Huawei P30 Pro-The new Leica quad-camera smartphone offers 5x optical zoom, a sensor that performs admirably in low light, and some interesting fun features to enjoy.
Huawei’s latest phone, the P30 Pro, has a groundbreaking new camera system on the back that delivers amazing low-light performance and 50x zoom so you can get up close to what’s going on.
The new £900 phone, from the company that has been at the center of many controversies over the past year, has a familiar metal frame and all-screen design. The P30 Pro now comes in a variety of vibrant color choices. If you’re looking for a phone that stands out and captures the beauty of color, look no further than the P30 Pro.
The Samsung Galaxy S10+’s display has a higher resolution than the FHD+ OLED, with a thin tear-drop notch at the top and 6.47 inches from corner to corner–however, it is not beaten by any device on the market.
Huawei P30 Pro is a flagship phone that comes with a triple camera system at the back and an in-display fingerprint sensor.
The Huawei P30 Pro is one of the best phones of 2019. It has an amazing camera system, good battery life, and awesome performance. The only downside to this phone is that it lacks wireless charging and water resistance compared to other flagships like Samsung Galaxy S10+.
Photo Credit: The Guardian
Build quality is exceptional. The glass back is slippery on fabric, but OK in the hand, even if it is a fingerprint magnet. A clear plastic case is included in the box in most regions.
There’s no earpiece speaker. Instead, the whole screen vibrates to produce your call audio, which is indistinguishable from a regular speaker. Despite the phone’s huge screen, the P30 Pro is still fairly manageable thanks to its narrow width.
It’s much narrower than other flagship phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S10+, even if it’s just a tiny bit wider than the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. The P30 Pro weighs 192g, which puts it on the heavier side. It’s the heaviest phone currently available and is only surpassed by the iPhone XS Max at 208g.
Specifications
- Screen: 6.47in FHD+ OLED (398ppi)
- Processor: octa-core Huawei Kirin 980
- RAM: 8GB of RAM
- Storage: 128 or 512GB plus nano memory card
- Operating system: EMUI 9.1 with Android 9 OS
- Camera: quadruple rear camera 40MP, 20MP ultra-wide angle, 8MP telephoto, ToF depth, 32MP front-facing camera
- Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 5, and GPS (dual-sim available in some regions)
- Water resistance: IP68
- Dimensions: 158 x 73.4 x 8.41 mm
- Weight: 192g
High performance, long battery life
The Kirin 980 chip is the same as the one we saw in last year’s Mate 20 Pro and it provides very smooth performance with no lag whatsoever. It’s better than any other brand if you want to play games for long periods or even just short intervals.
Huawei has built its image on great battery life and it continues to outpace the competition.
It has a good battery life and can last for up to 35 hours without being charged, so it will make it through a typical 8-hour day. That was my primary device with the usual deluge of email, messages, and push notifications, lots of browsing, five hours of Spotify via Bluetooth headphones, watching 90 minutes of offline movies, 30 minutes of gaming, and shooting about 20 photos a day.
Even when used as a primary navigation aid and camera on holiday, it never once got below 15% by midnight. With lighter usage, the P30 Pro should manage 48 hours between charges, or far longer with one of the specialized power-saving modes active.
A full charge took less than an hour, reaching 70% in just over 30 minutes via cable. It also has fast 15W wireless charging and wireless power-sharing for charging some other Qi-compatible devices.
EMUI 9.1
The new P30 Pro runs the latest version of EMUI – EMUI 9.1. It’s based on Android 9 Pie and is almost identical to its version on the Mate 20 Pro.
EMUI 9.1 has refined new gesture navigation features, which are very responsive and intuitive – swipe in from the left or right side of the screen to go back, swipe up from the bottom and hold for going home, or swipe up from the bottom and then release when you see your app. Swipe up from the bottom left or right to activate Gmail. The one thing I would be happy with is a way to get back to the previously used app more quickly. The traditional 3-button navigation bar is available if gestures aren’t your thing and there are many other customization options too.
EMUI’s strengths are long-term performance and battery life, with extensive automatic and manual suppression systems that stop apps draining the battery in the background. Occasionally that means you miss notifications, but EMUI is getting better at alleviating the problem and a little tweaking of the per-app power saving settings can make sure your Whats Apps or Guardian push notifications to get through.
Overall, Huawei is making gradual improvements, giving a fairly refined experience, but it still lags behind Google, OnePlus, or Samsung in look and feel for a western audience. The speed of updates is also not the best in the industry.
Fingerprint scanner
The P30 Pro comes with a brand new optical fingerprint scanner, which is blazing fast and takes up next to no screen space. It’s much easier to log in and it feels so natural too.
It’s faster, more accurate, and easier to hit with muscle memory, being further down the screen than the Mate 20 Pro. It’s still not as fast nor secure as traditional capacitive fingerprint scanners, but I found it fast and reliable enough to use without looking, making it a worthwhile trade-off.
Camera
Huawei’s P30 Pro camera offers 2 major features in 1 device: both for zoom and low-light capture. The Leica quad-camera system ups your smartphone photography game.
The 40-megapixel wide-angle and 20-megapixel ultra-wide-angle cameras are joined by a brand new 8-megapixel telephoto camera that uses a prism to direct light sideways into the body of the phone for a 5x optical zoom lens. The fourth camera is a time of flight (ToF) camera that can be used for various purposes.
The cameras on this phone are really special and unique. The ultra-wide-angle mode is out-of output the field, producing some stunning shots. The optical zoom is unparalleled by any other rival, allowing you to get up close without using digital. Then there’s the up to 10x hybrid zoom on top, with uses the other cameras to fill in the detail. In good light the differences between hybrid and the 5x optical zoom are small. If that wasn’t enough, you get a 50x digital zoom, which is visibly inferior to the optical and hybrid but is still good enough to read text from quite some distance or spot people on a distant hilltop.
I often use it as a substitute for binoculars and have had great success with the different zoom levels, but I found it tricky to keep my target in the frame while high zooming.
The second big leap is in low-light photography. Using a new camera sensor system that ditches green for yellow pixels, Huawei has been able to dramatically improve light absorption and the results are miraculous. Ordinary point-and-shoot shots without using a dedicated night or long exposure mode can all but turn night into day illuminating full detail and color in scenes where the human eye struggles.
Google managed to achieve a similar feat with its new Night Sight feature, but it takes several seconds to take an image. The P30 Pro does better and instantly snaps shots.
Verdict
The latest Huawei P30 Pro is a true leap forward for camera phones. The low-light capabilities & zoom tech – that has never been seen in this industry before – will transform how you shoot every day.
The P30 Pro has a lot of positives and is worth considering. The camera, as powerful and flexible as ever, offers both subtle changes to the form factor giving it more fun to use with some additional features included. Ultimately that is what a camera should be about; when all’s said and done, it should simply be about capturing memories!
Every other aspect of the phone is excellent, too. If it’s not that significantly different from the Mate 20 Pro, battery life remains a battle-winning feature. It also runs smoothly, has a great display and EMUI is constantly improving as well.
Despite being fairly narrow and therefore easier to handle than rivals with similar screen sizes, there’s no getting around the fact that the P30 Pro is a pretty large phone. Smaller hands will struggle.
At £900, the P30 Pro is certainly a premium smartphone. But if your priorities are performance, battery life, and camera capability, the Huawei P30 Pro is the best phone you can buy right now and will take some beating.