Huawei Nova 15 Max Full Review: Battery Life Champion With Trade-offs

At 163.3mm tall and 78mm wide, the Nova 15 Max is unambiguously a large phone. It belongs in the same physical territory as other “Max” and “Ultra” devices — you will notice it in your pocket, and one-handed use is largely a compromise rather than a feature. That said, Huawei has kept the thickness to a clean 8mm, which is genuinely slim for a device carrying the battery capacity this phone holds. Most phones with comparable power reserves end up noticeably thicker.

The weight comes in at 232g. That is not light — users coming from mid-range or compact handsets will feel the difference immediately — but it is well within the range of other large-screened flagships. After a week of use, most people stop noticing it; the balance is solid enough that the phone never feels unwieldy in the hand.

There is no mention of branded damage-resistant glass on the display, which is a notable omission at this size tier. Competing devices in a similar price bracket typically specify Gorilla Glass or equivalent protection. This does not mean the screen is fragile, but buyers who routinely skip screen protectors should be aware. A case and screen protector are sensible investments.

The design is flat rather than curved at the edges, which many users will actually prefer — flat displays are easier to case, easier to use at the edges, and less prone to accidental touches.

The Huawei Nova 15 Max runs on the HiSilicon Kirin 8000, paired with the Maleoon 910 graphics processor. The chip is built on a 5-nanometre manufacturing process — the same generation of fabrication used in premium processors from other major manufacturers. Smaller process nodes mean more transistors fit into the same physical space, which translates to better performance per watt and reduced heat generation compared to older chip designs.

The CPU arranges its cores in a layered configuration: a high-performance core running at 2.2GHz handles demanding single-threaded tasks, three mid-tier cores at 1.5GHz manage background work, and four efficiency cores at 2.0GHz handle the routine, always-on load. This architecture — known as big.LITTLE — applies the right amount of computing power to each task rather than running the full processor at maximum drain constantly. The practical result is a balance between responsiveness and battery efficiency that a single uniform-core design could not achieve.

The 8GB of RAM operates at a high data speed, meaning the processor rarely has to wait on memory access even when switching between multiple demanding applications. The phone supports memory configuration up to 16GB, which suggests the hardware architecture has headroom for expanded configurations depending on market variants.

For everyday tasks — multitasking between social apps, productivity tools, video streaming, casual gaming — the Kirin 8000 is more than sufficient. Heavier computational work such as sustained 3D gaming or video export will produce some heat and may see occasional frame rate moderation, which is expected behaviour for a chip at this thermal design power level.

Wi-Fi 7 support is a genuinely impressive inclusion. Wi-Fi 7 is the most current generation of wireless networking and delivers substantially faster throughput and lower latency than Wi-Fi 6 and especially Wi-Fi 5. In a home or office running a Wi-Fi 7 router, the Nova 15 Max will perform at the top of its wireless class. This future-proofs the phone against network infrastructure upgrades.

Bluetooth 5.2 handles wireless audio and device pairing with low energy consumption and stable connections. NFC enables contactless payments and device pairing. The infrared sensor is a detail worth highlighting — the Nova 15 Max can function as a universal remote control for televisions, air conditioning units, and other IR-controlled appliances, a feature that has largely disappeared from mainstream smartphones and is here preserved. Dual SIM support handles separate personal and work lines, or local SIMs when travelling.