The Huawei P30 & P30 Pro Reviews: Photography Enhanced
by Andrei Frumusanu on April 18, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- P30
- P30 Pro
Video Recording
Video recording on the new P30’s shouldn’t differ too much to what we saw on the Mate 20 Pro. The new Kirin 980 significantly improves upon the video recording capabilities of its predecessor, and as such, the new P30s should showcase significant uplifts to last year’s P20s. Particularly the P30 Pro will be interesting as it has OIS on the main camera module, which should result in much smoother video compared to what we’ve seen in recent Huawei flagships.
P30 Pro: P30:
Camera Module Transitions (P30 Pro)
Oddly enough, while there is an improvement stabilisation, the difference between the P30 Pro and P30 are quite minor. Both phones video quality is in line with the Mate 20 Pro, which is to say good. However the colour rendition is towards the saturated side, and things do pop a lot more than they should.
The bit-rate for the video is also quite low: For 4K30 we're seeing a 40Mbps AVC High@5.1 stream or a 25Mbps HEVC High@L5 steam, far lower than what we're used from other devices. Huawei here probably is looking to save on storage when recording. 1080p60 video falls at 25Mbps AVC High@4.2 or 16Mbps HEVC Main@4.1, both again very low for 60fps content.
Recording on the wide angle module remains great experience, however it’s extremely shaky as apparently Huawei doesn’t use any EIS. In the past this was available in the settings menu of the camera, however on the P30’s this option is gone. I think this is something that the company will be able to re-add in a future firmware update.
The phones are able to use all three camera modules when in non 60fps modes. Recording at higher frame-rate disables the telephoto module. Transitions between the different modules still isn’t as smooth as what we see on the competition, and there’s a notable delay that is much longer than say on LG’s V40 or Samsung recent S10.
The video clip also showcases exactly just how far you have to zoom in on the P30 Pro to switch over to the telephoto modules; the quality between 3x-5x really suffers significantly due to the excessive digital zoom. For everyday scenarios however this is the region you’d want to frame in the most, so again I do not see the P30 Pro’s 5x telephoto module as an inherent advantage for the phone as it represents a massive double-edged sword, more-so for video recording than for still picture capture.
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SwordOS - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
@Andrei, you're saying the galaxy s10+ battery life is better than the p30 pro's one, but reviewers everywhere are still saying that the battery life on the p30pro is phenomenal and you can hit 2 days of usage, while with the s10+ (and s10) you can barely hit one day of usage. Also, the difference in battery life between wifi and 4g with the galaxy s10+ (at least for the exynos variant) seems to be way more noticeable than on the p30pro. Did you also try these phones in a real day of usage? Maybe benchmarks cannot be translated to real life usage..Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
> and you can hit 2 days of usage, while with the s10+ (and s10) you can barely hit one day of usageSuch claims are just bollocks. I have the S10+ Exynos as a daily and I'm sitting at 47% at 2 days with 5h screentime. Similarly the P30 Pro isn't bad but it just doesn't last as long due to the base power simply being 120mW less efficient.
SwordOS - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
so are all european reviewers lying except you? I trust you, but this is strangeAndrei Frumusanu - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Yes, most European reviewers have their data wrong. It's because they didn't identify some firmware issues and got the articles out as soon as possible. I identified the issues and avoided it for the review; meanwhile Samsung has issued firmware updates at the end of March which fixed the drain issues. Of course those reviews weren't updated.SwordOS - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Did drain issues occurred only after making a voip call or even for other reasons?RMerlin - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
"Huawei still uses Broadcom BCM4359 WiFi combo chips" AFAIK, they use a HiSilicon Hi1103.Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Went and checked again, you're right. I was tricked by the phone still coming with the BCM4359 firmware.s.yu - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Now why do they have Broadcom firmware if they use their own modem?N Zaljov - Friday, April 19, 2019 - link
Probably BSP leftovers. Some Hi3680-based boards still use a BCM4359, and since most of the devices will rely on the same BSP (with minor little additions like bindings for the various different batteries, displays etc. that Huawei uses), they most probably just kept the Broadcom stuff in there.nicolaim - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
749€ for a phone with no OIS, no waterproofing, and no wireless charging? No thanks.