Review: Huawei Nova 7i The Affordable Yet Innovative Choice

Huawei nova 7i is a fantastic entry point phone at a truly affordable price. With all the same bells and whistles as its contemporaries, you’ve got yourself a very smart phone for a very small outlay of cash.

Apple devotee Shonagh Walker trialed the Huawei nova 7i and was pleasantly surprised with its capacity, battery life, and aesthetics.

I’ve always said, ‘once you go MAC you never go back’ but getting my hands on the Huawei nova 7i has made me eat those words faster than I would a sweet, crisp apple.

Even the unboxing was a breeze and discovering the simplicity of set up was such a relief. The hardest part was typing in my modem password (why do they print them in such small font?).

Despite several attempts at typing the correct password in, I had to detour my home wifi and use the hot spot on my iPhone, although I’m certain that was more a case of operator error than a glitch in the Huawei nova 7i software.

One small criticism I have is the Huawei nova 7i’s small keyboard. It frustrated me somewhat and it took a great deal of concentration and effort to get my typing en point. Despite being curvy by nature, I don’t have fat fingers.

However, I’d imagine with time, I’d get used to this, and I also believe this feature would be a massive plus for kids. After all, with its amazingly reasonable price point of $399 – $499, it’s the perfect entry point phone for school kids and their little fingers could manoeuvre the keyboard sans stress.

Best Accessories

Similar in shape and size to the iPhone 11, which I’ve been currently using, the Huawei nova 7i comes with all the usual accessories – a charger (which incidentally, Apple is no longer offering with its latest models), ear buds, sim pin, as well as a handy rubber case, so you don’t have to immediately go scouring the Internet for a case that suits you. Many an accident has befallen my unprotected phones whilst I awaited delivery on personalised cases, so this is a fantastic added feature that more tech companies should consider adding on.

Setting up my account

Creating a Huawei account was as easy as setting up an iCloud account, if not easier. As for device security, it gives you the choice of fingerprint ID or face recognition, or both, which is a nice security feature.

Transfer of info from my iPhone to Huawei wasn’t without hiccups, but that mostly wifi drop out issues. The App Phone Clone does a pretty efficient job of transferring data, images and contacts and calendar. It took a good hour or so, but it did get the job done.

Once set up, you then can choose whether to slide or use key points to work the phone. I chose swipe, as that’s what I’m used to. The phone automatically gives you common apps like SnapChat and TikTok, as well as others like WeChat. Others you may wish to upload, like Facebook and Instagram can easily be applied via a third party app called Petal Search, which easily finds your fave apps and adds them to your screen in seconds. 

Rather than tap to wake up in sleep mode, you press the power button on the side, which does take some getting used to, after all the tapping I’ve done over the past 10 years.

I also really loved the curved glass edges, which makes it comfortable to hold and swiping much easier from any direction and the unique feature where swiping from side takes you to your previous menu.

The Huawei nova 7i also has a special Eye Comfort Mode, which reduces blue rays that stress eyes, making it marvellous for reading ebooks or playing games, especially at night, or for anyone looking at screen for a long period of time.

The Huawei Nova 7i Camera 

This is something to be believed. The Hueawei Nova 7i Quad Matrix Camera has four lenses that are super high quality.  The first is the 48mp main lens, with large pixel to shoot high quality photos. Next up you have an 8mp ultra wide lens for group pics or wide landscapes, followed by a 2mp Boekholt lens when you wish to shoot a person with a blurred background. Finally, the Macro lens allows you to get great up close shots, without zoom and without blurring. And, it’s Artificial Intelligence function recognises what things in your photos actually are – a dog, plant, food etc. 

It has a super night mode which allows you to take photos without flash and a video and beauty mode that allows body shaping which is a fun function (especially to hide those covid kilos).

Battery Life

This is pretty impressive too. You can use the Huawei Nova 7i intensively all day without charging. And when you do need to charge, just 30 minutes of charge takes it to 70 percent. 

You also get 128gb storage and 8gb ram with options of expanding memory with a Nampo memory card. 

Huawei Nova 7i comes in  midnight black with a subtle gold around camera ring to set contrast. 

All in all, I’d rate the Huawei Nova 7i as an affordable yet innovative choice for Aussies looking for a smartphone jam-packed full of features, including a sophisticated camera and intelligent AI capabilities, all tied together with a classic, sleek design.