The bigger the storage on your phone, the more like you are to pay, and pay big, but Huawei’s latest mid-range has other ideas.
There’s only so much storage a phone can come with. While it’s expected upcoming flagship phones will likely come with a good 512GB of storage, even finding more than 64GB is a rarity at the moment. The moment you go over that magic 64GB size, smartphone makers tend to really charge for it.
In fact, the moment you pair that storage size with a big full-view screen that takes up the majority of the phone’s front, well, prepare to kiss some money goodbye.
- Huawei’s P20 Pro sits at $1099
- Samsung’s 256GB Galaxy S9 starts at $1349
- Google’s 128GB Pixel 2 XL is $1549
- Apple’s 256GB iPhone X is $1829
And that’s just a taste. Big screens and big storage sizes tend to cost quite a bit, though that might be changing.
The mid-range is really becoming that place where mobile makers take the fight to the flagship, and the latest model from Huawei is showing that the new place to play might actually be storage.
This week, Huawei’s Australian arm introduced another in the mid-range Nova line, announcing the Nova 3i, a phone borrowing the design used in the Nova 3e, but upping the specs and storage just enough to be different.
The phone may look the same, but it sports a bigger 6.3 inch full-view display complete with the notch, a big 3340mAh battery, and a staggering 128GB of storage.
That puts it on similar footing in at least one way to its P20 Pro sibling, though it does have an edge, with a microSD slot sporting an upgrade of up to 128GB more.
The specs are a fair bit different, too. Huawei’s choice of chip in the Nova 3i is closer to mid-range here, sporting Huawei’s Kirin 710 chip complete with support for artificial intelligence, a technology that has been applied to the cameras. There are four of those, mind you, with a 16 megapixel and 2 megapixel camera on the back, while the front is treated to a 24 megapixel and 2 megapixels.
You’ll find WiFi, Bluetooth, and 4G LTE, and while the connection on the bottom is the older microUSB standard, there’s also still a 3.5mm headphone jack included, not to mention two ways to unlock the phone with your body: a fingerprint sensor on the back or facial unlock at the front.
“Our mantra has always been to create products with innovations that enrich the lives of our users,” said Larking Huang, Managing Director of Huawei in Australia.
“But our mission has always been to make cutting edge technologies more widely accessible which is why it’s our privilege to introduce the Huawei Nova 3i, one of our most exciting achievements yet,” he said.
While technology is obviously a key part of this, price is also the other major differentiator, and Huawei is making it clear with a $599 tag.
That puts the Nova 3i clearly in the mid-range, and doing something few mid-range mobiles get close to: offering flagship features for a fraction of the whole.
The company is also attempting to sweeten the deal slightly, bundling in the Huawei Freebuds, Huawei’s alternative to the Apple AirPods in the package for much of August on online purchases.
You’ll find the Huawei Nova 3i both online and in stores shortly, though, with Optus, JB, Harvey Norman, Bing Lee, and Officeworks getting the phones in either black or purple.
