Huawei Nova 5T Review: Fabulously Fashionable with Powerful Performance!

Huawei Nova 5T is the latest addition to the Nova family. It’s a lite flagship phone that has a flagship-grade processor, camera, and design. Key features include the Kirin 980 chipset and a quad-camera setup with Sony IMX 586 48MP main sensor. The Huawei Nova 5T price in Nepal is set at Rs. 53,900.

Can Nova 5T emulate the success of previous Nova phones like the Nova 3, 3i, and 2i? Find out in our review.

Huawei Nova 5T Review

Build and Design

Huawei Nova 5T comes in three colors: Black, Crush Blue, and Mid-Summer Purple. We don’t know about other variant but the Mid-Summer Purple looks stunning. The livery on the glass back is really interesting; there’s a nova badging on the bottom-center and then the whole body is covered with a similar silhouette. This gives a unique vibe to the Nova 5T.

Huawei Nova 5T doesn’t sit flush as it has a protruding camera module that consists of three camera sensors with a flash. Then there’s a dedicated macro lens right beside. It’s a really interesting take to go for the macro lens rather than a zoom lens.

It’s sleek, rigid, and smooth. The curved edges and chamfered edges help in its ergonomics as it’s easy to hold in a hand. But of course, the glass back makes it slippery.

Nova 5T is one of the phones to embrace the punch-hole display. There’s a punch-hole in the top left of the 6.26 inches IPS LCD display which accommodates a 32 MP front camera.

Up top, there’s a secondary mic, light and proximity sensor. Also, there’s a tiny notification led inside what looks like a speaker grill.

On left is the sim tray for two nano-SIM cards. While on the right, there are volume rocker the power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner.

We’ve gotten used to the fingerprint on the rear to be natural but, the fingerprint sensor on the side also felt pretty natural. The thumb naturally rests in that position when we’re holding the phone.

On the bottom, we can find the main microphone, UBS Type-C port, and a downward-firing single speaker. Yes, there’s no headphone jack but at least Huawei’s giving you a converter.

The build of the phone is solid and its design is equally impressive. It’s easy to handle with a single hand and has a good grip. the metallic frame matches the glass back color and on overall it’s a peach of a smartphone.

Display

Huawei Nova 5T run’s a 6.26 inches IPS LCD display with a screen resolution of 1080 X 2340 and 412 PPI density. The colors are natural and the panel has a very good viewing angle. There are two color modes to choose between: Normal and Vivid. There’s also an option to switch between HD and FHD resolution but the smart display should be the optimal choice.

The display is bright enough to be used outdoors under sunlight. And, there are no issues with the display.

About the multimedia experience, the thin bezel and chin help in immersive content viewing. Additionally, the punch-hole on the top left is not noticeable at all. If you’re watching some kind of video in landscape mode, then you will totally cover the punch-hole with your thumb. Thus, I like the positioning of the punch-hole. Left is better than the dead center or the right.

However, you can hide it using the “Hide the notch” option in the display settings menu. But, it adds a huge chunk of a black bar that doesn’t look appealing. So, you are better off with the punch-hole.

Camera

Huawei Nova 5T brings a quad-camera setup to the table. It has a 48MP main sensor, a 16MP ultrawide angle sensor, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP dedicated macro lens. So, with all these lenses at its disposal, Nova 5T is one hell of a versatile camera smartphone.

You can capture images in 48MP or 12MP. By default, it will be set to 12MP which you can change via camera settings. The main sensor works really well, especially under adequate lighting. The images are sharp, bright, and vivid. The color is vibrant and the contrast is good as well.

The 48MP images have better details than the 12MP but, you will find that difference only if you zoom in. Else, you will find the 48MP image a tad bit sharper than the 12MP. So, it’s smarter to just use the 12MP because the 48MP image takes up a lot of space.

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Moving to the ultrawide sensor, it is a 16MP sensor that captures impressive wide-angle shots. The color profile is very similar to the main sensor, thus the regular images and ultrawide images maintain color consistency among them.

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Now, one of the more interesting sensors of the Nova 5T is it’s dedicated macro lens. This lens has an optical focal distance of 4cm which really helps you get close to your subject. The images have a decent amount of detail and the color is also consistent with that of the main sensor.

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Nova 5T has a dedicated night mode as well. The night pictures are decent without night mode but the night mode will make it even better. It helps by reducing the noise and capturing more details.

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On to the front, it has a 32MP selfie camera which does a good job almost every time. The high megapixel count gives you good details and the color is good too. It’s not too saturated, it’s balanced. However, the portrait mode will beautify your face ever slightly even if you turn off the beautification.

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Talking about the videos, it can capture up to 4k 30. 4k videos are clean and sharp as usual. The sharpness drop as you drop to 1080 30fps and 1080 60fps. However, video stabilization is better at 1080 30fps.

Performance

Huawei Nova 5T is powered by Kirin 980 chipset which has an octa-core CPU and Mali-G76 MP10 GPU along with 8GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. Nova 5T is a real performer. It will breeze through normal tasks like browsing, navigation, opening apps, and even multitasking. Moving onto games, it can run games at the highest of settings without any hiccups. It runs PUBG on highest setting without any sweat. There were no lags or stutters while we played the PUBG.

Similar was the story when we played Asphalt 9 at the highest setting. Furthermore, you can even use turbo boost mode to enhance gaming performance, which will give you a slight boost. Plus, it also has Huawei’s GPU Turbo 3.0 which helps to improve gaming performance.

Speaker

The downward-firing single speaker works well. It is loud enough and the high end is good too but it lacks the low end.

Software

Huawei Nova 5T runs on Android 9 Pie-based EMUI 9.1, which is also found in Huawei’s most recent devices. The UI is clean and uses multiple home screens to house the apps or you can also switch to an app drawer.

It doesn’t have pre-installed applications aside from the usual Google apps and services, which is good. If you’re a fan of Dark mode, unfortunately, this one doesn’t support it probably because it doesn’t have an OLED panel.

It also comes with digital wellbeing, which helps you to manage your screen time and have better control over your social media usage.

Battery

Nova 5T runs on a 3750 mAh battery which is just short of the 4000 mark but the battery life is impressive nonetheless. For an average user, the battery will last more than a day but power users will need to recharge it before the end of the day. In terms of charging, it comes with a 22.5W charger in the box which takes 24 mins to go from 0 t0 50%. Altogether, the battery and charging rate makes up for decent battery life.

Conclusion

The Nova 5T has an attractive and premium design, nice display, good cameras, decent battery life, and excellent performance. It does lack an AMOLED display but the IPS panel on the Nova 5T is a good one. So, if you’re coming from a mid-range phone, then there’s plenty of reason to upgrade to the Nova 5T. For me, it’s the design, camera, and performance, that makes this phone a good choice in this category.