Huawei nova 2 Plus Review: For the avid selfie shooters
9 min read
Huawei nova 2 Plus
RM 1999.00
Pros
- Great build quality
- Accurate & fast fingerprint scanner
- Great 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display
- Great camera performance
- Good performance
- Excellent battery life
Cons
- No IP-rated water and dust resistance
- Overly saturated rear camera
- No OIS
- Slow charging
Camera
Camera app
The camera app is easy to use and most of the functions are adjustments are easy to reach. I would prefer if Huawei put the Pro camera button at the same location as their P series & Mate series smartphones. As a person who uses Pro mode often, it is really troublesome to reach into the camera mode page to enable Pro mode.
That being said, I believe the core camera component is still the same as most of the function we have here is exactly the same as the higher end models.
Image Quality
Since this camera is marketed to be “selfie superstar”, we shall have a look at the front camera’s performance first. Â At the front is the 20 MP sensor with f/2.0 wide angle lens.
As we can see here, the Huawei’s exposure metering algorithm is putting a higher priority on the subject’s exposure. The photo above clearly demonstrates this with the overblown highlights in the background. Even though some photographers would cringe at the end result, I can see that many users are going to prefer this as the main subject, which is the person’s face, is properly exposed in the photo.
Can you differentiate which one has the beauty mode enabled?
Beauty mode is set to 50% by default and I think the effect is pretty reasonable.
The front camera suffers from the low light situation just like any other cameras.
Worth mentioning is that, when you shoot a selfie for the first time, it will ask you whether you want to save the photo in which direction. This is a super useful message because I have seen so many influencers who share mirrored images of the product placement selfies.
Huawei employs the dual camera configuration for the rear camera. The primary has a 12 MP sensor with a f/1.8 standard angle lens, while the secondary has an 8 MP sensor with a f/2.4 telephoto lens.
As seen from the above photos, the 2x zoom gives you extra reach without having to rely on digital zoom. On top of that, the telephoto focal length is great for portraiture shots.
Enabling the portrait mode, the app will automatically switch to the telephoto lens and turns on the bokeh effect. As you can see from the above sample, the software rendition of the bokeh is not perfect.
I am very satisfied with the overall performance of the nova 2 Plus’s rear camera, but one thing I don’t like about the photos is that the colours tend to overly saturated. I tried to make the adjustment in the camera settings but even a slight decrease in the saturation would make the photo look dull and lifeless.
Video mode, however, is a disappointment as it only offers up to 1080p FHD 30fps for both rear and front camera. “But not everyone records in 4K!” Yeah, I know, but some of your competitors are offering 4K recording for the front camera.
Gallery
Full-size photo samples are available in our Flickr album.
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