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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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?