HUAWEI nova 16s Pro Review – A Camera Focused Midranger With Plenty to Offer

HUAWEI’s nova series has always put a lot of emphasis on quirky design and cameras, and the nova 16s Pro without a doubt continues that philosophy.

It’s a smartphone that puts considerable emphasis on photography, particularly selfies, with a dual front-facing camera setup and a 200MP main camera at the back. There’s also a dedicated periscope telephoto camera, giving users more flexibility when shooting distant subjects.

Beyond the cameras, the phone comes with a 6.84-inch display, a Kirin 9010S chipset with 5G connectivity, and a sizeable 7,000mAh battery with 100W fast charging.

Let’s get into it.

Design and Construction

The HUAWEI nova 16s Pro has a relatively slim profile, measuring just 7.1mm thick and weighing 218 grams. Despite its large display and battery capacity, HUAWEI has managed to keep the body fairly streamlined.

The back is one of the more distinctive parts of the design. It features a wave-inspired finish layered with frosted glass on top, adding a little extra flare without solely relying on the camera module to stand out.

Which in turn does a good job preventing fingerprints without a case.

HUAWEI is offering the nova 16s Pro in three colorways: Breathing Crystal, Isle Blue, and Starry Black. There’s a decent selection here, whether you prefer something more eye-catching or understated.

The phone also comes with Kunlun Glass protection in front, which adds another layer of protection. But as always, it’s still worth using a case in the event of an accident.

Overall, the nova 16s Pro has a design that feels appropriate for its positioning. It’s slim, has a distinctive rear finish, and offers a little more personality than a typical glass-backed smartphone.

The weight is something to consider, especially if you’re coming from a smaller or lighter device. But it definitely feels good in-hand.

Display, Multimedia and Biometrics

The HUAWEI nova 16s Pro features a 6.84-inch 1.5K LTPO OLED display, giving it plenty of screen real estate for browsing, watching videos, playing games, and viewing photos.

It supports an adaptive refresh rate ranging from 1Hz to 120Hz. This allows the display to adjust depending on what’s happening on screen, providing smoother scrolling and animations when needed while lowering the refresh rate for more static content to help conserve power.

It gets a peak brightness of up to 6,000 nits. As with most advertised peak brightness figures, this is achieved under specific conditions and shouldn’t be confused with the brightness you’ll get across the entire panel during normal use.

That being said, the panel itself does in-fact get really bright, which proved useful under direct sunlight.

The large screen should also make reviewing photos more enjoyable. Considering how much emphasis HUAWEI puts on its camera system and editing tools, having enough space to inspect details and make adjustments is a practical advantage.

In everyday use, the panel performed well with great color reproduction when watching videos and playing games. Streaming videos on Youtube go up to 4K and the stereo speakers can get loud and sound alright.

For biometrics, the phone includes features both a fast and reliable fingerprint scanner (side-mounted on the power button) and optical face unlock with the front-facing cameras. They both work as expected.

Cameras

The cameras are arguably the biggest selling point of the HUAWEI nova 16s Pro. Unlike smartphones that focus primarily on their rear camera systems, this device gives its front-facing cameras just as much attention.

Front Cameras

The nova 16s Pro comes with two front-facing cameras: an Industry Exclusive Front True-to-Color Camera and a 50MP Ultra Portrait Camera.

The latter uses a 1/2.5-inch sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and a 90-degree field of view. It also supports a 0.8x to 5x zoom range, giving users more flexibility when framing selfies.

HUAWEI nova 16s Pro Front Camera Samples

Oct 17 – 21

The wider 0.8x option is useful for group photos, since it allows more people to fit into the frame without having to stretch your arm or reposition the phone as much. The tighter zoom levels, meanwhile, are better suited for individual portraits and closer shots.

The additional color sensor is designed to improve color reproduction, particularly when capturing skin tones under different lighting conditions. It’s an interesting addition, and a sensor HUAWEI’s been using with their rear-facing cameras.

Rear Cameras

For the back, the headline feature is the 200MP RYYB main camera. It uses a 1/1.28-inch sensor with an f/1.8 aperture, along with OIS and AIS stabilization.

The main advantage of a sensor with this much resolution is the additional flexibility it offers when capturing and editing photos. In the right conditions, users can crop and reframe images while retaining more detail than they would with a lower-resolution image.

This is useful when taking photos of landscapes, architecture, street scenes, or just for shots that could be better framed after they were taken.

It’s worth noting that users need to use to High-Res mode to capture full-resolution 200MP images. We also need to stay as still as can be for 3 seconds after hitting the shutter and wait another 3 seconds for the photo to fully process.

HUAWEI nova 16s Pro Rear Camera Samples

Oct 15 – 21

The other major addition is the 50MP RYYB periscope telephoto camera, which offers 3.7x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom.

Having a dedicated periscope camera is certainly useful, especially when photographing distant subjects. The 3.7x optical zoom works well, it provides a dedicated focal length without relying entirely on digital cropping but it can digitally zoom up to 100x if needed.

And before I forget to mention, the 50MP ultrawide camera is pretty decent too! It matches colors with the other sensors well, partly thanks (probably) to the rear-facing color sensor.

Overall, the rear camera combination gives the nova 16s Pro a good amount of flexibility. Having a high-resolution main sensor alongside a dedicated periscope telephoto camera means users have more options when shooting different subjects and scenes.

The dual-sensor front facing cameras also do a lot better compared to other phones in its segment but if you aren’t into taking a lot of selfies anyways, they’re easy to ignore.

Actual image quality from both the front and rear look great after taking with minimal edits needed to exposure and color thereafter.

AI Imaging Features

Beyond the camera hardware, HUAWEI has included several AI-powered tools (carried over from the Pura 90s series) designed to make taking and editing photos more convenient.

To name a few, AI Composition provides real-time guidance when framing a shot, which can be helpful for users who want to improve their composition, and AI De-glare is designed to remove distracting reflections, particularly when taking pictures through glass.

These features are useful additions for people who regularly edit their photos before sharing them on social media. However, their actual value depends on how convincingly they perform.

Of course, the older tools like AI Erase, AI Move, and AI Best Expression found in its predecessor are still here too.

Ultimately, these tools are only as useful as they are to the people using it, but it’s good to highlight they work quite well, some better than their competitors.

OS, Apps and UI

The HUAWEI nova 16s Pro runs on EMUI 16 out of the box.

It includes Celia AI, which is pretty much their version of the Google’s Gemini, Apple’s Siri, or Samsung’s Bixby (you get the picture). Celia is actually a pretty decent AI assistant, it can do pretty much any of the others can do.

We can ask it questions and get answers in return, look up flights, send messages, look up directions, and even hail ourselves car transport.

App support if provided through their AppGallery but we can also sideload APKs through the browser, there are also no major issues downloading and installing Google apps from their marketplace, but we can still run into Google account setup bugs every now and then.

Ultimately, we didn’t really run into issues with app installs nor logins, and the UI runs smooth.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the HUAWEI nova 16s Pro is the Kirin 9010S chipset with 5G connectivity. The phone also features HUAWEI’s IceBridge Heat Dissipation Architecture, which is designed to help manage temperatures during demanding workloads.

For everyday use, the hardware is capable of handling the usual combination of browsing, messaging, social media, and productivity applications.

When it came to more demanding gaming sessions playing NTE, the game was playable in the default “Smooth” graphic preset. We experienced frame drops when fighting mobs but ran into no problems loading the environment in populated areas of the game.

Those interested in our synthetic benchmark results, check them out below:

Beyond the partially inconclusive synthetic results, the IceBridge cooling system is intended to help keep temperatures under control during extended use. This is particularly important when gaming or running applications that put a sustained load on the processor.

Did the phone warm-up when playing NTE for a prolonged period of time?

–Yes it did, but it was reasonable cooler compared to a competitor phone seen in one of our comparison videos.

Overall, the nova 16s Pro delivers good performance in everyday use, we ran into no issues running applications, playing games, researching the web and social media, using the cameras, or watching videos.

Battery

The HUAWEI nova 16s Pro packs a 7,000mAh battery, which is one of its more notable specifications. It’s a large capacity for a smartphone with a large display and a camera system designed for frequent use.

For users who spend a lot of time using their phones as their primary cameras while constantly connected to the internet, having that much battery capacity should provide some additional flexibility throughout the day.

–And the nova 16s Pro does just that.

In our PCMark Work 3.1 battery testing the phone lasted 25 hours and 16 minutes, indicating the ability to last two days with mixed moderate use. And in our standard Yugatech video loop test, it stayed on for a whopping 51 hours and 47 minutes.

When it’s finally time to recharge, the phone supports 100W HUAWEI SuperCharge Turbo. HUAWEI claims it can reach 40% charge in just 15 minutes when starting at 3%, provided users are using a compatible charger.

That’s a fairly quick top-up, especially considering the battery’s capacity. The combination of a long lasting 7,000mAh battery and 100W wired charging rate gives the nova 16s Pro a promising foundation.

Connectivity

The HUAWEI nova 16s Pro supports 5G and 4G LTE data connectivity on our local shores.

Of course, actual connection speeds will depend on several factors, including carrier coverage, signal strength, network congestion, and location. Having a 5G-capable smartphone doesn’t automatically guarantee faster speeds everywhere, particularly in areas with limited coverage.

But it’s worth mentioning that whether with 5G or 4G, the phone’s able to sustain the signal longer and recover faster when in areas with bad signal quality (like an elevator.)

The phone also gets support for WiFi 7, WiFi Direct, BT 6, GPS, NFC, and an infrared blaster.

Conclusion

The HUAWEI nova 16s Pro is a smartphone with a fairly clear focus.

Its camera system takes center stage, particularly the dual front-facing setup and the combination of a 200MP main camera with a dedicated periscope telephoto lens.

It’s an interesting approach, especially for users who regularly take selfies, group photos, and portraits. The additional AI editing tools also provide more flexibility when working with images.

Beyond photography, the phone has a few other notable features. The 6.84-inch 1.5K LTPO AMOLED display, Kirin 9010S chipset with 5G, 7,000mAh battery, and 100W charging make for a fairly substantial hardware package.

Software preference and application compatibility are also worth considering for users switching from another device.

As for pricing, the HUAWEI nova 16s Pro with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage carries a listed SRP of PHP 44,999. HUAWEI is also offering a promotional price of PHP 39,999 from October 30 to December 31, 2026, subject to the promotion’s terms and availability.

All-in-all, the nova 16s Pro’s strongest selling point is its camera system, particularly for people who regularly take selfies and want more flexibility when editing their photos, the large battery and fast charging are also promising additions.

Factoring out preferential tastes in design and software, it’s a well-built premium midrange phone that’s worth considering.

What we LIKED:

• Cameras
• Battery life + charging

What we DIDN’T Like:

• Software bugs
• Side-mounted fingerprint scanner

HUAWEI nova 16s Pro specs:

Display: 6.84-inch OLED, 2856 × 1320 pixels, 1–120Hz LTPO adaptive refresh rate
Processor: Kirin 9010S octa-core
RAM: 12GB
Storage: 256GB
Rear Camera: 200MP RYYB main camera (f/1.8, OIS) + 50MP RYYB periscope telephoto (f/2.6, OIS) + 50MP RYYB ultra-wide (f/2.2) + True-to-Colour camera
Front Camera: 50MP Ultra Portrait camera (f/2.4) + True-to-Colour camera
Video: Up to 4K video recording
Operating System: EMUI 16.0
Battery: 7,000mAh typical capacity (6,800mAh rated)
Charging: 100W HUAWEI SuperCharge Turbo
Connectivity: Dual SIM, 5G, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, NFC
Ports: USB-C 2.0
Security: In-display fingerprint sensor
Other Features: 3.7x optical zoom, up to 100x digital zoom, infrared remote control
Dimensions: 163 × 78 × 7.1mm
Weight: 218g
Colors: Isle Blue, Breathing Crystal, Starry Black

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