Introduction
In October 2019, Huawei’s Nova launched a new variant of Nova 5, known as Nova 5Z. The Huawei Nova 5Z is available in Black, Aurora, Emerald Green colors. It offers 6GB of RAM and two ROM options – 64GB and 128GB. The device has a $225 price tag for the base model, and the high-end version 6GB of RAM and 128GB costs $250 price. The company unveiled Nova 5Z as a cheaper variant of Nova 5i Pro but has just RAM and ROM difference.
Design and Body Material
Huawei Nova 5Z is built with Aluminum frame body, and its weight is 178 grams. In terms of dimension, it measures 156.1 x 73.9 x 8.3 mm, the rear panel has a fingerprint reader for authentication. Unfortunately, the company hasn’t used a Corning Gorilla Glass on the front panel for safe from scratches. The Nova 5Z has a power button and volume keys on the right side while the bottom offers speaker’s grille, USB-C port, and 3.5mm audio jack. On the rear shell, it gets a square-shaped quad-camera setup for photography experience, and the front panel has a punch-hole for selfie sensor. The LED flash held at the right side of the square camera module, and the phone has a ‘Huawei’ logo at the end.
Display
The punch-hole design display features a 6.26 inches screen diagonally and offers 83.4% screen-to-body ratio. The LTPS IPS LCD supports FHD+ resolution with 1080 x 2340 pixels at 412 PPI density and 19.5:9 aspect ratio. There is a DCI-P3 feature for better color accuracy saturation (well gaming experience), and you can also use the screen for multi-touch. It offers up to 512 nits maximum brightness, and you can reduce as low as 2.1 nits (minimum brightness). In our display test, it provides a better viewing experience with the screen’s contrast ratio of 1875:1 under direct sunlight, and there is a Color Temperature Adjustment option so that you can set Default, Cooler (middle position), and Warmer at the extremes.
Battery life test
The Huawei Nova 5Z has a 4,000 mAh massive battery, which can support up to 20W for rapid charging. Huawei has shipped the powerful charger that can charge phone battery up to 50% just in 30 minutes. The phone gets 99h excellent endurance rating in our battery testing, and you can watch videos upto 13h as well. It can do about 25:35h of 3G Talk Time, and you can web browsing about 15:18h.
Software and hardware
The Smartphone runs on Android 9 Pie OS customized with the latest Huawei’s layer EMUI 9.1, and it offers Mali-G52 MP6 GPU. In terms of authentication, the phone offers a fingerprint scanner on the rear shell, and Face Unlock feature as well. Other sensors which include an accelerometer, gyro, proximity, and compass are also available. Switch down from the top, and the phone provides different toggles like – WiFi, Mobile Data, Battery saver, Do not disturb, Flashlight, Auto-rotate mode, Bluetooth, Airplane mode and Night theme for eye protection. Moreover, swipe up from the bottom, we get different apps, and it also has a side-way toggle, so we experience easy access to use apps. The locked screen provides a camera icon, time detail, and fingerprint sensor term to unlock the device. Huawei Nova 5Z has essential media apps like – Gallery, Music Player, File Manager, FM radio, etc. and in Fingerprint, Face & Passcode option, you can add fingerprint and face and also enable screen password to unlock the phone. Unfortunately, there is no option for Dark Mode, but May it offers Dark Mode after the Android 10 update next year.
Performance and Synthetic Benchmarks
The Nova 5Z has drawn power from the HiSilicon Kirin 810 Chipset with 6GB of DDR4 RAM, and the SoC has constructed on a 7nm Octa-core processor. The Octa-core processor paired with 2x2.27 GHz Cortex-A76 and 6x1.88 GHz Cortex-A55. The company claims that this Chipset provides a 10% faster performance than previous SoC “Kirin 710.” Huawei Nova 5Z gets different scores in the following ranks.
GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)
GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)
AnTuTu Scores
Rear camera setup (quad-camera setup)
Huawei Nova 5Z has a square-shaped quad-camera setup on the rear panel for photography. The primary camera uses the 48-megapixel sensor with f/1.8 aperture and 0.8µm pixels. The primary shooter optimized the daylight shoots with HDR mode and also optimized the low-light photography. In the quad-camera setup,
there are other three sensors, which include an 8MP ultra-wide sensor with f/2.4 aperture, a 2MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture, and a 2MP macro sensor with f/2.4 aperture. The macro sensor with 27mm wider can capture shots as close as 2cm. It offers HDR, and Panorama modes for capturing beautiful images at Dynamic range, and you can record videos between 1X, 2X and 5X optical zoom options. The Portrait mode provides gorgeous pictures with original skin tones. The phone can record 4K and FHD videos at 30fps, and you can also record slow-motion videos at 960fps. Sadly, Huawei Nova 5Z hasn’t given a better response in low light conditions. Moreover, the rear camera supports Bokeh mode, hybrid focus, and AI scene detection for better photography experience.
Front Camera (a punch-hole mechanism)
On the front panel, it has a 32MP immersive sensor with f/2.0 aperture for taking selfies and live video recording. The 32MP sensor is 26mm wider, and it can capture nicely detailed selfies with spot-on color reproduction. Along with the HDR feature, the phone gives us beautiful selfies in the day time, but low light (in night) performance not very well. The Huawei Nova 5Z has a portrait mode, and it provides beautiful images with natural skin tones and colors are rendered nicely. At the reasonable Dynamic range, you can record FHD videos at 30fps.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Massive battery capacity
Punch-hole design for selfie sensor
Square-shaped quad-camera setup
4k video recording
Powerful Kirin 810 (7nm) Chipset
Cons
IPS LCD not an AMOLED display
It can’t record 4K videos at 60fps
Low light selfie experience is not good