It wasn’t too long ago that you’d have been laughed out of the shops if you asked for a phone with four cameras but now, well, a smartphone fitted with multiple camera arrangements is as common as a primary school child doing the floss dance or a cucumber sandwich in the home of a Brexit voter.
The Huawei P30 Pro seeks to strengthen this multiple-camera trend. Following the launch of the excellent P20 Pro last year, which introduced the triple camera setup to smartphones for the first time, its successor aims to improve the photography experience still further.
Huawei P30 Pro review: Key specifications, price and release date
- 6.47in OLED 2,340 x 1,080 display (19.5:9 aspect ratio)
- Kirin 980 (2.6GHz) processor
- Mali-G76 MP10 GPU
- 128GB or 512GB of storage (expandable via nanoSD)
- 8GB of RAM
- Four rear cameras: 40MP (SuperSpectrum), 20MP (ultra-wide), 8MP (5x telephoto), ToF (Time of Flight) sensor
- Selfie camera: 32-megapixel
- 4,200mAh battery (40W wireless charging)
- IP68 rated
- Wi-Fi 801.11ax, Bluetooth 5, Cat21 4.5g 1.2Gbits/sec
- Android 9.0 Pie (EMUI 9.1)
- UK price: £899
- UK release date: Pre-orders from 27th March
Huawei P30 Pro review: Design, key features and first impressions
As for everything other than the cameras, the Huawei P30 Pro is a continuation of what made last year’s phone so great in the first place. It’s achingly attractive, sandwiched between layers of softly curvaceous glass on the front and rear and comes in some enticing, jewellery shop colours. The most eye-catching is the iridescent Pearl White colour, which fades from deep purple to a light blue across the rear panel, depending on how the phone catches the light. There’s also a regular black variant for those who don’t get on with such gaudy ostentation.
As you’d expect of a modern flagship, the Huawei P30 Pro is nice and thin, packing a large 6.47in screen into a comparatively compact chassis. Better still, the P30 Pro uses an AMOLED panel yet again, so colour contrast is effectively perfect and the resolution is 1,080 x 2,340 delivering a slightly more stretched out long-tall aspect ratio of 19.5:9.
Of course, the arrival of this elongated aspect ratio comes the return of the notch. However, this time around it isn’t an iPhone-like affair; instead, the 32-megapixel selfie camera is embedded in a not-so-obtrusive circular teardrop notch.
I suppose at this point you’re wondering where the front-mounted earpiece speaker went to. Well, you won’t find such a thing on the P30 Pro this year. Instead, it has been replaced with a new feature Huawei calls “electro-magnetic levitation”. Basically, this is a fancy way of saying the phone’s screen vibrates to create sound when pressed against your ear. I’m not sure it’s entirely necessary but it does clean the look of the phone up a little bit.
Odd features aside, the Huawei P30 Pro is the firm’s most attractive, well-designed smartphone to date. I even think it looks better than the recently-launched Galaxy S10 Plus, which takes some doing.
It covers most of the bases elsewhere, too. There’s a large 4,200mAh capacity battery keeping things ticking along, which supports 40W charging (and reverse wireless charging as with the Mate 20 Pro), and the phone is IP68-rated dust and water-resistant once again. Of course, the 3.5mm headphone jack has disappeared yet again, but slightly more worrisome is the lack of microSD expansion.
Instead, the P30 Pro, like the Mate 20-series of phones before it, only supports Huawei’s nano memory cards. These are physically smaller and more expensive than their micro-sized equivalents, although with at least 128GB of internal storage you probably won’t need one anyway.
As expected, the phone uses the firm’s own Kirin 980 mobile chipset, which is built using a 7nm fabrication process. This 2.6GHz octa-core processor first featured in last year’s Mate 20 Pro and is more power efficient than older chips built on 10nm or larger. In theory, the smaller fabrication process means more power for the same size chip and better battery life, too, which is certainly something we noticed with the Mate 20 Pro.
Huawei P30 Pro review: So many cameras
Of course, the Huawei P30 Pro’s star feature isn’t the processor or even the swish design, but the quadruple Leica camera array I mentioned at the beginning of this article. Before I get into the specifics of how this all works, let me first run you through the specifications of each camera and why each one is important.
The primary snapper is an optically-stabilised 40-megapixel unit with a wide aperture of f/1.6. What’s particularly special here is that, rather than using an RGB Bayer filter on top of the sensor to capture in full colour, this camera employs the less commonly used RYYB filter, replacing the green elements of the filter with yellow.
Huawei calls this “SuperSpectrum” imaging and what it means is the camera is more capable of capturing a broader spectrum of light. Huawei says the P30 Pro should be better-suited in low-light environments as a result.
This approach does have some potential drawbacks, however. A 2016 study by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology suggests that, while an RYYB-based sensor can capture a broader spectrum of light, it may also be more susceptible to chroma flare and noise. I’ll report back when I’ve had the chance to give it a proper stress test but first impressions from a few initial snaps are that these aren’t huge problems.
The main camera is accompanied by a new 20-megapixel ultra-wide sensor, which shoots at a slightly wider angle than before, allowing you to capture even more dramatic vistas than with the Mate 20 Pro.
Third, the Huawei P30 Pro has seen an upgrade to its camera zoom capabilities. This time around you’ll find an 8-megapixel, f/3.4 unit with up to 5x optical zoom – a big upgrade on last year’s 3x zoom. Huawei has achieved this by using a periscope-style housing, tilting the camera on its side and capturing the image via a tiny mirror. This is why, if you look closely enough, this third camera is square in appearance, not circular.
The “fourth” camera is actually a ToF (Time of Flight) sensor, like the one found on the rear of the Oppo RX17 Pro. This consists of two parts: an emitter that sends out beams of infrared light, and a receiver that monitors how quickly the light is reflected back to the sensor. Essentially, it’s a more precise method of measuring depth than the usual stereoscopic technique utilised by most smartphones today. Think how a bat uses sonar to bounce noise from an object to determine its distance and you get the right idea.
But what does this new ToF sensor actually add to the P30 Pro’s camera capabilities? Well, you won’t see many benefits with still photography or even video footage for that matter right now, although, in theory, it should enable more precisely cut out portrait images. What Huawei aims to do with it is to improve the phone’s AR (augmented reality) measurement features, meaning you should be able to measure distances, volumes and area to an increased 98% accuracy.
I say “aims” because these features won’t be available at launch. They’ll be enabled in a future software update the company says.
Speaking of video, the P30 Pro is capable of recording at maximum 4K resolution at 30fps but you’re still only able to record at a silky-smooth 60fps if you drop the resolution to 1080p. As with the Mate 20 Pro, both OIS and EIS are enabled by default in video for super-stable looking shots (Huawei calls this AIS). Slightly less useful and a lot more gimmicky is the addition of a new, “dual-view” video recording mode, which allows you to capture footage using any two of the phone’s rear cameras simultaneously.
Huawei P30 Pro review: Early verdict
It might not look like much has changed on the surface but dig a little deeper and you’ll find a smorgasbord of big changes that go a long way towards justifying that sky-high price. There’s an awful lot of substance to Huawei’s new P30 Pro.
Time will tell whether the P30 Pro’s quadruple camera array is all it’s cracked up to be, whether it works as well in low-light as Huawei seems to suggest, or if it makes as good a video camera as the Apple iPhone Xs but one thing is for sure: the Huawei P30 Pro is shaping up to be the most interesting smartphone of 2019 so far.
Source: expertreviews.co.uk
