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TELEPHONY The Huawei nova plus handles voice calls with ease and sound quality doesn't disappoint. The phone offers powerful dual-SIM manager in case you opt for the dual-SIM flavor,

too. SMART DIALING • RECENT CALLS • CALL LOG • THE PHONEBOOK • A SINGLE CONTACT The stock dialer app is a trinity of tabs bundled together - these include the Dialer, Contacts, and

Favorites. The phonebook offers all the usual sorting and display options, it supports multiple accounts, and there are lots of fields available for each contact. The Huawei nova plus scored

a Good mark in our standardized loudspeaker test. Our impressions from the speaker's sound quality are mostly positive - it produces deep and rich sound, but the default ringtones are

rather quiet and you may miss some calls. Perhaps you can load a ringtone of your choosing. SPEAKERPHONE TEST VOICE, DB PINK NOISE/ MUSIC, DB RINGING PHONE, DB OVERALL SCORE SONY XPERIA X

61.3 61.1 65.7 Below Average SAMSUNG GALAXY C7 67.3 67.8 72.8 Average SAMSUNG GALAXY S7 EDGE 70.0 69.1 71.8 Good ONEPLUS 3 62.4 71.0 77.8 Good HUAWEI NOVA PLUS 68.3 68.0 76.9 GOOD HUAWEI P9

72.1 66.6 75.6 Good HONOR 8 67.1 66.2 82.6 Good HUAWEI NOVA 69.2 71.9 80.6 Very Good HUAWEI P9 PLUS (REGULAR) 71.7 73.7 81.3 Very Good SONY XPERIA XA ULTRA 88.9 79.3 82.7 Excellent APP

PACKAGE The Huawei nova plus ships with WPS office, which can be used for some basic document editing on the go. It can handle text documents, spreadsheets and presentations as well as PDF

files. It can also export to PDF. WPS OFFICE Phone Manager is Huawei's do-it-all app for keeping control over your phone. It lets you control all sorts of features from call/message

privacy and Do Not Disturb settings to phone optimization and app permissions, to network and battery usage. The app features a one-touch optimization feature that frees up memory space and

gives you settings recommendations for maximum battery performance. It's a hell of a slick feature that few manufacturers offer. PHONE MANAGER Battery Manager is part of Phone Manager

and includes a selection of three power plans with varying degrees of feature limitations. From here you can also control which apps can remain active after you send the phone to sleep.

BATTERY MANAGER A file manager is also present, and it even supports batch operations. FILE MANAGER • FILE MANAGER • MORE TOOLS THE GALLERY The Huawei nova plus gallery app offers a Timeline

view, which sorts your images by the date you've taken them. Alternatively, you can opt for the standard Album view with all of your images sorted in different albums. Opening a single

image lets you quickly delete or rotate it, as well as gives you some basic sharing options (including streaming it over DLNA). The info icon up top gives some pretty detailed information

about the image, including a histogram. Pulling down from anywhere on the screen lets you take a quick photo without leaving the gallery. The image comes out in a square 1:1 ratio. ALBUM

VIEW • CHRONOLOGICAL VIEW • VIEWING AN IMAGE • DETAILED INFO • CAMERA QUICK ACCESS You can also go into a more capable editor with options for light and exposure adjustments (so you can

bring out the shadows or the highlights), filters and beauty enhancements. You can adjust levels and add individual watermarks for time, location, weather, food and mood. THE IMAGE EDITOR IS

QUITE CAPABLE VIDEO PLAYER When it comes to playing videos, the nova plus default player is pretty basic. Its sole option is playback speed. SIMPLISTIC VIDEO PLAYER WITH FEW OPTIONS MUSIC

PLAYER The nova plus comes with Huawei's custom music player app. It offers four default playlists - songs, artists, albums, folders. You can create your playlists, too. The background

of the app changes dynamically to match the album art, which is a nice little touch. The Now Playing screen is pretty standard, it offers album art and lyrics. There are no equalizers to

speak off, but the app does have a few extra features. It would try to pull album art, song info and lyrics automatically for you. THE MUSIC PLAYER FM RADIO The Huawei nova plus has a

built-in FM receiver. It can play through the headset or the loudspeaker, but you'll need to have the headset plugged in as it serves as the antenna. We were disappointed not to find

RDS support, so you'll have to name your radio stations by hand. FM RADIO WITH FAVORITES, BUT NO RDS AUDIO QUALITY IS AVERAGE The Huawei Nova Plus didn’t do particularly well in the

active amplifier portion of the audio quality test. Its volume levels were below average and it’s intermodulation distortion and signal to noise readings that are particularly bad. When we

plugged in a pair of headphones, the stereo crosstalk rose an average amount, but the distortion and noise readings actually improved. Volume remained low however so it’s only a decent

showing. TEST FREQUENCY RESPONSE NOISE LEVEL DYNAMIC RANGE THD IMD + NOISE STEREO CROSSTALK HUAWEI NOVA PLUS +0.03, -0.31 -70.7 83.2 0.0064 0.875 -95.4 HUAWEI NOVA PLUS (HEADPHONES ATTACHED)

+0.05, -0.10 -89.9 86.5 0.0057 0.062 -58.0 SAMSUNG GALAXY C7 +0.01, -0.09 -95.3 93.1 0.0046 0.0095 -92.2 SAMSUNG GALAXY C7 (HEADPHONES ATTACHED) +0.20, -0.03 -93.2 91.9 0.034 0.122 -57.6

XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 3 +0.04, -0.08 -96.0 92.3 0.0015 0.0076 -95.6 XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 3 (HEADPHONES ATTACHED) +0.48, -0.09 -95.3 92.1 0.011 0.327 -70.2 SONY XPERIA XA ULTRA +0.02, -0.15 -92.9

92.8 0.033 0.038 -92.5 SONY XPERIA XA ULTRA (HEADPHONES ATTACHED) +0.53, -0.25 -90.8 91.6 0.019 0.427 -49.1 XIAOMI MI MAX +0.01, -0.03 -93.5 93.5 0.0029 0.0068 -93.8 XIAOMI MI MAX

(HEADPHONES ATTACHED) +0.04, -0.02 -93.4 93.3 0.034 0.035 -57.7 HUAWEI MATE 8 +0.01, -0.03 -97.8 99.1 0.0054 0.0087 -97.3 HUAWEI MATE 8 (HEADPHONES ATTACHED) +0.02, -0.09 -97.3 97.9 0.015

0.078 -81.3 NOKIA LUMIA 950 XL +0.01, -0.08 -91.6 91.7 0.0035 0.012 -89.3 NOKIA LUMIA 950 XL (HEADPHONES ATTACHED) +0.48, -0.07 -90.4 91.5 0.011 0.293 -55.6 HUAWEI NOVA PLUS FREQUENCY

RESPONSE You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here. A 16MP OIS SHOOTER The Huawei nova plus features a 16MP camera with optical stabilization, bright

F2.0 aperture, phase detection and contrast detection hybrid autofocus, and a dual-tone LED flash. The camera pixels are 1.12µm big. The interface of the camera app is straightforward if a

little scattered. Swiping left or right in the virtual viewfinder lets you switch between still/video, and the nice Light painting, Beauty and Time-lapse modes. THE CAMERA UI • BEAUTY MODE •

LIGHT PAINTING • ALL MODES • SETTINGS From the shooting modes you can select HDR, Manual (Professional) mode, Super Night, All focus, and Watermark (also available post-shot from the image

editor), among others. MANUAL MODE • SUPER NIGHT SHOT The Light Painting mode shoots at 8MP and has four additional sub-modes - tail light trails, light graffiti, silky water, star track.

Whatever the scene, your Huawei nova plus will first take a picture with the proper exposure settings and then it will capture the light trails of either cars, stars, water, or other moving

objects. After you finish capturing those, the light trails will be automatically added to your picture. This process produces some stunning results if you keep the camera perfectly still

while shooting - on a tripod or similar. TAIL LIGHT TRAILS • GRAFFITI • GRAFFITI • STAR TRACKS The Super Night mode is basically a slow shutter one, where the shutter speed and ISO are

chosen automatically, depending on the scene, but you can tweak those if you like. The Manual option allows you to adjust all camera exposure settings as you see fit. We snapped a couple of

night shots for you. The auto mode does OK in terms of detail and contrast, but the focus often misses and we found ourselves taking a few test shots before the camera gets the focus right.

Using the Professional (manual) mode and a tripod allows for extending the shutter speed down to 4s or more, which often results in beautiful city night images. The focus issues remain, but

you can always resort to using manual focus to be sure everything is fine. NIGHT SCENE (AUTO) • NIGHT SCENE (AUTO) • NIGHT SCENE (MANUAL, 4S) • SUPER NIGHT (AUTO, 20S) Let's focus on

the daylight image quality now. The 16MP samples came out with more than enough resolved detail and very good dynamic range. Noise levels are only average, the colors are accurate, and

generally these are some solid-looking photos. HUAWEI NOVA PLUS 16MP CAMERA SAMPLES Of course, you may need HDR at some point of your shooting experience. You can check the HDR samples we

took below. HDR OFF • HDR ON • HDR OFF • HDR ON The panorama mode is one of the better implementations on the market, switching automatically between portrait and landscape. When shooting in

portrait, panoramic images turn out just over 3,000 pixels tall and the samples below are about 30MP - not that far from a 180-degree sweep. Stitching is good, exposure is even, it's

just that the captured detail and dynamic range are not quite the same as on the regular still images. HUAWEI NOVA PLUS PANORAMA SAMPLE The front camera of the Huawei nova plus is an 8MP

unit shooting images at 3,264 x 2,448 pixels. It's paired with a relatively bright f/2.0 lens. There is the obligatory beautification feature, which attempts to mask skin blemishes, but

it mostly gets rid of any fine detail in the shot. If you go for a regular photo, the resolved detail is quite satisfactory, the colors and contrast are great, too. It's one of the

better selfie snappers we've seen, it also supports screen flash and shoot pleasant selfies most of the time. HUAWEI NOVA PLUS 8MP SELFIE SAMPLES You can check out how the nova plus

camera stacks up against the competition in our Photo compare tool. HUAWEI NOVA PLUS VS. HUAWEI P9 PLUS VS. ONEPLUS 3 IN OUR PHOTO QUALITY COMPARISON TOOL 4K VIDEO RECORDING One of the major

flaws of previous Huawei smartphones is that they didn't support 2160p video recording. The Honor V8 was probably the first to offer it, and now both the nova and nova plus have 4K

video capturing. Unfortunately, there is no 1080p video at 60fps option. The 2160p videos come out with a bitrate of 42Mbps while the 1080p ones are exactly half that. In either case, audio

is recorded in stereo at 96kbps. The 4K videos came out rich in detail, the colors are spot-on and the contrast is very good. The dynamic range is only about average, but still enough. There

isn't any annoying focus hunting. The only real problem with the video samples is the poor audio quality of the sound that gets recorded along with the videos. Unlike the 4K videos,

the 1080p ones came with average resolved detail, and yet they kept their cool with the contrast and colors. The audio is as poor as on the 4K samples. These are some 2160p and 1080p videos

we uploaded on YouTube. [embedded content] [embedded content] As usual, we've provided unedited samples straight out of the camera for you to download - 2160p@30fps (10s, 50MB), and

1080p@30fps (10s, 26MB). Be sure to head over to our video compare tool to check where the Huawei nova plus stands against the rest. 2160P: HUAWEI NOVA PLUS VS. ONEPLUS 3 VS. XIAOMI MI 5 IN

OUR VIDEO QUALITY COMPARISON TOOL 1080P: HUAWEI NOVA PLUS VS. HONOR 8 VS. HUAWEI P9 IN OUR VIDEO QUALITY COMPARISON TOOL FINAL WORDS Huawei's on an upward trend and its recent phones

are consistently showing it. The attention to detail on the exterior has been matched on the inside and the polished software is one of Huawei's definite strengths. This is really where

the EMIUI is shining lately: innovative and helpful gestures, clean yet customizable interface and top-notch camera processing algorithms. The Huawei nova plus was developed and built to a

high standard. The airplane-grade aluminum has made it reasonably lightweight but sturdy, and it feels quite convincingly premium in terms of both hand feel and performance. The switch from

Kirin to the latest midrange Snapdragon chip didn't take performance up to flagship levels, but helped improve the battery life and pretty much ruled out heating issues. The fingerprint

sensor is among the best in class - blazing fast, always-on, super accurate, and it can be used with some really useful gestures. Finally, the new 16MP OIS camera is quite good. The company

has been adding new features and the nova plus benefits from all of them: the light painting mode with car trails, silky water or graffiti, the high-res panoramas, manual mode, super night

shot with long exposure of up to 30s, among others. Oh, and the nova plus is among the first Huawei devices to offer 4K videos, which was long overdue. Yes, the nova plus is nicely designed

and well-built, with a plethora of features to keep even the most demanding users interested. Here goes the cheatsheet. HUAWEI NOVA PLUS KEY TEST FINDINGS * Premium design, excellent and

sleek build, lightweight for a phablet; * The IPS display offers excellent contrast, but poor sunlight legibility, perhaps due to the average 400nits of maximum brightness; * Battery life is

very good at 79 hours - the nova plus did well across all tests; * Marshmallow with Emotion UI UX is a powerful combo. There are lots of customization options, gestures, and proprietary

services to enhance your Android experience; * The Snapdragon 625 chipset offers consistent CPU and GPU performance, enough for its mid-range status. It runs modern games great, and hardly

gets warm while doing so; * Average audio quality and low volume levels through the 3.5mm jack. The speaker loudness is very good, as is the sound quality; * Great 16MP camera both in

daylight and low-light, with high dynamic range, great contrast, colors, and low noise levels. The optical image stabilization allows for lower shutter speeds at night, but it isn't

that good at stabilizing the otherwise impressive 4K videos. The 1080p videos are not as good looking though and the sound recorded with both the 4K and 1080p samples is very poor; * The 8MP

selfies are very good with enough detail and accurate colors. If there's one issue with the Huawei nova plus, it's the asking price. The company will be charging €430 at launch,

which is as much as some top-tier smartphones right now. For example, you can get the OnePlus 3 with a Snapdragon 820 chip, 6GB RAM, and a 5.5" AMOLED screen for a little less. Or you

can grab the ZTE Axon 7, which not only comes with a 5.5" AMOLED screen, but also ups the resolution to Quad HD. There is the flagship Snapdragon 820 chip with 4GB of RAM inside, a 20MP

OIS main camera, Dolby Atmos sound on stereo speakers, among other goodies. ONEPLUS 3 • ZTE AXON 7 The Huawei G9 Plus might be a better pick if you live in the right Asian country, as it is

probably cheaper, and it's the local variant of the nova plus. Both smartphones are virtually the same. Or you can opt for the smaller 5" Huawei nova, which comes across as the

better-looking device but its 12MP main camera comes without optical stabilization. The rest of the specs are identical. The recently launched Honor 8 is another great in-house alternative

with a faster chipset, better dual-camera setup on the back, and a premium all-glass design. HUAWEI G9 PLUS • HUAWEI NOVA • HUAWEI HONOR 8 The Samsung Galaxy C7 offers similar build quality,

screen, chipset and camera, and costs around the same. If you are after the AMOLED sweetness and TouchWiz, you should give this one a try. The Motorola Moto Z Play which is about to launch

on the same price, offers quite a similar experience on a 5.5" AMOLED screen and Snapdragon 625 chip. The imaging skills are close enough too, but you will be getting the vanilla

Android OS. The Z Play offers water-repellant coating, which the Huawei nova plus doesn't have. SAMSUNG GALAXY C7 • MOTOROLA MOTO Z PLAY Finally, we should mention the LeEco Le Max 2

and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro, which prove that it is possible to match and even better the performance of a premium midranger for even less cash. Their availability however is quite

limited. LEECO LE MAX 2 • XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 3 The Huawei nova plus is the company's latest phablet, which steps on a solid foundation provided by the Mate series and benefits from the

latest R&D. It fetches quite a premium over the regular gang and its price pits it against some very potent smartphones. Not a very favorable position at this point but Huawei's

consistency may as well pay back in the long run. Right now it seems like Huawei is keen on adding depth to its lineup (like Samsung) and hanging hefty price tags (like Sony). But

that's not the only things the Chinese have in common with the established brands. Huawei is getting better in making good phones, which match the Western taste and the nova plus is a

prime example of that.