Cameras on the smartphone have evolved and now, we have reached a stage where we compare them with DSLRs. Not just that, these smartphones with this good camera comes under budget too. Well, one such smartphone is Huawei Nova 3i (that we have been testing for over two months now). Let’s find out how it performs, in terms of the camera.
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Huawei Nova 3i Camera Specifications
The Huawei Nova 3i comes with dual rear cameras, one with a 12-megapixel lens with 5P lens and f/2.2 aperture and other with a 2-megapixel lens with f/2.0 aperture, which is pretty identical to the Huawei P20 Lite.
Coming to the front, the Nova 3i (again) sport dual cameras, one with 24-megapixel with f/2.0 aperture and a 78° wide-angle lens, the other with a 2-megapixel lens with f/2.0 aperture for portrait selfies. Alright, let’s keep the specification aside and take a look at pictures and videos from both these (rear and front) cameras.
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In the broad daylight, the images from Nova 3i is really good i.e crisp and clear with good levels of exposure, contrast, and saturation. Well, switching to HDR mode enhances the overall look of the picture with a good combination of sharpness without losing the quality, which is really important.
Huawei smartphone (without a question) is about AI camera features, well, with the option of AI, turned on, the picture is brighter, sharper, detailed, and sometimes oversaturated too with a pleasant array of dynamic range. However, we don’t recommend using the AI mode all the time, as it sometimes overdoes saturation which makes the image bit tacky.
The dynamic range is unquestionably great in Nova 3i, but what if you AI on the dynamic range? well, it sometimes goes too far, which is again not recommended considering you lose the natural tones of the picture.
Maybe a drawback, but Nova 3 has a slight focusing issue while taking macro shots, not very hard, but we encountered that.
Coming to the artificial lighting, the Nova 3i stands still by producing a pretty good image maintaining the details and contrast of the picture, however, there’s a slight noise involved in very low-artificial-lighting. Turing on the flash, the phone slightly oversaturate the picture.
Now, lets a look at the portrait mode, which is pretty common among smartphone these days. The Nova 3i produces good portrait shots with a proper amount of bokeh, but with an abundance of light, the Nova 3i sometimes overcook the bokeh making it look artificial, if not making it look like a bad editing.
As mentioned, the Huawei Nova 3i has dual selfie camera, which helps taking good selfies with balanced highlights, contrast, and saturation. It also offers beauty mode, portrait selfie, HDR Pro and also screen flash, which sometimes lead to an overexposed shot, although it totally depends on the situation you’re in.
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The ability to take photos in poor-lighting or low-lighting condition is what makes a smartphone prop about the camera, but sadly, this is where almost every smartphone falls and Nova 3i is no surprise.
The 3i struggles to maintain the details and contrast of the picture. But, turning on the night mode, gets you a near perfect image even in poor lighting condition, thanks to the adjustable exposure of up to 32 seconds in the mode.
It hard to showcase the video quality of Huawei Nova 3i here, we would appreciate if you could check out our camera review of Nova 3i on YouTube. Just for the rundown, the 3i can record 1080p videos at up to 60fps, and there is also an option to choose H.265 codec in addition to H.264.
Well, the video quality is good, and the audio is crisp, thanks to the secondary microphone. There is also 16x Super Slow Motion mode offering 480 frames per second video recording at 720p for 10 seconds, but the quality is not up to mark.
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With all of the images and video samples, we can append our seal of approval to Huawei Nova 3i in terms of camera. No denying, it falls short in some parts, but if you look at the overall picture, it packs in features which rarely any other smartphone in the same price tag sports.
The Huawei Nova 3i is priced at Rs 20,999 (Rs 19,990 as of now) on Amazon.in. Well, what do you guys think about it? Does the Nova 3i hold the standard for a 20K smartphone? share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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