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REVIEW: Huawei nova 3e

Dubai - Mid-rangers are getting really serious nowadays

Take a good look at the iPhone X. Then take a look at the Huawei nova 3e. Don't tell me you weren't fooled even for a split-second.
Huawei loves to up things, and its new mid-range smartphone certainly shows it. While it does borrow elements from the iPhone X, it's pitch is that you can get a good-looking phone that performs pretty well at - as a colleague put it - a quarter of what you'd pay for that something else.
From afar, it does look like Apple's best at first impression - thanks largely to the vertically-placed dual-lens camera. But putting the 3e and the X side-by-side, the latter is a tad taller and a hairline thinner, while practically matching up in width. It's got the card trays to the left, USB Type-C and 3.5mm audio ports below and power and volume rocker to the right - and those on the last feel loose. On its back cover - which has a nice glossy finish that's also an invitation for fingerprint smudges - is a fingerprint scanner that reacts quickly. The blue variant, which we got, is absolutely gorgeous.
And by looking at its 5.84-inch IPS LCD screen, you'll notice two things that sets it apart from the X: a thick bezel below and a notch (another notch!) on top - though it's way smaller than the one on the iPhone X; Huawei says theirs is almost 50 per cent less, which means you have more digital real estate to enjoy. So, we really can't call this a truly end-to-end device.
And enjoy you can: the display is crisp and bright, and watching videos is a pleasure to the eyes. Speaking of videos, our standard one-hour YouTube test at full brightness eliminated 19 per cent of battery life, which is better than the last nova we reviewed, the nova 2 Plus, and at par with the Honor 7X. By comparison, the lower-tier Alcatel A7 did slightly better. But don't worry: it's enough to get you through a whole day.
Huawei's EMUI is pretty much straightforward, and die-hard users of the brand will pretty much get cozy with it immediately. The phone responds fast, but there is one thing I noticed while browsing with Chrome: there are times scrolling through a Web page isn't buttery-smooth, but it could be because there are some elements of the page that haven't fully loaded. Otherwise, it's negligible.
A bit of trivia: the nova 3e is also known as the P20 Lite. From what we've scoured, there are some differences: for example, the nova 3e has up to 128GB of storage and has a 24MP front camera, while the P20 Lite has 64GB and 16MP.
Which leads us straight to the camera: the nova 3e's main snapper has a dual-lens, 16MP/2MP combo. In works pretty well in good lighting conditions - delivering sharp detail - but it does tend to be grainy when the lights go dimmer. It also has what is called Moving Picture - similar to the iPhone's Live Photo - which takes shots before you hit the shutter, resulting in an animated, GIF-esque shot. As for its 16MP front shooter, there's a bokeh effect you can toggle. However, the effect appears inconsistent; in some of my selfies, a good chunk of my hair sometimes gets blurred as well. Merits our 'Beef of the Review'.
 
AND SO.
Props to our friends for churning out the Huawei nova 3e. The Chinese company is steadily raising the bar in the mid-range device segment, and that could put more pressure on other brands to raise their game as well. And if this smartphone is too 'Lite' for you, keep it here because something that has the 'Pro' tag is coming soon.
 
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