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Huawei’s most recent release is the Nova 5T which landed in the office to review this week. At first glance, it is an impressive device with flagship-like specs including a Kirin 980 chipset and quad camera all for a bargain price of £399.
Perhaps more impressive is that Huawei has managed to launch a phone in the UK with Google App even though they couldnt do this with their flagship phone the Mate 30 Pro.
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The reason behind this is the similarily it shares with the Honor 20, which was announced back in May and barely scraped through the trade bad to get its Google Certification.
When we compare the specification in the table below you will see not only do these phones have a striking resemblance, they don’t just share similar specs, it is the exact same specification.
During my early benchmarking of the Huawei Nova 5T when you load 3D Mark up, it identifies the phone like the Honor 20.
It is not the first time something like this has happened, the Honor 10 Lite and Huawei P Smart 2019 are also effectively the same. Huawei are not the only company that does it either, though they perhaps are the most blatant. Looking at the Oppo Reno Ace vs Realme X2 Pro they also bear a striking resemblance both in the specification and looks, however, in this case, they have at least differentiated themselves slightly with a different camera spec and charging functionality.
I assume the logic behind this is two-fold. Most consumers don’t pay that much attention to specs and having two phones on a shop floor increases the odd of Huawei winning that customer. I suspect that was the case back for the Honor 10 Lite and Huawei P Smart 2019.
This time around is perhaps more important. Huawei will want to be seen as carrying on as normal. Tech geeks may be quite aware of what is going, but your average punter will probably just hear that Huawei can’t launch phones with Google anymore. So by releasing the Nova 5T they can be perceived as still being in business (with Google).
The one issue here is that even though the phone is superb value for money, the Honor 20 was launched months ago and that means it has dropped below RRP. Thanks to Amazon being Amazon, you can bow buy the Honor 20 for just £310 whereas the Huawei Nova 5T is £399.
So at the moment, the Nova 5T is dead on arrival, at least until it drops in price further.
On the bright side, this has highlighted just what a good deal the Honor 20 is, this puts it £90 cheaper than the oft-recommended Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro, or £40 more than the less powerful Xiaomi Mi 9T.
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