Huawei’s Mate 10 and the Mate 10 Pro were — and still are — pretty underrated Android smartphones that suffered the weight of heavy competition late last year, when the hype of Google’s Pixel 2 and Apple’s iPhone X drowned everything else. Word of Huawei’s excellent smartphone camera lens (by Leica!) was then unfortunately foiled by reports that the Chinese tech giant got people to post fake reviews for the then-unreleased phones on Best Buy. This, on top of political pressure within the United States to not have anything to do with Huawei amidst growing concerns about the firm’s role in Chinese espionage.
In any case, Huawei wants to leave a mark this year. Leaks have already shown that their P20 series might be the world’s first smartphones with three rear cameras. And for some reason, a notch on the front of the screen, ala iPhone X.
Huawei P20, P20 Lite, and P20 Pro (top to bottom) pic.twitter.com/FK8iyxyQND
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) March 7, 2018
The first Huawei phone to come out here in 2018, however, is nothing that impressive. Making its debut at the IT Show 2018 yesterday, the Huawei Nova 2 Lite is all about making premium smartphone features affordable for the masses.
Feature-wise, it’s nothing to write home about. It has narrow bezels (an expected thing these days), a 5.99-inch screen and a resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels, which is decent for some casual video-watching. It’s crazy light at only 155g, and that’s because it’s made out of plastic, so it’ll feel like it could fly right off your hand at any time. It runs Android Oreo; it has a 32gb internal storage with expandable memory of up to 256gb; it has a 3,000mAh battery.
For less than S$300 though, it’s pretty laudable that Huawei actually managed to fit a perfectly satisfactory ‘Face Unlock’ facial recognition, which works just as well (though not as quick) as Face ID on iPhone X. But honestly, we’d rather use the fingerprint sensor at the rear because it’s way quicker than waking up the phone with the power button just so it can scan your face.
Other phones of the same price point, however, won’t have dual rear cameras like Huawei’s Nova Lite 2 — it’s a setup that includes a 13-megapixel lens and a 2-megapixel lens to provide a Bokeh effect, with seven different aperture levels. Not too shabby for a cheap, entry-level phone.
If you fancy the features and aren’t looking for anything more than that, the Huawei Nova Lite 2 is now available at the retail price of S$298 islandwide at all Huawei Concept stores, M1, Singtel, and StarHub branches, electronics retailers and Lazada. Those without the dough to fork out for higher-end phones can finally get their hands on something that’s close enough.
