Friday, March 29, 2024

Huawei P30 Pro hands-on review

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The Leica branding on the back of Huawei’s P-series smartphones are no joke. It’s a collaborative effort to create the best camera on a phone. Last year’s Huawei P20 Pro set the bar with its triple-camera array, and it propelled the company into the upper echelon of smartphone photography. Now Huawei is trying to maintain its position with the new P30 Pro with a quad-camera setup, and by changing a fundamental component of the smartphone camera — the color filter array.

Thin bezels, but it’s still a big phone

Like most smartphones today, Huawei’s racing towards full-screen design where the edges surrounding the phone — called bezels — are razor thin. This offers more screen real estate and makes the phone look stunning. But instead of opting for a hole-punch camera like Samsung with the Galaxy S10 range, Huawei’s sticking with the teardrop notch. It’s a little dip at the top center of the phone where the selfie camera is housed.

It looks more elegant than its predecessor’s design (the P20 Pro), and the lack of a fingerprint sensor at the bottom of the phone helps with the minimal aesthetic. I still prefer the hole-punch camera, but this is quite subjective. So, where’s the fingerprint sensor? It’s under the screen, and Huawei said it’s more responsive than ever before. I’m a little worried however, as I usually find in-display sensors to be unreliable, and the lack of facial recognition means you’ll be forced to stick with it.

huawei p30 pro

huawei p30 pro

huawei p30 pro

huawei p30 pro

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The P30 Pro has a 6.47-inch OLED screen, with curved sides, and it can be a little unwieldy to hold with one hand. This is a big phone. How’s the screen? It’s bright, easy to see outside in direct sunlight, and colors don’t look too saturated. There’s good contrast and it’s sharp with 2,340 x 1,080 resolution, though we’d have to use the phone more to get a final picture.

The top and bottom edges are flat, which is a nice touch, and the curved sides remind me a lot of Samsung’s Galaxy phones. The side edges are thin, but the glass on the rear is also curved, making the phone feel a little more ergonomic.

No matter what color you choose, this is still a beautiful phone.

A USB-C port is flanked by a bottom-firing speaker and the SIM card slot, and the right edge of the phone is where you’ll find the power button and volume rocker. The power button has a red accent on it for added flair, though I’d rather see a fully-colored button, like on the Google Pixel 3.

Around back is where the magic happens. You’ll find an intricate quad-camera setup, but you’ll be staring at the back for a different reason. Huawei introduced a color called Twilight for the P20 Pro, which captured the hearts of many and went on to become the phone’s best-selling color. It was a gradient color never seen on a phone, and the company is pulling the same trick again the P30 Pro.

Huawei P30 Pro Compared To

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Asus Zenfone 5

LG V30s Hands on

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Alcatel 5 Series

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Google Pixel 2

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LG V30

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HTC U11

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HTC One S

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T-Mobile myTouch 3G

The new phone comes in five colors: Amber Sunrise, Breathing Crystal, Pearl White, Aurora, and Black. The Breathing Crystal color, which you see here, has a gorgeous iridescent nature. It’s similar to the Prism White color on the new Galaxy S10 range. I’ve also laid eyes on the Aurora and Black, but none of those colors struck me with awe as much as last year’s Twilight. The Amber Sunrise color may do it for me, but it wasn’t present when I saw the phones in person.

No matter what color you choose, this is a beautiful phone. It’s a shame you’ll likely cover it with a case.

A truly reimagined camera

Huawei and Leica have re-engineered the camera, literally, on the P30 Pro. Yes, it’s a quad-camera setup, but that’s not the impressive part. We’ve already seen a phone with five cameras. The real story is the image sensor.

Most digital imaging sensors use what’s called a Bayer filter, also known as RGGB, because it uses 25 percent blue, 25 percent red, and 50 percent green to help create color in photographs. Huawei has decided to swap out the green for yellow, because yellow pixels offer 40 percent better light intake, which should deliver more detailed photos, especially in low light. But by changing the sensor from green — a primary color — to yellow, the company had to redesign the entire camera stack to ensure colors remain accurate. Huawei is calling this SuperSpectrum Lens.Huawei and Leica have re-engineered the camera, literally, on the P30 Pro.

huawei p30 pro review hands on xxl Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Huawei claims this is the highest ever light sensitivity in a camera — 409,600 ISO. The company said most phones sit around the 6,400 mark. In demo images, the P30 Pro impressively illuminated ultra-dark scenarios, not unlike Night Sight on the Google Pixel 3, but it works in the automatic camera mode.

Now onto the camera lenses. There are four, with the main being a 40-megapixel SuperSpectrum Lens with an f/1.6 aperture and optical image stabilization (OIS). It’s paired with a 20-megapixel ultra wide-angle lens with an f/2.2 aperture. This lens can even be used as little as 25 millimeters from a subject for macro photography. Then there’s an 8-megapixel optical Periscope Zoom lens, which has an f/3.4 aperture, OIS, and offers 5 times optical zoom. It’s all rounded out with a time-of-flight camera for measuring depth.

The main 40-megapixel lens can’t be used for various modes, so by default the camera uses 10 megapixels most of the time. Huawei said you’ll want to use the 40-megapixel mode when you have plenty of sunlight. Images captured with the standard lens had good detail and strong color accuracy.

Huawei and Leica have re-engineered the camera, literally, on the P30 Pro.

The wide-angle lens is a more fun lens to play around with, and I love that it can be used to get up close to a subject. However, HDR might be a weakness. Some photos I took with the wide-angle lens had a blown-out sky, while the main camera managed to bring out the blue.

It’s the Periscope Zoom lens that’s most interesting of the four. What you see on the back is actually a prism housing a mirror with a stacked zoom array hidden below. Just like a periscope, the camera’s lenses are stacked vertically, so the phone doesn’t need to be any thicker than it is currently. This enables 5x optical zoom, among the highest on a smartphone. Even more impressive, the phone supports up to 10x hybrid zoom, and if you really must, there’s even a 50x zoom option.

The 5x zoom mode looks good, and the 10x mode isn’t terrible for digital zoom. I don’t know who would ever use the 50x zoom mode, as the images look blotchy, but it’s a neat trick to show off. Swapping between modes is quick, too.


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huawei p30 pro review standard lens
SuperSpectrum Lens. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review 5x optical zoom
5x Optical Zoom. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review 50 times zoom
50x zoom Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review portrait mode
Portrait Mode. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review 5x optical zoom
5x Optical Zoom. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review wide angle lens
Ultra Wide-angle Lens. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review ultra wide angle lens
Ultra Wide-angle Lens Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review ultra wide angle lens
Ultra Wide-angle Lens. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review 5x optical zoom
5x Optical Zoom. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review superspectrum lens
SuperSpectrum Lens. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review 5 times zoom
5x Hybrid Zoom. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review 10 times zoom
10x Hybrid Zoom. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review 50 times zoom
50x zoom. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

huawei p30 pro review selfie
Selfie. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

So, that’s three. What’s the fourth lens? It’s a time-of-flight camera which is used to capture depth data. It tracks how much time light takes to travel from the camera, a subject, and back to the camera. This means you receive better-looking bokeh effects in Portrait Mode. The few Portrait Mode photos I took didn’t impress — they had a good blur effects, but the sky was overexposed.

The time-of-flight camera also means better augmented reality. To show that off, Huawei is introducing an app called Huawei AR Measure, which can understand all three dimensions of an object that you point the camera at. It’s very similar to Apple and Google’s respective Measure apps.

Huawei has even improved its Artificial Intelligent Stabilization (AIS). It uses A.I. to understand and minimize handshake so you don’t need a tripod. This works with Night mode, so even low-light photos should look better, but you can use it for long-exposure photos. You can achieve things like silk water effects, where the water looks silk-like because of a long exposure. This is only feasible with a camera on a tripod, but with the P30 Pro, all you need is your hands. It’s impressive.

The Periscope Zoom lens is the most interesting of the four.

A.I. is also being used with HDR+, which Huawei now calls A.I. HDR+. It creates a light map to understand when and where to increase or decrease exposure for a more well-balanced photo. I haven’t seen this in action, and I’ve seen more blown-out photos than I’d like, so this will require more testing.

huawei p30 pro Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Finally, there are improvements to video, as well. AIS is being used to further improve stabilization, and in a test I did it looks impressive. The use of the SuperSpectrum Lens means you get better low light video, and you can even use the 10x hybrid zoom when filming.

The front selfie camera has 32 megapixels packed in with a f/2.0 aperture, and the selfies I took on it had strong details, though the bokeh effect in Portrait Mode didn’t seem to kick in all the time.

It’s an intimidating laundry list of features, but it all comes together to improve the camera experience, and it makes Huawei’s P-series phones offer the most versatile photography experience.

Performance and specs

Huawei is using its latest Kirin 980 processor to power the P30 Pro, and it comes with a dual Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The company claims its 20 percent faster than the Kirin 970 chip inside the P20 Pro while using 40 percent less energy.

In our brief time with the phone I didn’t see any issues regarding performance. Apps opened quickly and moving throughout the interface was speedy. You shouldn’t have issues running all the latest graphics-intensive apps and games. After all, it’s the same processor inside the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, which I didn’t have issues with in terms of performance.

huawei p30 pro Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

There’s 8GB of RAM paired with the processor, as well as 128GB of internal storage for the base model. 256GB and 512GB variants are also available. The P30 Pro has a Nano Memory card slot (NM), which is Huawei’s own proprietary external storage card that uses up less space than MicroSD. That means you can expand the storage of the phone if you need more space. NM cards are available from Amazon (but they’re expensive).

There’s a 4,200mAh battery powering the phone, which should last more than a day of use, and potentially up to two days with light use. The phone supports Huawei’s 40W Huawei SuperCharge, which should get you from 0 to 70 percent with just 30 minutes of charging.

There’s 15-watt fast wireless charging as well, along with the capability to wirelessly charge other Qi devices — which Huawei first introduced in the Mate 20 Pro.

EMUI 9.1

The P30 Pro runs EMUI 9.1, which is Huawei’s Android skin based on Android 9 Pie. It’s much improved over past versions, though it can still feel clunky. Huawei says there are numerous improvements. Starting up an app is 52 percent faster than the P20 Pro, the speed of response when tapping an app has increased by 69 percent, and you’ll find 52 percent improved smoothness when using apps.

EMUI 9.1 is much improved over past versions, though it can still feel clunky.

The company has moved to a new file formatting system, named EROFS, which allows 20 percent improved read speed. You can expect smoother performance thanks to this change. Another addition is the ability for the P30 Pro to sync with third-party treadmills from companies like LifeFitness and Precor, so you can get treadmill data ported directly to the Huawei Health app.

Price and availability

Huawei hasn’t shared pricing details or availability just yet, but it’s safe to assume the P30 Pro will be in the ballpark of last year’s P20 Pro — around $1,000. It’s also likely you won’t be able to purchase the P30 Pro in the U.S., as the “P” series has historically never been sold here. Not to mention Huawei’s woes with the U.S. government.

The P-series is all about photography, and that’s evident here with how much of an emphasis Huawei has placed on the camera. There are bold changes here — particularly the SuperSpectrum Lens — and I can’t wait to see how the camera stacks up to the Pixel 3, our favorite smartphone camera.

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