Huawei has been enjoying its time in the market, In fact, they look like a company who are ready to take on some competition. The Huawei P Series hit the market quite a while ago and as the name suggests, the ‘P’ stands for photography, if you are someone who is into smartphone photography the first device that pops up into your head is, of course, the Pixel. Well, not anymore.
The Huawei P30 Pro is here and it is here to stay. The device has taken the tech community by storm with its inhuman abilities, I mean amazing technical abilities I mean, Oh never mind you’ll know everything about the device after you’ve read our detailed review.
Today, we take a closer look at the device and test out what all the hype is about. We will look into the device and provide you with the pros and cons of the same which will help you decide whether it is worth buying this phone.
Huawei P30 Pro: Unboxing and First Impressions
The Huawei P30 Pro comes in a minimal-looking box that has the branding printed all over it with Soy ink. Opening up the box you are greeted with the P30 Pro itself which we will come back to later on.
Digging in we are welcomed with a TPU case along with some paperwork and manuals. Moving on you can find the charging brick which can charge the device at 10V 4A and a USB Type-C cable along with Apple lookalike earphones.
Table of Contents
Huawei P30 Pro: Build and Design
On the first appearance, the device is just beautiful, the vibrant colors on the back can attract anyone which is one of the many positives of the device. The device weighs 190g and is 8.6mm thin. At the top of the device, you can find an infrared sensor.
The front of the device sports a 6.47inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 1080×2340 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19:5:9. Huawei has also taken part in the recent trend of adapting to the waterdrop notch which seems to be the go-to notch for every smartphone company right now.
Huawei had been facing some backlash due to its poor choice of display in the past because of a constant issue that was screen dimming.
Wherein, when a user opens an app with the entire interface of white color such as Chrome the device automatically used to lower the brightness which annoyed quite a lot of users.
This issue has thereby been brought to the notice of the company via forums, the issue is slightly brought forward to the P30 Pro as well however, it is not as prominent and disturbing as before.
Huawei P30 Pro: Other Features and Color Variants
The back and front of the device are covered in Corning Gorilla Glass which is an add-on everybody would appreciate. The top and bottom sides of the device are a bit flattened which helps the user to hold the device with a firm hand, unlike other smartphones whose entire body is rounded, Huawei here has added a personal touch to the design which might be of interest to some.
The rounded edges and the sleek design of the P30 Pro give it a premium look and feel. The Huawei P30 Pro is slimmer when compared to previous phones from the company.
This device can be counted in the bandwagon of flagship phones which provides IR blaster, which is sometimes useful when you are feeling lazy and useful every time when you are planning on pranking someone.
The color choice of Huawei is at another level. The P30 Pro comes in five color variants amongst which are the Amber Sunrise and Breathing Crystal. Don’t go by the name of the variants, they are just plain beautiful. The former color variant is a sun-kissed touch of orange with a wider range of red and hence the name sunrise.
On the other hand, the Breathing Crystal is an amazing-looking blue-to-silver style gradient that we have been able to get hands-on. A third color variant of the device which will be available post-launch is an entire black edition. The back panel of that variant is way smoother and is so reflective that you can literally take a selfie off your rear camera.
Huawei P30 Pro: In-display Fingerprint Scanner
The in-display fingerprint scanner is better and faster this time around since it is an optical fingerprint sensor which when compared to first gen scanners is way faster and more reliable than before.
As of now, the company has not been able to achieve ultrasonic fingerprint sensors like some big names in the market however, the optical sensor has its pros and cons.
The Huawei P30 Pro does miss out on a major factor which is the headphone jack. Companies nowadays have started to adapt to the no-headphone jack club, and we need to join it.
The overall idea of using the USB Type-C to 3.5mm headphone jack is actually decent but the downside to that is the downgrade in the sound quality. If you’ve experienced sound output from the Samsung Galaxy S10, 10 Plus, or even the ‘budget’ S10E, the sound output compared to those will be slightly dull.
Huawei P30 Pro: The Audio Experience
The P30 Pro comes with bottom-firing speakers which are unlike the P20 Pro which came with an earpiece speaker which somehow the company managed to connect a stereo setup.
However, in P30 Pro’s case, the company seems to have become a bit lazy. Well, there’s no harm in doing that, however, everything has a downside, first of all, the stereo setup is gone, secondly, the earpiece is not provided on the top because of which the display vibrates while you are attending a call.
Another downside of this is the audio during a call. If you are speaking to a person while in a mild environment, you can hear them very well without any issues. However, if you are in a crowded place the voice over the microphone will be a bit loud and shrill.
Huawei P30 Pro: Performance
Under the hood, the device is powered by Huawei’s in-house Kirin 980 SoC. When compared from a GPU perspective this chipset is not as powerful as the Snapdragon 855. However, the device does not fall back in terms of performance.
Although if you are going to compare this device with higher-end smartphones such as the S10 Plus which is powered by the Snapdragon 855 chipset it is going to let you down a tad bit. The Huawei P30 Pro runs on EMUI 9.1 based on Android 9.0.Pie with the latest March 2019 security patch bundled along.
Huawei P30 Pro: Specifications
The device comes with 8GB of RAM coupled with either 128GB/256GB or the monstrous 512GB. As far as the storage variants are concerned, the device comes with UFS 2.0 storage which is the fastest among the lot.
The device packs in a 4200mAh battery and as mentioned earlier it comes with a 40W fast charger which we’ve seen earlier with the Mate 20 Pro. On normal usage, you should be able to run for at least two days without any need for charging.
Also, the device does support wireless charging. In fact, it also supports wireless reverse charging so if your friends need some help you could lend a handout or in this case, your P30 Pro.
Huawei P30 Pro: The Triple rear cameras
Let’s be honest, chances are each one of you is here to discuss the camera capabilities of this device which has already created so much hype. I’m sure you’ve come across the Kirin 980 processor the same 8GB RAM device here and there but have you been able to experience the camera on the P30 Pro? Let’s take a look.
The P30 Pro sports a triple camera set up at the rear with a Time-of-Flight sensor which helps measure the distance of the object in the field of view. This time around the device has an RYYB sensor in place of a traditional RGGB sensor which basically helps to improve the light sensitivity to a huge amount which can be brought out in different scenarios throughout the day.
The back camera setup consists of a 40MP sensor which will be the one you’ll be using most of the time. Also, it has a periscope sensor mechanism that helps to zoom up to 50x, however, it is not a traditional optical zoom but a sophisticated digital zoom.
Until 5x zoom the camera quality is very impressive however, as you increase the zoom the photos are stable but as you reach 50x it registers the micro movement of your hand which then shakes the image.
Camera Features :
Another amazing feature that the camera provides is the low light capability. The device is capable of taking pictures even in darker conditions that are not clear to the human eye. The camera uses a long exposure to gather the light surrounding the scene.
This feature is built right into the default shooting mode. Trust me when I say the phone can see things in the dark which you never thought was possible.
Coming to the front camera, the P30 Pro features a 32MP selfie camera which is more than adequate. The selfies are crisp most of the time however, sometimes the images come out a bit more soft even though you’ve not enabled beauty mode or any other AI mode. The images come out a tad bit processed which won’t be an issue for most of us.
The camera app is very easy to. Use with every feature right at your fingertips. There are tons of options to choose from with a ‘see more’ tab provided which consists of the HDR mode in case you were worried.
Coming to the video capabilities of the device, this is one of the regions wherein the company has faced quite a bit of issues. The 4K videos shot on the device look and feel like a 2K video upscaled in order to make it look better.
When the video was compared to a video shot on the iPhone XS, we could easily figure out the difference in the quality and bitrates. The front camera is capable of shooting 1080p videos however, even those shots did not seem to be of a quality I would approve of at this price range.
Huawei P30 Pro: Software
The Huawei P30 Pro runs on EMUI 9.1 based on Android 9 Pie. This version of EMUI is similar to the UI previously seen on the Mate 20 Pro. Now you can see third-party notifications with the help of always-on display which has finally arrived on a Huawei device.
Minor gestures such as swiping from the side to exit the app drawer and holding the power button will open Google Assistant have been provided for ease of usage.
The EMUI custom skin comes in two variants. A Chinese variant and a global one. The only difference both of these has is the ability to use third-party launchers. The Chinese variant does not allow third-party launchers to be installed however you can install and use as many launchers as you want to on the global variant.
Huawei P30 Pro: Final Verdict
If you are a photographer or you wanna start smartphone photography this is the device to go for. However, I wouldn’t say this device is not as good as a daily driver, it is. It has so many merits that you can blindside the demerits and still live happily ever after.
However, if you are a person who is performance-hungry and just cannot even wait for one second in order for the device to boot up, I’d suggest you go do for a device with the latest and greatest Snapdragon 855 SoC like the Samsung S10 Plus or future device that will be powered by the same.
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