Verdict
A cellphone all about model and selfies that doesn’t come throughout as shallow or vapid. Nonetheless, you do find yourself paying rather a lot for what you get. Energy is poor for the cash, there’s no 5G and no Google apps. It has its charms however the Huawei Nova 11 Professional doesn’t get an unreserved advice.
Professionals
- Vogue-inspired design
- Very quick charging
- Wonderful selfies
Cons
- No Google apps
- No 5G
- Fairly expensive for the spec
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100W chargingThis cellphone has one of the vital highly effective chargers in its class, able to going from 0% to 50% cost in 10 minutes. -
60MP + 2X selfie digital cameraHuawei makes use of two entrance cameras, one with an ultra-high decision 60MP sensor, the opposite a 2x lens for maxed out selfie versatility. -
Vegan leather-based again cowlA leather-based impact again cowl with a fashion-inspired embossed texture is an choice right here, and it appears surprisingly good in particular person.
Introduction
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional has two key priorities, style and selfies. It has a pair of entrance cameras that might not be all that misplaced on a cellphone’s again, and a end that might look the half on a purse.
It offers the Huawei Nova 11 Professional a particular character even when the collection it belongs to, Nova, isn’t the flagship Huawei one.
You additionally get extraordinarily quick charging, lifeless useful for fast top-ups earlier than an evening out. Younger and busy — that’s the Nova 11 Professional viewers. As typical, although, the Huawei Nova 11 Professional is a professional advice at finest as Huawei telephones proceed to lack Google apps. The Huawei options aren’t pretty much as good. And at upwards of £600, points like these are laborious to disregard.
Design
- Vegan leather-based or glass rear
- Vogue label-style embossed sample
- Curved glass entrance
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional is a distinctive-looking cellphone. It has a vegan leather-based again, which implies it’s plastic however has a few of the really feel of leather-based. This isn’t simply laborious embossed plastic.
It additionally bears a cool sample, a remodeling of the “nova” household title that appears similar to the brand of a style home. I’m typically not all that recreation for kinds like this, ones clearly made to be eye-catching above all else. However the Huawei Nova 11 Professional’s model works, and that title “nova” design appears good.
The one half that could be a step too far is the digital camera housing, which might look higher and fewer low-cost if it have been toned down a bit. All these a number of finishes and all that tiny textual content throughout the principle digital camera lens border? A step too far.
The entrance of the cellphone is successful too. Curved glass makes the Huawei Nova 11 Professional really feel slimmer, and the show borders seem thinner.
It’s not a real no-compromise design, although. The metallic-looking sidewalls that join the entrance glass to the backplate are plastic, not aluminium. There’s no official water resistance both.
We’re not flagship-grade right here, however it’s a largely profitable and grippy design for many who just like the fashion-inspired vibe. The Huawei Nova 11 Professional can be accessible with a glass again. Like different high-end Huaweis, this one makes use of the corporate’s Kunlun glass reasonably than Gorilla Glass.
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional additionally has an excellent in-screen fingerprint scanner, not the side-loaded form. However to actually embrace the cellphone’s particular attributes it’s best to most likely use face unlock.
Within the field you get the 100W charger and cable, plus a silicone case. All of the packaging seems to be cardboard-based bar the plastic sheath used to guard the case.
Display screen
- OLED show panel
- Good picture high quality
- Strong however not flagship-tier brightness
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional has a 6.78-inch OLED display with 2652 x 1200 pixel decision. As a curved Full HD OLED, this display makes an incredible first impression.
It gives nice distinction and powerful color pop. Most brightness shouldn’t be class-leading however is excessive sufficient to make the show pretty clear in direct shiny daylight.
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional additionally makes an excellent showcase for the smoothness of a 120Hz refresh price. Its fast-scrolling app menu nonetheless appears silky clean, and you’ve got the choice of switching all the way down to 60Hz to avoid wasting battery life.
There’s a Dynamic mode too, the default, which drops all the way down to 60Hz when displaying static content material.
You even have a alternative of Regular and Vivid color modes. Each look good, however I like to recommend utilizing the marginally much less saturated Regular, and switching to the “heat” color temperature preset to take the sting off the default cool/blue lean.
The cut-out is one different factor to notice. Because of the pair of entrance cameras, the lozenge-shaped digital camera housing is bigger than most.
Cameras
- Fab selfie digital camera array
- Respectable however removed from class-leading rear cameras
- Video faucets out at 4K/30
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional is uncommon in that there are literally extra megapixels up entrance than on the cellphone’s again. We get 50MP and 8MP cameras on the rear, 60MP and 8MP ones on the entrance.
These two selfie cameras are used to attain three fields of view. There’s your traditional ultra-wide focal size, a second “1X” cropped view you may use to take snug selfies and 2X, a zoom mode that may nearly slot in an entire grownup face passport picture-style at arm’s size.
It’s this zoom mode that makes use of the 8MP digital camera, whereas the opposite two use the 60MP ultra-wide, capitalising on that prime decision for digital cropping with out an excessive amount of picture high quality compromise.
The outcomes are nice. Selfies have scads of element, and picture high quality holds up properly even in poor lighting, significantly when utilizing the 60MP digital camera.
Rear digital camera efficiency is much less notable. Whereas the cellphone can take wonderful pics, I discover its processing has a barely digital-looking, painted character. For pure picture high quality the Huawei Nova 11 Professional doesn’t beat or match the Pixel 7.
The 2X rear digital camera mode is only a digital crop, however can produce usable outcomes
I additionally seen an inclination for the HDR optimisation to sometimes go away fairly important overexposed areas in photos. Huawei has nice HDR software program, and it’s typically seen within the Huawei Nova 11 Professional’s digital camera. Nonetheless, at instances it does both seem to slide up or to overly favour general picture brightness on the expense of necessary areas of picture high quality.
Equally, at instances colors seem considerably oversaturated. That is to be anticipated when utilizing the “AI” scene mode, however within the ultra-wide digital camera oversaturation in any mode appears to be fairly frequent.
Right here’s the ultra-wide dramatically oversaturating the blue sky
Nonetheless, in a pleasant shock, the ultra-wide makes a really neat macro digital camera due to its capacity to focus very, very near topics. It’s significantly better than the typical 2MP devoted macro digital camera.
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional can’t match Huawei’s finest, just like the Huawei P60 Professional, at night time both. There’s full-on computational images right here, leading to radically improved dynamic vary, color and readability, significantly when utilizing the night time mode. Nonetheless, element within the darkest areas appears stodgy and smudgy in comparison with the Huawei P60 Professional’s photographs.
Nonetheless, that’s a way more costly cellphone, and the Nova does an honest job at night time.
For video your high modes at 1080p, 60 frames per second, or 4K decision, 30 frames per second. This stands for entrance and rear digital camera arrays. Ideally I’d prefer to see 4K/60 seize. And, oddly, I’d nearly say it’s extra necessary for the entrance cameras right here than the rear, as that is kinda a “vlog” cellphone.
Efficiency
- 4G solely web, no 5G
- Unimpressive mid-tier CPU and GPU efficiency
In a reasonably disappointing transfer, the Huawei Nova 11 Professional makes use of the identical Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor as its year-old predecessor, the Nova 10 Professional.
That is additionally the 4G variant of the chipset. You’ll see this repeated throughout Huawei fashions — they don’t have 5G as the corporate is barely given entry to the 4G fashions from Qualcomm.
It’s in any other case a decent mid-range chipset, however not one which has the gaming grunt of, for instance, the Pixel 7’s Tensor G2 chipset. For the cash, it’s mediocre.
You get sufficient energy to make Android run properly, however not the facility to make the Huawei Nova 11 Professional really feel like the perfect cell for eager cell avid gamers. For that, you’d finest try our roundup of the perfect gaming telephones.
Like most telephones with much less highly effective trendy CPUs, although, the Huawei Nova 11 Professional’s efficiency is way extra steady than that of a flagship.
In response to 3D Mark’s Wild Life stress check it by no means must throttle when the processor is underneath pressure in a “regular” temperature atmosphere. Its efficiency stability was 99.2%.
The audio system additional reaffirm that the Nova 11 Professional isn’t preferrred for gaming. Whereas there’s a stereo array, there’s no semblance of bass and at greater volumes the sound turns into ugly, the mids descending right into a cacophonous muddle with busier music. Most quantity can be simply OK.
Software program
- Makes use of customized Huawei software program
- No entry to Google apps
- Interface model with be acquainted for Android followers
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional has Huawei’s EMUI interface, and the HMS Core software program beneath. That is mainly Android, however not.
As a substitute of getting acquainted Google apps like Google Play, Mail and Maps, you employ Huawei’s options.
Is Petal Maps pretty much as good as Google Maps? No, however my solely main concern right here is with Huawei AppGallery. That is Huawei’s Google Play app retailer various, and it’s not a patch on the actual deal.
There’s not a lot of Android’s finest stuff in right here. Huawei has recognised this too, by introducing a Petal Search function that shows outcomes from standard third-party app shops in addition to the AppGallery, spots like Apkpure.
This doesn’t actually absolutely clear up issues, although, as a result of these app shops are largely primarily based round free downloads. A lot of the high-quality apps and video games I regarded for stay inaccessible to the Huawei Nova 11 Professional. And I discovered extra downloads by looking these app shops individually.
You may get WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Netflix, via a third-party retailer. However there’s no straightforward option to get Minecraft, or plenty of different big-name titles.
I’d have hoped to see Huawei appeal to extra big-name publishers to its platform by now. In spite of everything, Huawei has needed to depend on the AppGallery for greater than 4 years now, after it was blacklisted by the US authorities in 2019.
This apart, although, the Huawei Nova 11 Professional feels very similar to any Android cellphone, with a well-known structure and navigation model.
Battery life
- 100W charging
- 50% in 10 minutes
- No wi-fi charging
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional has a smaller battery than I’d prefer to see, 4500mAh. That is doubtless used to make it simpler to get the cellphone’s thickness down under 8mm. Nonetheless, something under 5000mAh lately makes me nervous.
Battery life is match for a day however not all that rather more. Standby battery retention is nice, but when you’ll purchase a comparatively high-end cellphone like this, you had higher be utilizing it an excellent quantity.
Charging velocity is great, although. Identical to 2022’s Nova 10 Professional, the Nova 11 Professional features a 100W adapter. Huawei claims it takes quarter-hour to succeed in 50% cost. Xiaomi’s 13 Professional pips it, at 120W, however at this degree we’re not speaking about enormous variations in cost time.
There’s excellent news and unhealthy information. It’s even quicker than the bottom declare, taking simply 10 minutes to succeed in 50%. By quarter-hour it was at 67%, whereas it hit 100% at 24 minutes.
Nonetheless, it doesn’t truly attain 100W in response to my energy meter. It tops out at 88W, and solely spends just a few seconds at that degree.
The entire charging behaviour is kind of odd right here, truly. You sometimes see a cellphone begin quick, after which regularly begin receiving much less and fewer juice because it goes via the cycle. Right here, although, I noticed it head into the 70-88W vary a number of instances. I assume this was when the cellphone judged the temperature ranges have been low sufficient.
Both means, it’s snappy. You don’t get any wi-fi charging assist, however that is true of the 100W OnePlus 11 too.
Newest offers
Do you have to purchase it?
You desire a distinctive Android cellphone: Distinctive styling, robust selfie cameras and super-fast charging provide an attraction for a sure younger and busy crowd of social media-connected cellphone followers.
You desire a cellphone that may do every little thing: This cellphone prices rather a lot, contemplating it’s 4G-only and never all that highly effective. It additionally lacks Google software program, considerably limiting the video games and apps you’ll be able to obtain.
Last Ideas
The Huawei Nova 11 Professional is a mode and selfie-driven cellphone that appears the half and performs properly for on a regular basis jobs. Its selfies are nice, and ultra-fast charging is rarely not welcome.
Nonetheless, the attraction drops whenever you realise it’s fairly expensive for a 4G-only cellphone. And, like different Huawei telephones, it doesn’t have Google apps.
This implies it’s important to use Huawei options as an alternative. A few of these are tremendous, however the AppGallery app retailer’s library isn’t practically pretty much as good as Google Play’s. You get that with nearly all rivals, together with the Nothing Telephone (2), Google Pixel 7 and OnePlus 11.
Whereas none of these has fairly the identical angle because the Nova 11 Professional, every will get you extra to your money, all thought-about.
How we check
We check each cell phone we evaluation completely. We use industry-standard exams to match options correctly and we use the cellphone as our fundamental machine over the evaluation interval. We’ll all the time inform you what we discover and we by no means, ever, settle for cash to evaluation a product.
Discover out extra about how we check in our ethics coverage.
Used as a fundamental cellphone for per week
Thorough digital camera testing in well-lit and low-light circumstances
Examined and benchmarked utilizing revered {industry} exams
FAQs
No, there isn’t a official water resistance score right here.
It doesn’t include Google apps, and makes use of Huawei options.
Unusually, it has a zoom lens on the entrance (2x), however not the again.
Trusted Evaluations check information
Geekbench 6 single core
Geekbench 6 multi core
1 hour video playback (Netflix, HDR)
30 minute gaming (intensive)
30 minute gaming (mild)
Time from 0-100% cost
Time from 0-50% cost
30-min recharge (included charger)
15-min recharge (included charger)
3D Mark – Wild Life
3D Mark – Wild Life Stress Check
GFXBench – Aztec Ruins
GFXBench – Automobile Chase
Jargon buster
mAh
An abbreviation for milliampere-hour and a option to specific the capability of batteries, particularly smaller ones in telephones. Typically the upper the mAh, the longer the battery will final however this isn’t all the time the case.
OLED
Natural Gentle Emitting Diode is panel know-how that permits every particular person pixel to supply mild reasonably than counting on a backlight. This allows the display to precisely show blacks by turning off the pixel, leading to improved distinction in comparison with typical LCD panels.
