Huawei's spring showcase had ended barely twelve hours earlier, and tech feeds were still glowing with superlatives. The spotlight now fell on the second act of the event—Yu "Big-Mouth" Dazui unveiling Huawei's brand-new Nova line. He began by praising the Kirin 820 as "the perfect heartbeat for youthful fashion," a chip meant to slide neatly between mid-range pragmatism and flagship bravado. The first Nova handset trumped the Honor 7 Plus in terms of raw performance: higher CPU clocks, faster GPU bursts, and a brighter 2K panel pulled straight from Huawei's flagship inventory.
Where Nova pulled even farther ahead was optics. Huawei had paid Leica for co-branding rights and—more importantly—the company's newest sensor pack. Yu claimed the phone's 20-megapixel selfie camera and 24 + 8 MP rear duo out-shot even last year's P8 in low light, thanks to a big-area sensor and the latest Leica color matrix. The claim sounded outrageous, yet early sample shots on the giant screen shimmered with realistic skin tones and razor edges.
Huawei sacrificed fast charging to keep thermals cool—only the original 10-watt brick was bundled—but went heavy on fashion. The Nova shell flashed under stage lights, shifting from teal to violet like an oil slick. The audience gasped; live comments exploded: "Looks better than iPhone's midnight green."
Then came the prices.
• 3 GB + 32 GB – ¥2,499 (≈ $344)
• 3 GB + 64 GB – ¥2,899 (≈ $400)
• 3 GB + 128 GB – ¥3,499 (≈ $483)
High for something labeled "youth," but Huawei bet photographers would justify the premium. Social chatter immediately divided: half jeering at the cost, half declaring Leica glass worth every yuan.
Heifeng streamed the entire segment from Jiangcheng headquarters, marking a notepad with three columns: Threats, Parity, Leverage. Honor 7 Plus was a respectable rival to China Star's upcoming Hongmeng S3; Nova could steal the S3's thunder outright with its Leica-polished lens and iridescent glass. He circled the ¥2,499 opening price—two hundred yuan below the S3 target—and underlined it twice.
Performance gap favored him: Kunpeng A2 Lite's GPU outperformed Kirin 820 by nearly twenty percent in GFXBench. Fast-charge gap also favored him: his 25-watt split-cell system hit sixty percent in twenty-two minutes, while Huawei's vanilla charger crawled. Optics were trickier; Dove's beautification stack rivalled Huawei's color science indoors, yet Leica lenses carried prestige no algorithm could fake.
He scrawled one counterpunch: "Show real-world selfies—bar lighting, neon street, skin tone preserved." The S-series marketing would sell trust, not buzzwords.
The next morning, he convened an emergency meeting. Mint-green S3 shells lay on the table beside prototype boards. Yang Qiang was the first to speak. "Performance lead, yes. But Nova's glass back and Leica badge will hypnotize fashion buyers."
Heifeng nodded. "True. So we fight on three fronts: cost, battery, experience."
Bill of materials audit. Purchasing must shave at least ¥120 per unit—bulk-discount Sony sensors, domestic PMIC swap, and tighter plastics yield.
Fast-charge demonstration. Shoot a single uncut video: S3 charging beside Nova 64 GB. Timelapse to 60 %, timestamp overlay. No CGI; authenticity sells.
Selfie war. Jiang Li's team must pull the Dove algorithm v2.1 into the April build. Skin-tone retention under bar LEDs must beat Nova.
Marketing head Li Li suggested another tactic: deploy Jay Chou's new single three days earlier, video entirely shot on S3 hardware. She would seed clips across Douyin and Bilibili: Jay composing in night markets, neon bouncing off Lavender-Dream glass, lyrics scribbled on the S Pen equivalent.
Finance chief Xu asked the blunt question: "What if Honor's pre-order numbers explode again? Their ¥1,288 entry phone is cannibalising every tier." Heifeng's reply was equally blunt. "We keep the S3 at ¥2,699—unless Nova hits half a million pre-orders in seventy-two hours. If that happens, drop to ¥2,599. Keep eighty yuan cushion below Huawei's middle SKU."
No one objected; the room understood price was a scalpel, not a club.
Three days later, pre-order dashboards lit up: Honor 7 crossed 300,000 units; Honor 7 Plus broke 180,000; Nova's pre-order counter ticked above 120,000 by noon. Tech blogs hailed Huawei's "three-lane blitz," but commenters noticed the trade-offs—Nova's battery is small, charging is slow, and storage is stingy for the price. Hashtags #NovaLeicaCamera and #NovaSmallBattery trended simultaneously.
Operations delivered good news: suppliers okayed a ¥105 reduction after merging two lens orders, and domestic voltage-regulator chips passed accelerated aging tests. They could hit the ¥2,599 fallback if needed.
Suzhou factory lines ramped from one shift to three; coating units perfected Mint Frost and Lavender Dream finishes. Engineers flashed Dove v2.1 onto test rigs; under harsh tungsten lighting, the S3's selfies held natural skin while Nova's leaned pale-peach, Leica's usual preference.
Li Li's social team cut the charge-race video: side-by-side, percent counters ticking. In thirteen minutes, S3 sat at forty-seven percent; Nova lingered at thirty-three. Over a lo-fi hip-hop beat, a caption read: "We spend your night out, not your night in."
Jay Chou delivered his single a week early. The raw clip showed him in a dim alley, chord progression echoing off wet bricks, S3 propped as a recorder. When the chorus hit, overhead lanterns switched from red to gold, reflecting off Lavender Dream glass—the phone's color shift mirrored in the music's key change. The clip hit Douyin midnight; by dawn, #JayChouPhoneSong tallied 3 million likes.
Launch day arrived like a held breath. Heifeng walked into the Shenzhen flagship store at ten a.m. Lines snaked around the block, mostly students and young office workers. A pair of girls up front debated Nova's Leica name against S3's fast charge; a demo rep handed them both phones. They snapped selfies under the store's café lights. One frowned: "I look yellow on this one." The other battery percentages were compared: S3 is still above ninety, and Nova is already down to eighty-three. The argument ended in front of the cashier—both bought S3 Lavender Dream.
By noon, internal dashboards showed 68,000 S3 units sold offline, 110,000 online. Nova's livestream counter plateaued. Huawei still dominates headlines, but comment sections are filled with comparisons: "Nova for photos, S3 for everything else." Heifeng took neither pride nor ease; wars were won by weeks, not days. Still, the field was level again.
That night, he stood on the helipad of headquarters, phone in hand, city lights below. The Hongmeng S3 shimmered mint under the moon, battery still half full after a twelve-hour demo ordeal. He snapped a photo of the skyline, autofocus quick and accurate, then turned the lens on himself. The portrait came back crisp—hair black, eyes bright, skin untouched by algorithms except to banish fatigue. It looked like confidence made flesh.
"Sprint finished," he whispered. "Marathon continues." The wind carried his words into the neon haze while, far away, Nova's pre-orders ticked forward and Honor's flash sales reloaded. The throne was still empty, but tonight China Star had climbed another step, flowers blooming in the path of Nova's debut.