6.9 Good

The Nova 8i may be the downsized version of the standard 8 specs-wise, but in terms of value for money you can’t ask for much more here. The only thing holding it back is all that App Gallery bloat, but we’re willing to look past that for everything else on offer here. Solid internals, a great camera array and a very pleasant design all for R7,000 is more than a little attractive.

Display 6
Design 7
Performance 7
Camera 7.5
User Ratings (5 Votes) 7.4

The budget to mid-range smartphone market is as hot as it’s ever been right now, and it’s taken the global South by storm. Huawei’s Nova series arrived earlier this year to capitalise on that popularity, with the efficient but not particularly exciting Nova 8 helming the ship. The Nova 8i is the even budget-er version of the standard 8, and it shows.

But that isn’t something we can really pan it for. Specs-wise it probably won’t wow anyone, but in terms of value for money the 8i is hard to beat.

A little unorthodox

Like the standard Nova 8 (and, indeed, all of Huawei’s smartphones), the 8i is by-and-large sans Google, by which we mean the Google Mobile Services. It’s still running on an open-source version of Android (Android 10 to be precise), but you’ll be bereft of Google’s apps. That means no Play Store, no Gmail, no Google Search. At least not without significant workarounds.

You’ll also have to pull a few apk-shaped strings to access WhatsApp and Instagram, which aren’t featured on the proprietary App Gallery, but given Facebook’s recent track record you might consider this a net-positive.

Huawei has some software of its own to make up for this though, so you’re not going to have to learn to read a road map just because you made the switch to the App Gallery. Barring some significant exclusions and OS exclusive titles, the App Gallery itself has pretty much everything the App Store and Play Store have to offer too.

Unfortunately, like the Nova 8, this means that there’s an outrageous amount of bloat ready to be installed on your phone from the moment you boot it up. We’re used to having a few superfluous apps littering your home screen when setting up a new phone, but having seven to eight folders with 9 apps apiece in them, plus a dozen outside of those folders is a terrible first impression.

Form and function

Time for a spec dump. This Nova entry sports a 6.67in 1080p display, ever-so-slightly larger than the standard Nova 8’s. That’s the only point it scores over it’s more talented sibling though. The 8i has an IPS LCD display in comparison to the 8’s OLED panel, so you can expect notably less colour and definition there. It’s adequate, but very underwhelming.

Under the hood, the 8i is packing exactly what you’d expect (and maybe a little more than that) for its price. You’re looking at an octa-core Snapdragon 662 SoC running the whole operation, which is about as budget as Qualcomm processors get these days. It gets the job done, admirably at that, with no significant staggering or slow-downs unless you’re doing resource heavy tasks. Just don’t try to multitask too hard and you won’t have any problems.

The 8i comes in two flavours of RAM, 6GB and 8GB. Neither of these are top-end but they’re both pretty substantial offerings for a budget phone. You’ve only got 128GB of storage though, of which a hefty amount can be taken up by that App Gallery bloatware. There’s no room for an SD card either, which is disappointing.

It’s a bit of a looker

The camera array is the most impressive part of this setup. First off, it’s pretty eye-catching. The four lenses are packed into a pretty big ring that looks more obtrusive than it is. The lenses themselves are pretty substantial too. There’s a 64MP wide sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide, and then a pair of 2MP sensors for micro and macro shots. They’re not the greatest, and they’re pretty much exactly the same as the rear sensors on the Nova 8, but for R5k less. We call that a steal.

The selfie cam is a 16MP sensor, half the size of the 8’s, which won’t blow anyone away but is perfectly adequate for your everyday needs.

The Nova 8i is pretty aesthetically pleasing too, standing out from the crowd of glass slabs without deviating from the tried-and-true formula too much. Ours came in “Moonlight Silver”, and while it’s a little easy to smudge it looks fantastic.

It has a 4300 mAh battery, which is pretty substantial. And even if you do manage to run it dry in a few hours, the 66W fast charger will have it filled up in no time.

On the miscellaneous side of specs, there’s a side mounted fingerprint scanner and dual-sim support, both of which are nice to have but not massive priorities for us. Port side, the Nova 8i charges via USB-C like any good modern phone, and (thankfully) has a headphone jack.