HUAWEI nova 11 Pro review – Modernizing Outlooks with Social Oriented Cameras

The Huawei nova 11 Pro is one of the latest refresh from the nova series which is known for its mid tier range of devices that mainly focuses towards the masses and this time around the nova 11 Pro came out to be something premium in looks.

Today we will look at the Huawei nova 11 pro and with that, this will be the review.

If you have not check out our unboxing and first impression, click HERE to check it out, and we did a video as well as below

Design

This time around, Huawei adopted a new, fresh design, dubbed the monogram vegan leather back design with an exquisite touch that is premium like from the looks and feel of it retaining the classic nova logo all around it. If you are worrying of the resistance of the leather, rest assured that it is water resistant and should be able to withstand water splashes. While the outlook is elegant, it is tough also as the screen is reinforced with Huawei’s signature Kunlun Glass protection which can take some serious drops or hits all the way. The rear camera gets a fresh redesigned with Super Star Orbit Ring, compared to others which still use the traditional squared island, the Orbit Ring represents planets around us that is circulating working together in tandem just like the combination of different lenses to form a visual.

Color wise, there is only two known to choose from, Green or Black. Black represents the classic, safe looks with gold nova logo while Green gave a fresh, young, styled yet fun feeling that is appealing for the youth, energetic vibes to it. Whichever colors you choose, the Leather Embossing Craft is is there.

The nova 11 pro is weighted at 193 grams with a slimness of just 7.9mm, making it easy to hold, control and tap with its dual curved display with nicely placed power and volume buttons, along with the SIM card tray insertion and USB C port below. There is no headphone jack but it is common to see these absent.

Display & Audio

With a 6.78 inch 1200 x 2652 pixels OLED 1B color display, the Huawei nova 11 pro delivers what it can when it comes to the vibrant display, where blacks are good, other colors can represent good accuracy backed by a fast 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10 and screen-to-body ratio of 93.4% making it a mobile cinematic view for all your streaming and scrolling enjoyment along with the 300hz touch sampling rate, so you will not be missing your taps over your gaming needs. Widevine L1 support is there also, meaning that streaming apps and services can be delivered in Full HD.

Now towards the audio, you get dual stereo speakers which can sure gives some pleasant sound (or music) there and audible within small room or area, watching a stream with a few friends together for example. But if you need more rich audio experience, then getting a wired earphones will get you more options from Huawei Histen audio profile, or relying on a Bluetooth earbuds will be much common these days, you check out some of the Huawei offerings here.

Camera

Camera is proven to be one of the most important piece when comes to phone, and Huawei put it quite a number of sensors front and back. Lets start with the rear camera, a 50 MP wide laser AF sensor along with a 8MP macro camera. The main sensor camera came also RYYB Colour Filter Array and able to provide precise focus at most of the time and easy to handle as well in many situations. This means that you can do quite abit of creative shots with it, especially with the 10-Channel Colour Temperature Sensor as well as the available filters within the camera app. Our experience with the rear camera is there is just many options to play around and even with the defaulted settings, during day time everything came out as expected, good dynamic range and colors, with good zoom in results there. Night Time wise, the night mode features boost up the colors and contrast revealing good separation in objects and subjects.

Day time photos

Night time photos

Close up photos

Front Camera samples

Huawei made it almost an equal too with the front camera, a 60 MP Ultra-Wide Autofocus Front Camera and a 8MP portrait lens. To start, there is also portrait filters you can play with, and of course you can do group selfies with full zoom range from 0.7x to 5x, and 50 mm focal length. Since this has wide lens, even putting it further can capture more.

We manage to capture a short sample footage of what the rear video recording is capable of, and we a day time sample so that you can judge it, to me this is good for most short to medium length video takes, and because of its light weight and slim size, holding on it while recording is fun and not tiring even after some time. And in case if you asked, it supports up to 4K at 30FPS. My experience?, recording at 4K 30FPS can came out clear and decent, just try not to move too fast or otherwise focusing may be stuttering, however I am satisfied with the audio though.

Performance, Experience, Benchmarks

I am not disappointed at this portion, in fact the included Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G along with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of internal storage is still common and able to deliver some of the medium to slightly heavy multitasking with apps comfortably. This is also to probably balance the size of the phone with the included internals which makes sense to me. Since we touch on the internals, the Huawei nova 11 pro also has dual-VC liquid cooling, which helps to quickly dissipate heat, especially when comes to intensive games such as Diablo Immortal or Genshin Impact. While the lacking of SD card expansion, well you still can backup to any cloud services. Security for locking an unlocking the phone can be done via classic password/pin or the under display optical fingerprint sensor.

With the equipped 4500mAh battery capacity, it might sound small, but it can last you for about 13 hours over a mix of work and play altogether. Putting it to power saving mode will get you an average usage of about 27 hours. If you are out of juice (as in your battery), a full charge from almost empty to full will just take less than 40 minutes with the supplied 100w PD charger.

UI and OS wise, the Huawei nova 11 Pro came with EMUI 13 (HarmonyOS in some regions) and Android 12 that will receive frequent updates and enhancements to keep this device fresh. Notable features as part of EMUI 13 and Android will be the AI Privacy Protection that helps to remove sensitive information along with Multi Device Gallery, Super Device for multiple Huawei devices collaboration, themes, Eye Comfort, updated customizable status bar, Widget Staking and more. CLICK here to know more about features of EMUI 13.

As usual, benchmarks as above and this still prove even with the Snapdragon 778G, it is still going strong along with our reference devices.

AppGallery is now available with Google Apps

Huawei has been committed towards the customers on bringing back most of the compatible Google Apps and they did manage to do so with almost the full suite of GApps such as Gmail, YouTube, GDrive, Chrome and more, other app that can also be search and downloaded with the combination of the AppGallery and Petal Search. There is no more additional steps required the separately download Google Services as AppGallery intelligently download it in background mode and installed as if you are using an actual Google Services phone and you can proceed to sign in with your Google Account, its just as simple as that.

Technical Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion

The Huawei nova 11 Pro is proven to be a device that is striking between photography and performance on par with each other, and at this point of time, taking the fact that apps and consumer usage today needed more resources to give things a run, the nova 11 pro still handles it with good optimization’s over both software and hardware, long term security updates, along with a combination of a timeless classic mixed with modern element on the design.

Availability & Pricing

The HUAWEI nova 11 Pro is now available with the price tag of RM2599 and will be entitled for a free HUAWEI Band 7 worth RM219 upon purchases made from 7 July 2023 until 23 July 2023

For more information on the nova 11 Pro CLICK here to find out.