Google apps, the same thing that made Huawei moved from being one of the best-selling mobile brands in the European market to less than 1% market share in the last quarter.

The Huawei nova 9 is one of the first mid-range companies to display a "waterfall" effect / Photo: Christian Collado

Huawei nova 9, Andro4all opinion and evaluation

Huawei Nova 9 price and where to buy it

Huawei Nova 9 has been on sale in Spain since mid-November at a price of 499 euros and can be purchased in a single configuration of 8 GB RAM with 128 GB internal memory.

It is available both from the brand's official online store and can also be found from other regular retailers such as Amazon.

Learn more: Huawei Nova 9

Specifications Huawei Nova 9

Where is Huawei Nova 9 located?

Top-of-the-line or affordable high-end features some of the hottest phones on the market, and the Huawei nova 9 arrives to try to gain a foothold in this segment.

The new Huawei model competes with terminals such as the Xiaomi 11T, POCO F3 and realme GT. Although they all have more powerful processors than the Snapdragon 778G from Nova 9, the Huawei model surpasses them in terms of build quality and materials, screen quality, physical appearance, and in some cases also photography.

But interestingly, its main rival is another. The Honor 50 is basically the Huawei nova 9 ... no problems with the Nova 9: ​​it has a better main camera, 5G connectivity and pre-installed Google apps, all for a price only 30 euros more than Nova 9.

Learn more: Honor 50

In the Huawei catalog, it is a model that is immediately inferior to the Huawei P series, with which it shares several functions, especially in terms of design or the photographic section.

With nova 9, Huawei strives to stand out with design and photography / Photo: Christian Collado

Design and display

The Nova 9 is the closest to the Huawei P50 in the Western market today, at least when it comes to design.

As has become usual in the last generations of the nova series, the physical appearance of the device means that Huawei has taken care of its build and that it has not followed the trend of using the overall design despite being a mid-range focused model.

So much so that the similarities with its current flagship are more than reasonable. The back, made of glass with a pleasant, rough touch, incorporates the signature camera module with double circles in the P50 style, adding harmony to the rear, hiding all sensors in two modules with a the same size and shape.

The back of the Nova 9 has a rough matte finish that is very pleasant to touch / Photo: Christian Collado

The unit that has passed through my hands has a tone between blue and purple that changes depending on the incidence of light, somehow reminiscent of the blue color of the Xiaomi Mi 11, although darker and more exposed than the purple tones.

Its front is occupied by a large AMOLED screen surrounded by very narrow margins, which is undoubtedly one of the gems in the crown of the device's technical card.

It is covered on both sides by curved glass, with a "waterfall" effect, which, while a typical feature of high-end models, has never been seen before in the intermediate series of the catalog. this is the distinguishing feature of this phone.

Cascading screen, a distinguishing feature of the nova 9 project / Photo: Christian Collado

The panel in question has a diagonal of 6.57 inches and Full HD + resolution, as well as a refresh rate of 120 Hz. These are the numbers. On a daily basis, the Nova 9 screen turns out to be one of the best, if not the best, ever seen on a smartphone in its category. with over acceptable maximum brightness levels, perfect viewing angles and very good color reproduction, plus the extreme fluidity provided by 120 Hz, which makes everything move smoothly.

As is logical given the dimensions of the screen, the Huawei nova 9 is a large phone, the curves of its body make it comfortable in the hand, and there will be those who will be able to use it with one hand without too much trouble, but it is not a perfect phone for lovers of small cell phones with its 16 centimeters tall, although not too heavy a smartphone with its 175 grams.

Other interesting features that emphasize its physical appearance are, for example, the narrow aluminum rim that surrounds the entire housing, as well as the volume and power buttons, the latter accentuated in an orange tone, as usual on reference cell phones by the Chinese company. In addition, the screen is perforated in the top center to accommodate the selfie camera and video calling.

While not everything is premium in its design, unlike the more expensive nova 9 models, it has no IP protection against water and dust, and its sound system consists of one loudspeaker located at the bottom of the unit.

Neither waterproof nor stereo speakers in Huawei Nova 9 / Photo: Christian Collado

Hardware and performance

This time there is no sign of Kirin under the hood of the nova 9. Huawei chose one of the platforms that offers the best performance in the devices that mount it, albeit with special attention.

And the point is that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor in the Huawei Nova 9 does not have a 5G modem and therefore leaves us with a device incompatible with these types of networks. In mid-2021, almost at the gates of 2022, there will be those who recognize this none for a disadvantage, and the truth is that it can, especially if you plan on using the device for several years.

The processor has eight cores: four are Cortex-A78 at 2.42 GHz, four are Cortex-A55 at 1.8 GHz and an Adreno 642L GPU. All this comes with 8 GB of RAM and 128 internal memory or 256 GB.

Thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor, performance is one of the Nova 9's strengths / Photo: Christian Collado

This combination of features translates into solvent efficiency in any situation. The Huawei nova 9 has no problems when it comes to performing heavy tasks, managing several applications for multitasking or handling large files. The experience is worthy of a high-end smartphone, especially due to the smoothness it provides. through a screen with a high refresh rate and reduced touch latency of the screen, which makes every action performed immediately.

Battery

The Huawei nova 9 battery has a capacity of 4,300mAh, and therefore not the largest we've seen in a mobile phone in this segment.

However, the use of a modern and efficient processor and efficient - albeit a bit aggressive - optimization by software make the autonomy of the phone more than correct.

Overall, during these weeks of testing, the most common occurrence was arriving at night, with around 30% of the battery remaining with the screen on for three to four hours. It's not a powerful battery like the Huawei Mate series models, but its autonomy is not a problem.

The fingerprint reader integrated into the screen is fast and accurate / Photo: Christian Collado

In addition, the device has one of the fastest charging systems seen so far in a phone in this category: 66 W through the charger included in the box, which allows you to charge the entire battery in less than 40 minutes. With just 15 minutes of charging, we can charge half of the battery .

In this case, yes, Huawei has decided that wireless charging is not present.

Software and experience

The Huawei nova 9 arrives on the market with the EMUI 12 inside, being the brand's first terminal to debut in this version of the customization layer developed by Huawei.

EMUI 12 is a layer that uses Android 11 as a base, but Huawei has managed to remove all references to Android from the operating system to make it feel like its own operating system, something similar to what we could find in models with the HarmonyOS operating system sold in China.

This has its advantages, the most obvious being the excellent performance of the device when it comes to working with the rest of the devices that shape the Huawei ecosystem, but also its disadvantages.

And I am afraid that, once again, disadvantages may become the decisive factors that will make many choose the competition model instead of the nova 9.

Because, as we've seen by analyzing other recent Huawei terminals, the lack of Google services and apps leads to more problems than you might initially expect. It's true that the App Gallery could more or less replace the Google Play Store thanks to its growing catalog of apps. What cannot be provided with Huawei Mobile Services, at least for now, is the lack of components within Google Mobile Services that are essential to the operation of some of the most popular applications. In some cases, the applications simply stop working:

Leaving aside perhaps the most serious problem of the device, it has to be said that EMUI 12 is one of the most complete and advanced layers we have seen so far. On the other hand, something understandable as Huawei was forced to develop all these elements on its own, which disappeared as soon as the veto imposed by the United States entered into force.

On an aesthetic level, the software maintains the lines of the previous versions, and the similarities with regard to the HarmonyOS 2.0 interface are more than obvious.

The EMUI 12 home screen offers a classic format, with all your apps arranged on the home screen - although there's an option to activate the app drawer format in the launcher's settings.

An interesting novelty is the notification panel and the control center, because to access one or the other you will have to move from the top left half or the top right half of the screen, respectively. In this sense we can see that Huawei has opted for a similar approach to Xiaomi with MIUI.

Features have also been added to improve multitasking, including an app sidebar that can be accessed by gesticulating from one side of the screen while keeping your finger pressed. This panel can be customized to only show our favorite apps.

Speaking of applications, it must be said that the variety of applications included by default by Huawei should be more than enough to mitigate the lack of Google applications. You can find the necessary tools such as browser, email application, calendar, contacts, gallery, messages, translator , music or maps. In this sense, the new version of the Petal Maps has improved significantly.

Some Apps pre-installed on Huawei Nova 9 / Photo: Christian Collado

All of the features included by Huawei, combined with a consistent design and fast and smooth operation, make EMUI 12 the most mature version of Huawei's customization layer to date, were it not for apps such as YouTube or Google Maps m. Among others, the EMUI 12 would be able to conquer the whole part of society that has already used the brand's terminal in the past, i.e. those who were looking for an alternative to models from Samsung, Xiaomi, realme or the rest of the companies.

Cameras

There are a total of four cameras on the back of the Huawei Nova 9 / Photo: Christian Collado

There is no doubt that Huawei wanted the photography part of the Nova 9 to be one of its strengths, just look at its camera system and see that its star sensor is a 50-megapixel Sony IMX766, the same one that reference models use in mobile photography. such as OPPO Find X3 Pro or OnePlus 9 Pro.

But I'm afraid that is where the joys end for photography enthusiasts. Unlike the other two models mentioned, Huawei has decided not to accompany this sensor from the classic pair of ultra-wide-angle and telephoto sensors. Instead, we see an 8-megapixel camera with an ultra-wide angle lens and two complementary cameras, 2 megapixels each, for taking macro photos and portraits.

As for the front camera, Huawei is once again releasing the chest by integrating one of the highest resolution sensors we've seen in a selfie camera, with a resolution of 32 megapixels and an f / 2.0 aperture.

Seeing the results obtained with other mobile phones that use the same primary sensor as this Huawei nova 9, we expected a little more from the cameras of this terminal.

While the experience is not bad, we found some inconsistencies in the shots obtained, especially with regard to capturing the detail of the scenes, possibly due to the not very good performance of the autofocus system, which is even more accentuated in the night scenes.

The dynamic range is good, and Huawei's algorithms are good at capturing images in scenes with complex lighting. Sometimes yes, the software tends to reduce noise more than necessary, especially when taking photos at night.

When using an 8-megapixel camera paired with an ultra-wide-angle lens, the quality of the photos decreases and the images are less detailed and have colors significantly different from those captured by the main sensor.

Things change when we use the front camera to take selfies. The capture of details is excellent, and the wide dynamic range means well-lit shots even in complex scenes. Moreover, the processing does not tend to alter the skin tone too much, as is the case with other models. .

Overall it's a good camera system, though there is room for improvement in some respects. We'd like to have a slightly more powerful secondary sensor or telephoto lens that would give the system extra versatility instead of the 2 megapixel sensors which, like many other cell phones, serve little more than a increasing the number of the phone datasheet.

Related Topics: Mobile Analysis, Huawei, Cell Phones, Chinese Phones

This device has been independently analyzed thanks to brand transfer. The article contains shopping links for which Andro4all can earn a commission