Huawei today unveiled its flagship phone for the first half of 2019 — the P30 Pro and P30. The company has once again managed to take smartphone photography to a new level and released one of the most feature-packed smartphones of 2019. The P30 Pro particularly gives the Galaxy S10 a stiff competition and is superior to it in many ways.
Huawei P30 Pro
Before I talk about the camera setup of the Huawei P30 Pro, let’s get its rest of the specs out of the way. The P30 Pro packs a 6.47-inch 19.5:9 curved OLED display with FHD+ resolution. There’s a curved glass back at the rear as well. The degree of curves for both front and rear glass has been decreased which makes the phone easy to hold.
To reduce the bezels, Huawei has given the earpiece on the P30 Pro a miss. That’s because it is using the display as an earpiece itself which it is calling electromagnetic levitation. We have seen LG use similar technology on the G8, though it remains to be seen if Huawei’s implementation is good enough to replace the traditional earpiece.
Inside the P30 Pro is Huawei’s own 7nm Kirin 980 chipset, 8GB RAM, 128GB storage, a 4200mAh battery, 15W wireless charging, and 2.5W reverse wireless charging. There’s also 40W insanely fast wired fast charging which can charge the P30 Pro to 70 percent in just 30 minutes. Other specs include USB-C, IP68 certification, in-display fingerprint scanner, a bottom firing speaker, up to 1.4Gbps LTE speeds, and more. The only thing that the P30 Pro is missing is a headphone jack.
Now, let’s talk about the highlight of the P30 Pro — the quad-camera at the back. Huawei is introducing a new SuperSpectrum 40MP shooter with the P30 Pro. This new camera sensor swaps out the green sub-pixels in favor of two yellow sub-pixels for an RYYB arrangement. Huawei says this allows the sensor to absorb more light which is also helped by the wider f/1.6 aperture and OIS. The secondary sensor is an ultra-wide 20MP f/2.2 shooter. The third 8MP f/3.4 periscope sensor with OIS is brand new and offers 5x optical zoom or 10x hybrid lossless zoom. There’s also an insane 50x digital zoom. The fourth camera is a Time of Flight sensor used for capturing depth information.
With such beastly specs, Huawei has also improved its image processing and the P30 Pro is capable of capturing some stunning photos particularly in low-light. The demos showed by the company on stage blew the Galaxy S10 and the iPhone XS image samples. The P30 Pro has also managed to top DxOMark’s ranking with a total score of 112 points beating the likes of the Pixel 3 and the iPhone XS.
At the front, there’s a new 32MP selfie shooter with improved processing from Huawei which includes a new AI HDR+ system which is also available for the rear camera. Video recording has also improved with low-light videos particularly getting a nice quality boost. Apart from OIS, Huawei is also offering AI-based stabilization for smoother videos.
On the software front, the P30 Pro runs on EMUI 9.1 based on Android 9.0 Pie. It comes with a few refinements and improvements compared to EMUI 9.0, though overall, it is still the skin that most people hate.
Huawei P30
Alongside the P30 Pro, Huawei also unveiled the cheaper but equally capable P30. The handset makes a few compromises to reach its lower price tag but it is still an impressive handset overall. While the P30 shares the same internals as the P30 Pro, it comes with a smaller 6.1-inch FHD+ display and a lower IP53 certification. It also comes with 6GB RAM, a smaller 3,650mAh battery with 22.5W SuperCharging support, and a slightly lower-spec’d rear camera setup. While the 40MP SuperSpectrum camera sensor is still there, it has an f/1.8 aperture and lacks OIS. The ultra-wide angle shooter is a 16MP f/2.2 shooter and the periscope camera has been replaced with an 8MP shooter offering 3x optical zoom. There’s no ToF camera sensor on the P30. At the front, it has the same 32MP selfie camera as the Pro variant.
Interestingly, the P30 does feature a headphone jack which the P30 Pro lacks. Other specs of the handset remain the same as its bigger sibling.
Pricing and Availability
The Huawei P30 and P30 Pro are already available in Europe from today. The P30 starts from €799, while the P30 Pro is available for €999 for the 8GB RAM/128GB version. The 256GB storage version comes in at €1099.
Huawei is offering the P30 and P30 Pro in Amber Sunrise, Breathing Crystal, Pearl White, Aurora Red, and Black colors.
