Huawei P30 Pro Review: The Next Level For Mobile Photography

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Huawei’s P-series has had a singular focus of pushing the frontiers of smartphone photography as far as possible. The recently launched P30 Pro is stuffed to the brim with cool, cutting-edge technology, and the most impressive of these is its state of the art quad-camera system. (Huawei P30 Pro Review हिंदी में पढ़िए)

The use of multiple sensors and different types of lenses makes the camera versatile, but even more exciting is the extent to which Huawei has pushed the individual elements. If the camera is all that you are interested in, we have covered all the details in a separate Huawei P30 camera review.

And yes, the camera isn’t all there is to the P30 Pro. Huawei puts its best foot forward and backs the P30 Pro’s camera system with its leading technology, which is only fair considering the high-end price.

But, does the technological prowess make the new Huawei phone convincing enough for anyone to rather choose it over an iPhone or a Galaxy S10+? Let’s discuss in our Huawei P30 Pro review.

Page Contents:

Huawei P30 Pro Price in India and Specs

Specs Huawei P30 Pro
Platform Android 9 Pie
with Huawei EMUI 9.1
Screen 6.5″ OLED
1080 x 2340 px
396 PPI
Biometrics In-screen fingerprint (optical)
Processor Kirin 980 (7nm) octa-core
RAM 8GB
Storage 256GB, nanoSD card
Main Rear Camera 40MP SuperSpectrum RYYB sensor
27mm, f/1.6, OIS
Secondary Rear Camera 8MP 5x telephoto w/ periscope
125mm, f/3.4, OIS
Additional Rear Cameras 20MP ultra-wide
16mm, f/2.2
+ ToF depth camera
Front Camera 32MP, f/2.0
Battery 4200 mAh
Charging USB-C
40-watt in-box charger
15-watt Wireless charging
Reverse wireless charging
Others IP68 water resistance
With IR blaster
India Price Rs. 71,990

Huawei P30 Pro Unboxing: What’s in the Box?

Everything you’d expect is in there, except for a 3.5mm audio jack to USB Type-C dongle. The Huawei P30 Pro Box contents include:

  • Handset
  • Soft TPU Case
  • USB Type-C headphones
  • USB Type-C cable and Fast charger
  • SIM ejector pin and documentation

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Design and Build

The P30 Pro takes after the Huawei Mate 20 Pro that we found to be really impressive. The AMOLED display has agreeable curves, and, more in line with the current trends, the wider notch housing the 3D Face Unlock assembly has now been replaced by a tiny dew drop notch with a single selfie camera. Perhaps a punch hole would have been better, perhaps not.

For a cleaner look, Huawei has eliminated the earpiece altogether. Instead, the sound emits from the screen itself (Huawei Acoustic Display Technology) and you may place your ear anywhere on the display (or on the back glass) to attend calls.

The top and bottom of the phone have been chamfered flat, which is a nice touch (the phone can even stand straight unaided on a flat table). The components lined at the bottom aren’t symmetrical, though. The P30 Pro retains IR Blaster and IP68 water and dust resistant certification – both of which we immensely value on our phones.

The back is again glass with several nanolayers facilitating fashionable gradient patterns. Our Breathing Crystal model, for instance, is an absolute stunner. The P30 Pro fits snuggly in our hands and it’s impressive that Huawei has managed to pack this much camera hardware, including thick sensors, without making the phone one bit unwieldy.

Having said that, the P30 Pro just can’t match in-hand feel of the Mate 20 Pro. A few design elements that we loved on the Mate 20 Pro are missing. For instance, Huawei hasn’t concealed the speaker grill at the bottom this time, the square camera module has now been replaced by a more customary vertical alignment, and the fingerprint sensor has been shifted close to the bottom (honestly, the Mate 20 pro had the most ergonomic in-display sensor placement). But none of these foibles is particularly bothersome. At the end of the day, the P30 Pro is as premium and handy as it gets for a tech-loaded phone.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Display

The Huawei P30 Pro has a purely stunning AMOLED display with deep blacks and high contrast. Display settings have a ‘Normal’ mode that’s closer to more accurate sRGB gamut, but I am sure most consumers won’t mind the “Vivid” mode (with blue-ish whites) set by default.

Each of the two modes has a Default, Warm, and Cold preset. For us, the Normal mode with default colors worked best. Users have the option to switch to warmer color tones (that are lighter on eyes) or to switch to a dark theme from within battery settings.

The P30 Pro screen maxes at Full HD+ resolution and supports HDR 10. The 2K resolution would have been more forward-looking, but we think the Full HD+ resolution on a phone screen is just fine. By default, Smart resolution is turned on and it may automatically reduce the resolution to HD to conserve battery. We’d advise you to turn it off.

The display is also sufficiently bright and we didn’t face any issue using the phone outdoors.

One issue with the screen is flickering. The flickering isn’t noticeable with naked eyes, but will affect people who are sensitive to flicker. The P30 Pro screen shows high flickering unless you are using it at full brightness and the flicker is easily visible when you are filming the screen.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Camera

The camera is what really makes the P30 Pro tick. We have already talked about the camera performance at length in our P30 Pro camera review. Here’s a summary of our camera experience.

Primary sensor

The primary 40MP has f/1.6 aperture wide-angle lens and OIS. This sensor has an RYYB filter instead of the conventional RGB one. The logic is that the Yellow is a mix of Green and Red and allows 30 percent more light to pass through. This, in turn, helps improve low light performance.

The camera can shoot remarkable shots in daylight, but you’d need to choose your color preferences first. You will need to decide between Standard, vivid and smooth color profiles. Also, Master AI when left on can oversaturate colors at times. So, you’d need to decide if you prefer it on or off.

The lowlight camera performance is really impressive too. The Huawei P30 Pro also has a night mode that works amazingly well. We’d say the primary camera performance is really good but still can’t beat the seamless photography experience on Pixel 3 XL.

SuperZoom

SuperZoom is Super Fun, and currently the mode we can’t have enough of, but it only works well in proper lighting (both outdoors and indoors).

The P30 Pro has an 8MP sensor with a Telephoto lens and OIS. This sensor can deliver 5X optical zoom, 10X Hybrid Zoom, and up to 50X digital Zoom. This works really well.

The Zoom camera uses a periscope-like assembly, similar to the one Oppo demonstrated last year. Since zoom cameras on phones use fixed focus lens, up to 5X the zoom is digital, and at 5X, the zoom is optical. Between 5X and 10X you get hybrid zoom, which is almost lossless, and beyond 10X, you get a digital crop from the 8MP sensor.

50X zoom is a bit gimmicky but if you have a tripod, you can use that to watch objects that are really far away in real time.

Wide-angle Camera

The P30 Pro also has a 20MP sensor with an ultra wide angle lens and f/2.2 aperture. This is ideal for capturing wide backdrop and landscape shots. The software also smartly eliminates distortion at the edges.

ToF sensor for portraits

And finally, there’s a ToF depth sensor to assist with lowlight performance and portrait mode. The 32MP selfie camera also gets a software-powered portrait mode but portraits are so much better on the rear camera.

Huawei P30 Pro reviewThe camera app layout ensures you don’t have to put in any extra effort to switch between these sensors. The process is quite seamless.

Selfie camera

The selfies we clicked on the P30 Pro aren’t particularly impressive. They aren’t bad by any yardstick, but the competition fares better in this regard.

So, overall, the Huawei P30 Pro has an excellent camera one that we are drawn to a lot. It might not necessarily beat Pixel 3 or Samsung Galaxy S10+ in all situations, but it’s surely in the same league.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Performance and Software

The Huawei P30 Pro is powered by Huawei’s 7nm Kirin 980 chipset and, in India, Huawei is selling only one variant with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. There is an option to expand storage using nanoSD cards, but those aren’t available in India.

Huawei is using UFS storage on P30 Pro, and the new extendable read-only file system (EROFS) makes it the fastest storage on a phone that we have tested so far. Apps open really quickly and all high-end games run really smooth. The latter may also be attributed to GPU Turbo 3.0 that now supports over 25 titles including PUBG, Fortnite, and Minecraft.
Also, the P30 Pro brandishes a new SuperCool cooling system that uses graphene film, graphite, and improved heat pipes to dissipate heat. This seems to work as we didn’t notice any unnatural heating during extended gaming sessions.

The Software on the Huawei P30 Pro is Android Pie-based EMUI 9.1. Apart from some minor changes, it isn’t very different from the EMUI 9.0 that we are familiar with.
The skin is a little too feature rich and bit complicated to navigate, but it’s well optimized on the P30 Pro and we didn’t run into any unexpected glitch (something that’s fairly common on low-end EMUI phones). There are several pre-loaded apps on the phone and you can uninstall a few of them. The launcher also has the option to add an app drawer, but it’s a half-hearted effort and the option is buried deep in settings.

Virtual Car Key, that allows you to use your P30 Pro to unlock any of the 10 Audi car models is one interesting functionality added to the P30 Pro, but we couldn’t put that to test for obvious reasons.

The in-display sensor is again one of the fastest we have come across and even though it’s an optical sensor, it still works with wet fingers! The Face Unlock is incredibly fast too.

Huawei p30 Pro has dual VoLTE support and we didn’t face any connectivity issue on the phone. The call quality is excellent and the in-display speaker can get sufficiently loud should you want it to.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Battery and Audio

The Huawei P30 Pro includes a 4200mAh battery and supports 40W Huawei SuperCharging that can top up 65 percent in just 30 minutes. The battery mileage is excellent, and this should give P30 Pro an edge over existing competition. The handset also supports 15W fast wireless charging, and Reverse Wireless Charging.

The P30 Pro is missing stereo speakers but the mono speaker present at the bottom is quite loud. There is some audio distortion at full volume. The audio output is surely flagship grade if not outright impressive. Audio via headphones is really good.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Should you buy it?

The Huawei P30 Pro looks like a fabulous phone, especially for consumers who value a great camera – which is perhaps everyone. We are really taken in by lowlight photography and the superzoom, and I guess it will be a while before the novelty fades off. This is the kind of camera innovation that we expect to see on flagships.

Huawei doesn’t compromise on any other smartphone aspect either, and the complete experience of P30 Pro is impressive, to say the least.

Priced at 71,990 INR, Huawei P30 Pro will be up against the likes of iPhones, Pixels, and Galaxies, which also have impressive cameras and more brand clout. None of these phones is perfect, but you’d be happy with whatever you choose. The important thing is that pushing pathbreaking innovations across its flagship has earned Huawei a much-deserved spot at the big table. It’s now counted in the same league as Apple and Samsung worldwide.

Pros

  • Elegant design
  • Excellent performance
  • Super Zoom is fun
  • Great lowlight camera performance
  • Extremely fast in-display sensor

Cons

  • No Audio Jack
  • Missing QHD+ resolution

 

Deepak RajawatDeepak Rajawat
Experienced technology journalist with over 7-years of experience. Before embracing online journalism, he has worked with several legacy publications including print editions at Hindustan Times and The Statesman. He also has a keen interest in Sports, which he used to cover with equal enthusiasm in his early career.

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1 Comment
User
Robert
Anonymous
4 years ago

Huawei p30 pro is best smartphone in 2019.i love this phone.All feature and speification are good.I think this phone price is too high with this configeration.If this phone medium price,It is best selling phone in other smartphone.

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