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
Battery Life
Huawei always proclaimed to have excellent battery life in their products, and this seems to be a management directed priority in device development. Having said that, power consumption on the recent OLED devices hasn’t always been as optimised as it could be.
The P30 Pro’s 4100mAh rated battery and the P30’s 3550mAh unit compete at the higher end of the spectrum. We’ve already proven that the Kirin 980 SoC is able to deliver fantastic power efficiency, and the Mate 20 still tops the charts as one of the most efficient and long-lasting devices.
In the web-test, we see both P30s not far apart from each other, with the P30 Pro reaching 11.83h and the P30 11.43h. Overall these are great results, in line with what Huawei was able to achieve in the past. Again I would like to point out the difference in battery life between the P30 Pro and the new Galaxy S10+s – both have similarly sized batteries and screens, yet the Samsung devices lead even though they’re 1440p screen, again showcasing that fundamentally the resolution should have very little impact when implemented correctly.
In the PCMark battery test both P30s perform excellently, as is usualy with Huawei devices. The P30 Pro lags behind the P20 Pro because the latter wasn’t more efficient, but rather because it was much slower and operating at lower (and more efficient) performance points. The P30 Pro along with the new Kirin 980 devices showcase leading battery life along with leading performance.
Another change that I noted in the P30s is that their idle battery life is significantly better than past Huawei flagships, a notorious issue that I hadn’t covered nearly as much as I should have.
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Quantumz0d - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Good camera review, their auto mode looks good at night but the low light photography in smartphone arena is heavily faked. Be it Google insane algorithm for creating unnatural light or th damn Huawei night mode with HW. I think its too fake and perhaps they do have advantages in some situations but going from a dark room to a lit room is bad in my book.Next up the stupid curved glass copy they did from Samsung needs shaming. Plus its a waste that distortion of image is horrible and the damn construction is weak, see Jerry rig for it.
Then the worst parts - NanoSD ? WTF, please call them out for this, proprietary storages ? That's anti consumer, I use my SGS with 200GB SD card yes the 10Yr old phone with replaced battery and Fat32 works. And same in my iPods and V30S, and it works in PC without any stupid gimmicks or bloat.
Finally Andrei, I know your contribution to Samsung Exynos S9 disaster, it was only possible because it allows Bootloader unlock. That's the most powerful feature of Android and its principles of GNU GPL.
This Huawei junk is blocking access to that officially and in India I read the service centers demand DL for their Honor subsidiary, XDA portal people sold their soul to Huawei and OnePlus now their contract expired for OP and Huawei I guess. This is another massive hole in Huawei devices. I have every doubt about the firmware and SoCs from this CPC company I would really wish to have a Bootloader unlock for all their portfolio subsidiaries and themselves. Its bad, no ownership choice is horrible given how their EMUI blocks lot of stuff and notorious for its control over background processes.
You should include that in your reviews, please.
Thank you.
Quantumz0d - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Also thank you for mentioning the 3.5mm jack and the stupid mono speaker in 2019. LG is Audio champion since a long time and hopefully they will retain that with their top class ESS Sabre implementation moving ahead. Also to note, LG and their new G8 has zero bumps which is a feat along with the Crystal Sound they call. Looking forward for piece.zeeBomb - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
You guys should take a look of MrWhoseTheBoss and his videos about this amazing phone. Such a shame you can't get it in carriers in the Americas, but man oh man.Ian Cutress - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
>You guys should take a look of MrWhoseTheBoss and his videos about this amazing phone.Any specific reason? You haven't exactly said why.
zeeBomb - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link
My bad. Sorry for the late reply too, he talks primarily about the sensor of the P30 Pro and its usefulness in Low Light. Just a suggestion to take a look.bogda - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
I think this statement: "...Huawei continues the senseless design choice of including a headphone jack on the smaller model while skipping it on the larger and more expensive P30 Pro.", makes much more sense if it is changed just a little bit into:"Huawei continues the senseless design choice of skipping a headphone jack on larger and more expensive P30 Pro while including it on the smaller model."
Awful - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Great review but still missing half the picture when it comes to the camera. Time-of-flight sensor? Graduated blur based on depth map? Portrait/face lighting? People are the most photographed and most interesting subjects. Even if it's a mannequin with a wig for repeatability!s.yu - Friday, April 19, 2019 - link
Portrait lighting has been gimmicky for a few generations now. Regarding ToF, IIRC only the Nokia 9 has the proper implementation. Still there are pixel grade deviations and some people aren't satisfied. Personally if I were to add fake bokeh that precision would be enough for me.Awful - Saturday, April 20, 2019 - link
Yeah, they weren't really meant to be separate concerns- they're all factors contributing to portraits. I.e. how the exposure is chosen, how the depth is mapped to the bokeh/blue, how edge detection is done and masked for blurring, how AI/ML is used to make adjustments etc. All great computational photography stuff...that this review is silent on.Lau_Tech - Friday, April 19, 2019 - link
Hi Andrei, as a s10 exynos owner, was interested to see your updated comparison pics between the snapdragon and exynos. Looking at the pics from ur S10 review and now, it seems to me that the gap has closed substantially especially in daytime photos? What do you think?