So this weekend I got my new phone to replace my Nexus 6P due to its failing battery (started turning off at 20% charge a while ago and it was getting progressively worse).

Initial setup was pretty straightforward, the only thing that didn’t work on first try was setting up the Huawei Account, as the confirmation code SMS didn’t want to arrive in a reasonable amount of time, so I skipped that part. But after the rest was up and running, setting it up worked fine. Restoring the apps from my previous phone took a while, but it was quite a few apps (over 100 updates and new installs), so that’s to be expected. I also replaced the default Huawei Launcher with the Nova Launcher, as I can customize more things with that (modify the grid size on the home screens to fit more icons, for example).

In general use I can feel a noticeable speed increase compared to my previous phone (which was to be expected, considering the Nexus 6P released in 2015 and sports a Snapdragon 810 chipset). The fingerprint scanner seems to be performing much faster as well. I tried out face unlocking for a bit as well, though I won’t be using that generally. The display looks great, I don’t really notice the slightly reduced resolution compared to the Nexus and since it is an OLED display, the colors are just as great.

Given that the phone costs a pretty penny, I appreciate that it comes with a protective case and a pre-applied screen protector. While there is no SD-card slot, I don’t think that will be an issue for me as the phone comes with 128GB of storage (double of what I had with the Nexus). There’s also no separate audio connector, only the USB-C one and a supplied adapter for wired earphones/headsets, the bundled headset connects directly to USB. Battery life is gonna be pretty good with this phone I think. After charging it to 100% during the initial setup, the phone has gone to around 50% after a day (that includes just lying around over night), so I could likely get at least a day out of it even under heavier use.

The camera made a good impression as well, but that was to be expected after reading all the reviews.

Overall really good first impressions, looking forward to using this phone for a hopefully rather long time.