Meet HUAWEI nova Y70 - Affordable 6,000mAh battery

We share our thoughts with the recently released HUAWEI Y70 with a 48MP rear camera and a 6,000mAh battery.

Meet HUAWEI Y70!

The Chinese manufacturer brought the Y70 to the Philippine market. It boasts a 6.75-inch HD+ TFT LCD screen. Inside is the 12nm Kirin 710 octa-core processor, Mali-G51 MP4 GPU, 4GB RAM, 128GB of storage and a massive 6,000mAh battery with 22.5W SuperCharge.

At the back are triple rear cameras while on the punch hole is the single selfie camera.

Let's unbox it first.

Box inclusions

It comes in a familiar white box with the HUAWEI Y70 branding, key features, key specs and regulatory information.

Inside the box are the phone, SIM ejector tool, USB-C cable, 22.5W SuperCharger, Silicone case and documentation.

Back design

At first glance, the phone is eye-catching. Upon closer inspection, the phone is made of a glass front, a polycarbonate frame and a glasstic back panel.

The combination of materials makes the phone lightweight while being easy to hold because of the curving of the back panel.

The middle frame has a faux metal finish while the front glass and back glasstic panel have glossy finish that makes it slippery to hold and makes it prone to fingerprint smudges.

Display

As mentioned above, the front 6.75-inch curved TFT LCD screen has a resolution of 1600 x 720 and a PPI of 260.

Around the panel are slim top and side bezels while the chin bezel is noticeably thick.

Images produced by the panel are bright and vibrant but could be sharper and more detailed had HUAWEI offered a 1080 panel.

Top and bottom

On top are the microphone port while at the bottom are the speaker grills, USB-C port, microphone port and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Left and right

On the left side of the phone is the SIM tray while on the right side of the phone are the polycarbonate volume rocker and the power button which doubles as the fingerprint scanner. Both the volume rocker and the power button offer satisfying feedback when pressed.

Rear cameras

At the back is the aforementioned 48MP f/1.8 primary camera, 5MP f/2.2 120-degree ultra-wide angle camera and 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor with an LED flash.

The stock camera app features the following modes: Photo, Video, Portrait, Night, Aperture, Panorama, Moving Picture, Slow-Mo, Time-Lapse, High-Res, Pro, Light Painting and Stickers.

The Pro mode allows control for White Balance, Focus, Shutter Speed (30 secs - 1/4000), ISO (50-3200), EV (+-4), and switching between the main camera only.

First Camera Samples

Daylight 1x

Daylight ultra-wide

Indoors 1x

Indoors ultra-wide

As you can see, the 48MP primary camera takes decent photos with good sharpness, color, detail and contrast while the ultra-wide camera is softer and tends to be washed out when compared to the main camera across daylight and indoors.

Selfie daylight

Selfie indoors

The selfie cameras produce images that are dark even when the location where the selfie was shot was broad daylight. This has affected the color accuracy of the photos. We do like the sharpness and detail of the selfies but the colour and exposure could hopefully be improved via firmware.

Overall, for the price, the camera's performance is underwhelming.

Performance

AnTuTu and GeekBench

We ran some benchmarks like the Antutu where we got a score of 204,649. While on Geekbench we got 292 points on the single-core and 1,315 on the multi-core tests.

3DMark and CDPT

In 3DMark Wild Life Extreme the phone managed to score 564 overall and scored 3.4 average FPS. While si CPDT scored 380.84 MB/s in sequential read speeds and it scored 265.73 MB/s in sequential write speeds.

In real-life use, the phone runs somewhat smoothly. We have yet to notice any hiccups. Navigating thru the UI and opening or switching between apps is fast enough that is on par with similarly priced smartphones.

25 hours!!

The 6,000mAh battery managed to withstand over 25 hours and 7 minutes of the PCMark battery benchmark. Impressive! While the 22.5W charging brick charges the HUAWEI Y70's battery from 0 percent to 100 percent in under 100 minutes from our experience.

Bottom speakers and 3.5mm audio jack!

The bottom-firing speaker produces sound with decent maximum volume with acceptable clarity and separation. The two microphones help with noise cancellation during calls. We have yet to hear any concerns from the other side of the voice or video calls.

It comes with a 3.5mm audio jack but does not come with earphones in the box.

EMUI 12

The side-mounted fingerprint reader and Face Unlock are both easy and quick to set up. Once set up, both detect our face and our fingerprint and immediately unlocks the phone. The camera does struggle at times when the environment is dark or when we are wearing a mask.

For connectivity, VoLTE, WiFi, Bluetooth 5.1, and NFC work consistently and as expected.

The HUAWEI Y70 is running on Android 12-based EMUI but without Google Services. This means that users have to use workarounds to access Google apps and services like GBox. Otherwise, EMUI works smoothly and easily as expected. If you have been a fan of the UI, you will like it still. However, if you didn't like EMUI before, there is barely any new feature that will change your mind.

Huawei nova Y70 Specs

Display: 6.75-inch 2.5D curved TFT LCD screen w/ HD+ 1600 x 720 resolution at 260 ppi

CPU: 2.0GHz 12nm Kirin 710 octa-core processor

GPU: Mali-G51 MP4

RAM: 4GB

ROM: 128GB expandable via microSD card slot up to 512GB

Back Camera: 48MP f/1.8 + 5MP f/2.2 120-degree ultra-wide-angle + 2MP f/2.4 depth + LED flash 

Selfie Camera: 8MP f/2.0

Battery: 6,000mAh 22.5W SuperCharge

OS: EMUI 12

Connectivity: WiFi 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHz), 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.1, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, dual SIM

Sensors: Accelerometer, light, magnetic

Others: Side-mounted fingerprint sensor, USB-C, Colors: Crystal Blue, Pearl White, Midnight Black

Dimensions: 168.3 x 77.7 x 8.98 mm

Weight: 199 g

Price: PHP 9,999 (PHP 8,499 new SRP)

Quick thoughts

GIZGUIDEPH

With a price point of PHP 9,999, you are getting the immortal Kirin 710 octa-core processor and a massive 6,000mAh battery with 22.5W SuperCharge.

On paper, one of the highlight features of the nova Y70 is the 48MP rear camera and it does perform well but as you can see from the images above, the images from the 5MP ultra-wide and the 8MP selfie camera could be improved.

What we do like about the phone is its long battery life with fast 22.5W fast charging and the eye-catching design with high-quality glass and polycarbonate materials. This combination makes it lightweight but prone to fingerprint smudges.

Let's not forget about convenience and security features like Bluetooth 5.1, WiFi, GPS, side-mounted fingerprint scanner and face unlock that work as expected.

If you like or are invested in the HUAWEI ecosystem, the nova Y70 is a decent affordable option. But it may underperform when compared to similarly priced smartphones.

What do you guys think?