Huawei nova plus review: Renovation

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.