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HUAWEI nova 13 Pro Review

For today’s review, we have the HUAWEI nova 13 Pro. It’s a promising pickup for 2025, being generally well rounded compared to last year’s nova line released in the Philippines.

Device highlights from specs alone include its stylish design, cameras, and fast charging speed. All things considered, for now we can say that it’s a great pickup for those who value social media presence. If readers are interested to see how it fares in other aspects, let’s dive right in.

Design and Construction

The HUAWEI nova 13 Pro has a premium feel, highlighted by its curved frame and slim body. It stands out with its plaid design, which is exclusive to its Loden Green colorway.

While the textured finish is easy on the eyes, it’s also fairly functional. It’s pretty smudge resistant and it’s sturdy since the back panel’s made of glass.

As such, it has a good amount of weight but is still easy to carry around. On the upper left of the back panel, we have a slightly protruding enclosure, which houses the camera sensors and the LED flash.

At the front, we have the phone’s display panel. It has thin, asymmetrical bezels and a camera situated on top. We’ll unpack how these perform later on in the review.

For buttons and ports, users will find the power button and volume rocker on the right side. Meanwhile, the left is clean as a whistle.

At the bottom, there’s a SIM tray, a USB Type-C port, a speaker grille, and one of two microphones. The other one’s found on top with another speaker.

I believe HUAWEI did a pretty good job under this segment. The phone stands out while not being too flashy. It’s a good mix of fashion and function.

Display, Multimedia, and Biometrics

The phone is fitted with a 6.76-inch OLED screen with an adaptive refresh rate up to 120Hz. My time with the device includes YouTube binges, browsing, and gaming.

Users could definitely feel how smooth the display was just by swiping left and right at the home screen. I do have one gripe relative to anyone’s general browsing experience, but I’ll cover it later under apps.

For those that enjoy watching videos on their phone, the screen supports up to FHD+ resolution. This makes for sharp, crisp, and colorful images complemented by its thin bezels.

The phone also has dual stereo speakers situated on the top and bottom of the device. Personally, I spend most of my time with mobile devices with wireless earbuds. However, I feel like the nova 13 Pro can do without.

The sound stage it provides is full with great lows and mids. It doesn’t get too loud to the point where it sacrifices quality, which is good in my book.

Neither of the speakers feel like they’re being blocked even if your fingers get in the way either. For reference, this is for when users are holding the phone horizontally during gaming and whatnot.

For biometrics, users will get the modern standard means of device security. This includes an in-display fingerprint sensor and face unlock.

Users may find the former on the bottom of the display, where it works relatively fast to recognize your prints. As for facial recognition, it’s just as efficient. It takes half a second for it to work for users who are curious.

 

Cameras

For optics, the HUAWEI nova 13 Pro has triple-rear shooters. This includes a 50-megapixel main with adjustable aperture and a 12-megapixel telephoto, both with OIS. There’s also an 8-megapixel ultra wide and macro sensor for either capturing landscapes or close-ups.

The device also boasts dual-selfie shooters, which includes a 60-megapixel ultra wide and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera capable of 0.7 to 5x zoom. It can also shoot 4K videos at 30 fps with either rear or front cameras.

From experience, the rear cameras are well and capable of taking great shots. Users can take shots with wide dynamic range, sharp details, and notable color reproduction with deep blacks.

For those curious, we’ve noticed that the nova 13 Pro’s processing leans to more of a warm white balance. With that, it should preserve highlights in most scenarios.

We’ll leave sample shots from the rear camera below for readers to judge.

What the nova 13 Pro really excels in, however, is taking great selfies in almost any setting. Personally, I prefer it without beautification filters (which is toggled on by default).

Similarly, it has warmer tones and produces decent skin tones well enough for users to stay social media ready.

It also has a cool feature that saves otherwise doomed selfies or group photos with friends with AI Best Expression. It uses processing to keep frames during a shoot to give you usable photos at will.

If you guys wanna see how it works, we did a video about it in comparison with the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE. I’ll leave it below for those interested.

OS, Apps, and UI

The HUAWEI nova 13 Pro runs on EMUI 14.2 out of the box. For those worried about OS futureproofing, don’t wait up. HUAWEI generally doesn’t give a timeline for their software updates and security patches.

At first glance, it’s minimal, fairly easy to navigate, and straightforward. It feels like a huge upgrade in comparison to its predecessors. I appreciate that they kept the general design language consistent with their first-party apps aesthetically speaking.

There’s also a ton of app folders and bloatware that I find annoying. But hey, at least installing some of the useful apps like TikTok from the AppGallery feels smooth.

For apps, I have an issue with the device’s dedicated browser. I mentioned this gripe under the display segment. Whenever I need to look something up, HUAWEI just feeds me ads and unwanted app recommendations.

While I get that it probably has an algorithm waiting to take note of my preferences, it just felt unpleasant. If readers aren’t down to just download another browser, keep this in mind should this be a pet peeve of yours.

Notably, I think some UI elements took inspiration from Apple’s iOS. This is evident in how the control panel panned out to be. Overall, I’d appreciate the entirety of this segment if HUAWEI didn’t feed me off putting ads or app recommendations.

Performance and Benchmarks

The HUAWEI nova 13 Pro is powered by a Kirin 8000 chipset. For reference, our review unit came with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage available.

The device is capable of handling general use, various tasks, and gaming well. I spent my time with the phone playing Teamfight Tactics (TFT), which I understand isn’t too graphics intensive.

To get a better idea of its limits, I played Genshin Impact to check frame stability. It can run reliably on high graphics, at the cost of more power consumption and heating up.

Users will find that most of the heat comes from the camera island. Generally, it doesn’t heat up at all though. I found this strange because it didn’t act up at all during benchmark testing.

For those interested, we’re leaving readers with our synthetic benchmark scores below. Our general consensus for the nova 13 Pro under this segment is that it’s reliable for anything and everything.

BenchmarkScore
Antutu v10622,758
Antutu Storage Test113,721
S. Read20,615
Speed2073.0MB/s
S. Write20,666
Speed1801.0MB/s
R. Access56,120
R. Speed640.0MB/s
W. Speed608.0MB/s
AI Read16,320
Speed408.0MB/s
3D Mark: Wild Life3541
Geekbench 6 CPU Single932
Geekbench 6 CPU Multi2682
Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL2169
Geekbench 6 GPU Vulkan2216
PC Mark Work 3.09081

As seen above, it offers great scores for read and write speeds under storage. Users will certainly find that this is a huge upgrade compared to previous nova devices.

However, it does pale in comparison against other offerings under its price segment which we’ll disclose at the end.

Battery and Connectivity

This device packs a large 5,000mAh battery with support for 100W of HUAWEI SuperCharge via USB Type-C. Notably, the in-box charging brick is pretty sizable with a good amount of weight to it.

From my time with the device, I can vouch that it’s insanely good under this segment. We took a couple of tests to help readers get a better idea of how its uptime estimates are.

In PC Mark’s Work 3.0 Battery Test, our review unit gave us 16 hours and 32 minutes of activity. The test was taken with the phone set to 50% brightness, volume muted, and in airplane mode.

In our proprietary video loop test, it was able to pump 24 hours and 4 minutes of playback. For this test, we played a full HD movie with the same variables mentioned in our test above.

Charging shouldn’t be an issue with the device. HUAWEI says that users will only need 9 minutes to charge it to 50% from an empty battery. Of course, charging speed will slow down around 80% of its power for longevity’s sake.

Connectivity options include 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and NFC. The phone has a dual nano-SIM tray as well. Call quality is pretty standard either with Wi-Fi or via your network provider.

Users may also use the nova 13 Pro for casting via its wireless projection feature found in the control panel. Other useful connectivity features include HUAWEI Share and its QR code scanner.

Pricing and Conclusion

To address the elephant in the room, the HUAWEI nova 13 Pro is priced at PHP 32,999USD 567INR 48,621EUR 549CNY 4,164 with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. To recap, its strengths lie with its fashionable (yet functional) design, cameras, and battery life.

I just found it weird that the device doesn’t support 5G connectivity. There’s also the matter of it having tons of ads in its dedicated browser and not having an IP rating. In other words, users might want to keep this away from water.

Suffice it to say, this device has its pros and cons. Frankly, I feel like it had a ton of potential. Understandably, there are users that value things like performance and connectivity. The nova 13 Pro fell flat a bit in these areas, making it tough to justify its pricing in the upper midrange segment.

At the end of the day, it still falls to user preference though. I believe those that value style, optics, and battery will still find this device worth it. What do you guys think of the HUAWEI nova 13 Pro? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

What we liked:
Fashionable yet functional design
Cameras
Battery life

What we didn’t like:
4G connectivity and performance scores for its price range
Dedicated browser ads
Lack of IP rating

HUAWEI nova 13 Pro specs:
6.76-inch FHD+ (2776 x 1224) LTPO OLED display
120Hz adaptive refresh rate
Kirin 8000
Mali-G610 GPU
12GB RAM
512GB internal storage
50MP main camera (f/1.4 – f/4.0, OIS)
12MP telephoto camera (f/2.4, OIS)
8MP ultra wide and macro (f/2.2)
60MP ultra wide front camera (f/2.4, AF)
8MP close-up portrait front camera (f/2.2)
Dual stereo speakers
Dual SIM
4G VoLTE
Wi-Fi 6 (dual-band)
Bluetooth 5.2
NFC
GPS, AGPS, GNS, Beidou, GALILEO, QZSS
USB Type-C
Fingerprint sensor (in-display)
Face unlock
EMUI 14.2
5,000mAh battery
100W HUAWEI SuperCharge Turbo support
163.4 x 74.9 x 7.82 mm (dimensions)
209 grams (weight)
Loden Green, Black (colors)

Duane Villanueva
Duane Villanueva
Communication graduate, closet cynic, and kid at heart. Duane is a rare person to find, quite literally. He often takes to himself but has proven his mettle in tech media with his quick wits. Well, the portfolio of scriptwriting, web content, and public relations help too, we suppose. As a homebody, he often spends his time on the streaming platform Twitch or ‘farming’ gaming clips with friends. He is also an avid fan of round glasses and anything relative to blueberries.
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