Huawei announce the Nova 2i, coming to Australia on October 25

Huawei have done a great job of building up the hype for their next set of devices, expecting to be announced next week in Berlin. Jumping the gun early, for the lower end of them all, Huawei Australia have today announced the sleek looking Huawei Nova 2i will be arriving Downunder in late October.

Earlier this week I wrote that the Mate 10 Lite would be arriving in Berlin after being announced as the Nova 2i in Malaysia recently. It seems I was wrong and the Mate 10 Lite/Rhone/G10 will be released as the Nova 2i in Australia.

The Nova 2i sets the scene for next week with it being the first ever Huawei phone with an 18:9 aspect ratio display, termed FullView by Huawei. It is a decent 5.9 inches in size which gives the phone an 83 percent screen-to-body ratio and has a 2160 x 1080 (FHD+) resolution. The phone itself is 156.2 x 75.2 x 7.5mm and weighs 164 grams.

The Nova 2i has not only a rear dual lens camera but also a front dual camera. The front facing combination is 13MP/2MP with a new “Selfie Toning Flash” and the rear a 16MP/2MP camera. Both camera systems can achieve the much-loved bokeh effect through hardware rather than software.

As expected, the Nova 2i comes with an octa-core Kirin 659 CPU, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The battery inside is a decent 3340mAh and utilises machine learning built into the Android 7.0-based EMUI software to be long lasting. The machine learning is also applied to the rear-located fingerprint sensor where it learns to become more accurate and secure with each use.

The Nova 2i will come in a dual SIM version that will be available from JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman from October 25 for $499 and a single SIM version from Vodafone in November.

With a FullView 18:9, decent amounts of RAM and onboard storage as well as a decent processor this phone could well be a very successful mid-ranger. With it releasing in just a couple of weeks why not check it out at your local store.