Today Honor completed its Chinese launch of the new Honor 30 series of smartphones, adding three new devices to its premium to flagship line-up of devices. All the new phones are 5G capable and inherit the leading edge custom RYYB camera sensors from Sony that made Huawei devices stand out from the crowd – all in new sleek designs that significantly raises Honor build quality compared to previous generations.

Honor 30 Series (China Launch)
  Honor 30 Honor 30 Pro Honor 30 Pro+
SoC HiSilicon Kirin 985

1x A76 @ 2.58 GHz
3x A76 @ 2.40 GHz
4x A55 @ 1.84 GHz

Mali G77MP8 @ ?
HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G

2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.86 GHz
2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.36 GHz
4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.95 GHz

Mali G76MP16 @ 700MHz
DRAM 6/8GB 8GB 8/12GB
Display 6.53" OLED
2400 x 1080 (20:9)
60Hz
6.57" OLED
2340 x 1080 (19.5:9)
60Hz
6.57" OLED
2340 x 1080 (19.5:9)
90Hz
Size Height 160.34 160.32
Width 74.18 73.61
Depth 8.1mm
8.47mm (top)
8.38mm
8.63mm (top)
Weight 185g 190g
Battery Capacity 3900mAh (Rated)
4000mAh (Typical)

40W SuperCharge
Wireless Charging - - 27W Fast Charge
Rear Cameras
Main 40MP 1/1.7"
1.0µm RYYB

f/1.8 OIS
27mm eq.
50MP 1/1.28"
1.22µm RYYB

f/1.9 OIS
27mm eq. (crop)
Telephoto 5x Optical
8MP
f/3.4 OIS

125mm eq.
Ultra-Wide 8MP
f/2.4

17mm eq.
16MP
f/2.2

17mm eq.
Extra 2MP Macro -
Front Camera 32MP f/2.0 FF 32MP f/2.0 FF
+
8MP f/2.2 FF
Storage 128 / 256GB
+ proprietary "nanoSD" card
I/O USB-C
Wireless (local) 802.11ax (Wifi 6),
Bluetooth 5.1 LE
Cellular 4G + 5G NR NSA+SA Sub-6GHz
Splash, Water, Dust Resistance - IP54
Dual-SIM 2x nano-SIM
Launch OS AOSP 10 w/ EMUI 10

without Google services
Launch Price 6+128GB: ¥2999 (~$426)
8+128GB: ¥3199
(~$459)
8+256GB: ¥3499
(~$495)
8+128GB: ¥3999
(~$566)


8+256GB: ¥4399
(~$622)
8+256GB: ¥4999
(~$707)

Starting off with the regular Honor 30, the biggest surprise here in terms of the specifications is the fact that this is a phone powered by the new Kirin 985 chipset, making this the first public showing of the new silicon. Similar to the Kirin 980 in capabilities, it’s very much a completely new design that fits in-between the two flagship generations in terms of its capabilities. For the first time HiSilicon is launching a similar 1+3+4 CPU configuration as first seen in Qualcomm chipsets such as the Snapdragon 855 last year, with the core configuration in this case being 1x A76 at 2.58GHz + 3x A76 @ 2.4GHz and 4x A55’s at 1.84GHz. Whilst the CPU generation hasn’t been updated, the GPU saw a bigger change as we’re now seeing a Mali-G77 powering the SoC – also a first for a HiSilicon SoC. We currently don’t have more detailed information on the core count or frequencies.

The new chipset is manufactured on a 7nm process node and seemingly has 5G capabilities. It’s likely HiSilicon here integrated the 5G modem into the SoC, but again we’re waiting on official confirmation on the matter.

The Honor 30 Pro and Pro+ are powered by the well-known Kirin 990 5G chipset that had been launched in the Mate 30 series last year and is also being used by the recently announced P40 phones from Huawei.


Honor 30 Icelandic Frost

The Honor 30 is a somewhat similar design to the Honor 20 – at least from far away. We’re still looking at a flat display, which in this generation has been upgraded to OLED technology, still coming in at 6.53” and 2400 x 1080 resolution. However Honor seems to have greatly improved the build quality as the new glass sandwich design seems more seamless and smooth compared to past generation iterations.

Camera-wise, the Honor 30 sports the same main camera module as found on the P30 and Mate 30 series, the IMX600 RYYB sensor coming in at 40MP and supported by f/1.8 aperture optics and OIS. There’s a smaller 8MP ultra-wide angle module which is at the lower-end side of such modules in terms of specifications, and an extra 2MP macro unit.

Shared amongst all Honor 30 series today is an additional periscope type telephoto module with 5x optical zoom or 125mm equivalent focal length, sporting an 8MP sensor and f/3.4 aperture optics with OIS.


Honor 30 Pro+ in Emerald Green

The Honor 30 Pro and Pro+ share a similar form-factor to the Honor 30, but differ in terms of the industrial design, most notably because of the usage of a curved screen. The OLED panel falls in at 6.57” and a 2340 x 1080 resolution, with the distinction that only the Pro+ model also comes with a higher 90Hz refresh rate.

The front also is characterised by a pill-shaped camera cut-out now housing two front cameras, the 32MP f/2.0 unit found on all models of the Honor 30 today, as well as an additional 8MP f/2.2 sensor module. It’s said the second sensor module is optimised for video while the high-resolution unit is meant for selfie still pictures.

All the phones feature a 4000mAh battery capacity, 5G connectivity with wide band support, WiFi 6, under-screen fingerprint sensors, and Huawei’s expandable “nanoMemory” storage along with dual-SIM support.

The launch today focuses on the China market only, with device prices ranging from ~$426-495 on the Honor 30 to ~$566-622 on the Honor 30 Pro to ~$707 for the Pro+. We’re expecting to hear more about western market launches in the next weeks and months.

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  • PeachNCream - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    Vendor-supplied ASOP without Google's revolting bundled spyware? Best phone idea ever if you don't want to deal with f-ing Alphabet all up in your shizzle constantly.
  • quiksilvr - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    No you get all of China spy shizzle instead.
  • prophet001 - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    You're not wrong.
  • PeachNCream - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    I'd honestly rather have China spying on me than Alphabet. At least the government's motives are obviously related to intellectual property theft and overwatch of citizens. Google, on the other hand, is f*cked up in every possible way through the assembly of a broad data set across search, location, biometrics, web activity, who calls who, video viewership, and so forth. Sure they say you can turn the collection off, but is the monitoring and collection really not happening? Are those gigabytes of history and information stored on their servers really being deleted when you tell them to do it? No one will know until any present, past, or future public incidents happen and by then its way too late to do anything about it.
  • Deicidium369 - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    Wonder what happened to "Don't Be Evil"?
  • wr3zzz - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    I think Google officially dropped that motto around the time Facebook went public. I am serious.
  • quiksilvr - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    China literally does all of the exact same things Google does too AND on top of that its a communist dictatorship that lies literally about every piece of data it "discloses". How is that better than Alphabet?
  • PeachNCream - Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - link

    If you don't live in China, the reach of their government is weak at best. On the other hand, as I already explained above, Alphabet aims to be everywhere to mine data from everything and has the advantage of access to nearly everyone so it can broadly link activities among individuals and groups. If you do live in China, there is nothing any amount of banter in a tech forum is going to do to alter the course of action or change the situation. Therefore, Google looms large as a threat and China those of us here. Besides that, China is a politically easy target for westerners to attack as the big bad nemesis so they can avoid thinking and addressing problematic companies like Alphabet.
  • d01mf - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link

    "If you don't live in China, the reach of their government is weak at best" ... Let's revisit that statement in a couple of decades, shall we?
  • PeachNCream - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link

    I don't mind revisiting that, but a couple of decades from now is not today and bears no relevance to purchase of a current generation phone.

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