Admit it, we Malaysians love our selfies. How else to show people how beautiful we’re feeling that day right?!
We take selfies almost 24/7 that the selfie camera is practically the top priority for Malaysians when looking for a new smartphone. However, the question remains… What’s a good phone for our selfies? And it must be worth the money too!
Thanks to our friends at Huawei, we managed to get our hands on the new Huawei Nova 3 which is specifically designed for the selfie-craze Malaysians out there! To test its capabilities, we pit the Huawei Nova 3 against typical Malaysian selfie scenarios. How does it fair? Let’s find out!
1. The selfie in your typical darker area with no sunlight (e.g. stairs/alley)
Feature: Cutting-edge low light photography experience
What it does: Produces good images even in low light as opposed to other phone brands
Verdict?
We purposely went into a dim room where all the shades were down. We were legitimately surprised. Most phones promise to work well under low-light conditions but that’s never the case! However, as you can see, even with low light/night lighting, the picture taken is detailed, clear and has a good contrast colour to it, versus other pics that would turn out with a LOT of noise.
Forget the expensive lighting that those social media influencers use, the Huawei Nova 3 achieves the same lighting effect by only using the circular flashlight built into the camera app as seen above. Brilliant weh!
2. The outdoor squad selfie
Feature: AI camera/ AI selfie
What it does: Detect more than 200 scenarios across eight categories, such as Blue Sky, Plant, Flower, Beach, Stage Performance, Night, Room, and Snow / automatically saturates the colours to give it a more vibrant ‘pop!’. To know whether AI mode is enabled, just see the AI icon at the top of the screen like below:
Once enabled, it will automatically detect objects and scenarios like the flower below:
Verdict?
This phone’s AI camera feature gives a higher saturation to your picture than most phones. If you compared it with the same image taken from another phone, you’ll see how dull the image appears as opposed to the Huawei Nova 3’s vibrant image. With the features it provides, taking pictures outdoors will offer the greens or flowers or sky with more contrast!
Plus, it has a 3750mAh battery that lasts through the day. We tested it by (of course) taking a bunch of selfies, playing games, streaming videos, and scrolling through tons of social media and it lasts about 12 hours with 27% battery left!
3. An indoor group selfie (because only lame people say wefie)
Feature: Portrait Mode
What it does: It has many lighting styles for you to choose from. Focusing on the person or object, leaving a blurred background behind.
Verdict?
We really loved this mode as it gives a very natural effect, it focuses well on our faces and it has great edge detection. Just look at that blur! This mode also works well under low lighting. This most natural BOKEH is actually a real-time hardware generated effect thanks to the dual front cameras. Kinda made us feel like professional photographers! Haha!
4. A cool monochrome portrait
Feature: Monochrome performance
What it does: Its monochrome sensor captures stunning black and white images.
Verdict?
Ok, this isn’t a selfie but this is a must-shout feature! We were expecting the picture to just be some normal black and white photo, boy were we wrong! The photo turned out looking even cooler than the RGB sensor, and many reviewers can also agree. There was barely any noise (the small little dots you find in most B&W images). It was so clear, spot on detailed and the dynamic range was also better.
To take a monochrome shot on the Huawei Nova 3 is really simple. Just select monochrome from the more option and there’s even a normal, aperture and portrait mode to choose from!
5. Posting adorable insta-stories selfies
Feature: AR stickers & 3D Qmoji
What it does: AR sticker changes your surroundings and 3D Qmoji animates your favourite emoji with your facial expressions.
Taken using Huawei 3D Qmoji
Verdict?
We had ABSOLUTELY too much fun with this. Don’t tell our boss. We definitely took too much time to ‘review’ this feature hahaha! If you’re someone who gets as amused as we do, then man, enjoyyy!
6. Bonus: Bloopers reel!
Well, we took A LOT of pictures whilst playing, err I mean, testing the Huawei Nova 3, so we decided to stitch the pictures together to show you a bit of a behind-the-scenes peek ;P
All in all, we enjoyed Huawei Nova 3’s features. Our favourite? Its AI camera that automatically makes the colours ‘pop!’ and the portrait mode that focuses on the subjects, blurring out the backgrounds.
Besides the camera, here are some things you wanna take note of too:
- It has AI-powered Kirin 970 on board, which makes the Huawei Nova 3 damn laju weh!
- Images load super-fast
- Can even handle high-end games smoothly especially with GPU Turbo turned on, which increases 60% graphic processing efficiency, and decreases 30% power consumption for a steady 60+ FPS during gaming
- Has a whopping 128gb storage, so you no longer have to worry about having to delete your amazing selfies just to take another one!
Impressive kan?! What’s more, the phone is priced at a really attractive pricing too at only RM1899! For the spec and the quality of the camera I seriously would consider this one once my current phone breaks. Which won’t take long…
Well, if the Huawei Nova 3 is just a little over your budget, you can always get the Huawei Nova 3i which is priced lower at RM1249! It has the dual front AI camera as well so you won’t miss out on your selfies!
Alamak writing this review I also wanna get one doh. Huawei give us some free phones plis!
Anyway, to find out more about the Huawei Nova 3 and the Huawei Nova 3i, click on this link here!