Huawei is strengthening their 5G offerings with yet another premium mid-range smartphone in the form of the nova 7 5G. While near identical in design to the nova 7 SE 5G released a few months ago, the nova 7 5G has plenty of improvements over its older brother in terms of camera, display and overall performance that makes it a better buy even with its higher price tag over other mid-rangers right now.

Packaging and contents:

If you’ve seen one Huawei box you’ve seen them all, and the packaging for the nova 7 5G isn’t a huge departure from what we’ve seen in other phones in the nova family.

The plain white box only has the phone’s name written on the outside in the line’s distinctive typeface. Inside, you’ll find the phone itself, the silicone case, a pair of wired headphones, a USB Type-C to 3.5mm dongle for said headphones, a Type-C cable, and a 40W SuperCharge charging brick.

Killer looks, killer hooks

It’s not surprising that the nova 7 5G looks almost identical to its older, more affordable sibling. The nova 7 5G sports classic Huawei craftsmanship, in that it feels incredibly well built and is well put together.

The phone has a glass exterior that curves and terminates into an aluminum frame for better one-hand use. Like the nova 7 SE 5G, the nova 7 5G has two eye-catching colorways to choose from in the Philippines: Space Silver and Midsummer Purple. The back of the phone shines and shimmers depending on how light hits it, giving it a unique look almost every time it leaves your pocket.

There are a few subtle design cues that tell the two phones apart. The most obvious is the way the flash unit is integrated into the quad-camera module, which is separate from the nova 7 SE 5G. The power button is now rounded and is a similar style as the volume rocker, as the nova 7 5G now uses an in-display fingerprint scanner instead of a physical one that’s integrated to the power button which was the case with the nova 7 SE 5G.

Personally we liked how natural unlocking the phone was with the integrated fingerprint scanner with the nova 7 SE 5G since your thumb would naturally already be on the frame of the phone when you lifted it up to use it, but lefties would probably appreciate the under-display fingerprint scanner on the nova 7 5G on the display.

Speaking of the display, the nova 7 5G uses a 6.53-inch 20:9 OLED FullView panel with full HD+ resolution, topped off with a punch-hole notch on the upper left side that holds a 32-megapixel front camera. The display looks nicer on the nova 7 5G, thanks to a better, color-accurate display. Unfortunately, the refresh rate is still stuck at 60Hz.

Huawei has added an 8-megapixel telephoto camera to the mix, removing the 2-megapixel depth sensor that was present on the nova 7 SE 5G. The three other cameras still remain the same: you’re still getting a 64-megapixel main camera with an f/1.8 aperture, 8-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 2-megapixel macro lens.

We took a few shots with the phone’s snappers and included the un-edited photos below:

The biggest difference between the earlier nova 7 SE 5G VS the nova 7 5G is the processor. The nova 7 5G uses Huawei’s brand-spanking-new Kirin 985 5G-capable chipset, which is just a few steps below the company’s flagship 990 5G chip.

Huawei’s been churning out 5G capable chipsets via their HiSilicon subsidiary like crazy, and the Kirin 985 is the third 5G-capable chipset from the brand this year, after the Kirin 990 5G and the Kirin 820 5G.

We couldn’t really test the 5G capabilities of the nova 7 5G as of press time, but we’ll be taking that into consideration as well when we finalize our review.

The chip itself is built on TSMC’s 7nm process and features a single-chip 5G solution without any plug-ins.

As for processor specifics, the chip uses a single-core ARM Cortex-A76 clocked at 2.58GHz, three ARM Cortex-A76 core clocked at 2.4GHz, and four lower clocked ARM Cortex-A55 cores running at 1.84GHz. An ARM Mali G77 GPU with the company’s Kirin gaming+ 2.0 tech provides the graphical solution for the chipset.

The nova 7 5G’s processing package is powerful enough to deliver flagship-grade performance, especially when compared to other flagships. Here’s how it stacks up the GeekBench 5 benchmark when compared to a Snapdragon 865-equipped phone (Xiaomi Mi 10), an Exynos 990 (Samsung Galaxy S20+) and Huawei’s own Kirin 990 5G (P40 Pro):

Huawei makes the case for the nova 7 5G even more compelling thanks to the 256GB of storage which is double what you’d usually find in a phone at the same price point. The phone comes with 8GB of RAM as well, which is pretty generous.

As always, Huawei’s EMUI 10.1 is present in the phone built on top of Android 10. And like everything else post Entity List, the phone doesn’t come with Google Play or GMS, and instead comes with Huawei’s own HMS and AppGallery.

AppGallery has expanded quite a bit since it was introduced a few years ago, and now boasts a robust selection of both international and local top apps to install and download. Aside from efforts to entice developers to its platform, Huawei has also developed the Petal Search Widget, which essentially acts as a search platform for apps that’s not present in AppGallery.

Battery stays the same as the nova 7 SE 5G at 4000mAh, and you still get the same 40W fast charging capability via SuperCharge like its more affordable brethren.

The nova 7 5G offers quite a bit of value at first glance compared to the nova 7 SE 5G, and you’re getting quite a lot from its Php 23,990 sticker price.

The phone will be dropping tomorrow, July 31 2020 and consumers who will make purchases in-store can get a slew of freebies worth more than Php 9000 until August 2, 2020. This includes HUAWEI Watch GT2e, FREE HUAWEI 15GB Cloud Storage for a year, Five (5) Exclusive and Customized Dynamic Themes on HUAWEI Themes, FREE 3-month subscription of VIU Premium, FREE 3-month Booky Prime membership, PHP150 Pesoloan Cashback, PHP70 GCash voucher, and PHP50 Paymaya voucher.

Meanwhile, first 100 nova 7 5G consumers on Shopee or Lazada will get a chance to receive PHP 18390 worth of freebies including a HUAWEI Watch GT 2e worth P6,990 and one additional HUAWEI FreeBuds 3 worth P8,990 that lucky five (5) consumers per day can get on a first-come, first-served basis.