Soon after launching the Maimang 6 in China, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei has updated its mid-range smartphones catalogue with the launch of a new device with four cameras, called the “Huawei Nova 2i” in the Malaysian tech market. The Huawei Nova 2i is the company’s second offering to come with dual front and rear cameras, after the Maimang 6. As for pricing, the Huawei Nova 2i has been launched in China with a price tag of 1299 RM (approximately Rs. 20,000) and will be made available for purchase in Malaysia starting October 13 (Friday) via company’s official online store, Vmall Malaysia in Aurora Blue, Graphite Black and Prestige Gold colour options. The key highlights of the smartphone are its dual front and rear cameras, a gorgeous 5.9-inch full-screen display with 18:9 aspect ratio and minimal bezels, and a powerful 3,340mAh battery.
If you take a look at its design, you will see the Huawei Nova 2i borrows its all styling and design languages from the company’s recently launched Maimang 6. The Huawei Nova 2i sports an all-metal unibody design with curved metal edges, giving it an overall premium look. It features on-screen navigation buttons and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, that is housed on the rear panel of the smartphone. The volume up-down keys as well as the power-key/lock button are all placed on the right-hand edge of the device and a 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the very bottom edge of the phone. The vertically aligned dual rear camera setup is still positioned exactly the top portion of the rear panel, while the dual front-facing camera is fixed on the top right-hand corner of the front panel. The speaker grilles are seen at the bottom edge of the handset along with a charging port sitting in the middle.
As far as specifications are concerned, the Huawei Nova 2i flaunts a gigantic 5.9-inch Full HD+ display with a screen resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels and a scratch resistance 2.5D curved glass coating on top. The display has an 18:9 aspect ratio and minimal bezels. In terms of power and performance, the Huawei Nova 2i is powered by a 2.36GHz Kirin 659 octa-core processor (4 x A53 cores at 2.36GHz & 4 x A53 cores at 1.7GHz), which comes clubbed with Mali T830-MP2 image processing unit to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the smartphone is backed up by a 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 256GB with the help of a microSD card.
Talking about its software fronts, the Huawei Nova 2i runs company’s own EMUI 5.1 custom UI skin, based on Google’s Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. The Android 7.0 Nougat-based EMUI 5.1 UI brings some gesture-based shortcuts like “draw an S” on the display to take a long screenshot, “tap twice with one finger” to take a screenshot, and “tap twice with two fingers” to record the screen. As we mentioned earlier, the smartphone also features a rear-mounted fingerprint recognition button for biometric security.
For photography, the Huawei Nova 2i features a dual rear-facing camera setup that comes combined with a 16-megapixel primary sensor with an LED flash module and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor. On the front, the handset houses an another dual front-facing camera setup, which is the main highlight of this device. However, the dual front-facing camera setup includes a 13-megapixel primary sensor and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor for capturing selfies and making video chats.
In terms of connectivity, the Huawei Nova 2i supports dual-SIM dual standby using a hybrid dual-SIM setup (nano+nano/microSD). Apart from this, the device also offers 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS / A-GPS, NFC and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the battery front, the Huawei Nova 2i is fuelled by a high-density 3,340mAh battery. Sensors on the smartphone include Accelerometer, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor, and Fingerprint sensor (rear-mounted). Dimensionally, the smartphone measures 156.2 x 75.2 x 7.5 mm and weighs 164 grams.
