The Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: Top Hardware without Google?
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 27, 2019 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Kirin 990
- Mate 30 Pro
Battery Life
The Mate 30 Pro comes with a quite large battery measuring at 4400mAh rated / 4500mAh typical. This is 5% larger than its predecessor, and the new phone also comes with a new more efficient SoC. The question of how the new phone will end up in the battery charts is largely dependent on how its new screen will behave, and if it’s going to be nearly as efficient as some of the new generation Samsung panels we’ve seen employed in the new Galaxy and iPhones this year.
Starting off with the web browsing test, we do see the Mate 30 Pro edge out the Mate 20 Pro by 18% and achieving a good battery life result of 11.75 hours. While in absolute terms of a good result, it doesn’t manage to keep up with the more efficient devices from Samsung and Apple. Whilst the Mate 30 Pro has a good base power consumption of ~420mW, the screen panel’s luminosity efficiency doesn’t seem to have improved much compared to last year’s model, and this results in the Mate 30 Pro falling behind even though it has a bigger battery and more efficient SoC.
PCMark is more a heavier compute workload which puts more stress on the SoC and less on the display panel due to the lower APL, and here the Mate 30 Pro actually fares very well, landing in as amongst the most efficient devices. Keeping in mind that the performance exhibited here is excellent, the Kirin 990 does really make the phone shine.
The overall conclusion for battery life is that there’s two aspects to the phone. The phone itself is extremely efficient and sports a very large battery, however it’s hampered by a quite inefficient screen. This is a scenario where battery life will differ a lot depending on how you use your phone – if you’re the type of person using it outside at maximum brightness a lot of times, then the Mate 30 Pro won’t fare as well as the competition. If you’re using it more extensively at lower brightness levels, the inefficiency of the display will impact battery life less and here the phone’s excellent internal hardware will outpace other devices by greater margins.
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PenGunn - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
My Mate 20 is flawless. Got a seriously good deal from Virgin in BC Canada and its the best phone I've ever had. My previous phone, a P10 was the best, until I picked up the Mate 20. All the Google crap is there. Still sideloading is easy.dudedud - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
So... what's the point of the bigger NPU? It's actually used anywhere? Or at least have an advantage over the one on the 980?Kangal - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
The biggest advantage of the NPU is for......OEMs to say look we have Neural Link and AI-capabilities, despite not doing anything :D
s.yu - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Bragging rights.cfenton - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
Without side-loading APKs or installing Google Play Services, what's available on the device? Is the Huawei app store any good, or is it like Samsung's store (most of the big stuff, but nowhere near everything)?Kangal - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Why has no-one else asked this question?!?(I'd think it's significantly worse than GalaxyApps, Amazon Appstore, APKpure, Aptoide and F-Droid)
cfenton - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
I suspect you're right, but I'd like to know for sure. I think a casual user could get away with the Amazon Appstore, and maybe even the Galaxy Store, but not anything less than that. I'd like to know, for example, how many of the top 50 apps on the Play Store are available on the Huawei store.yetanotherhuman - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
New SD card type. Ugh. Who do they think they are, Sony? MicroSD is small enough. It works. They're cheap, and everywhere, up to unbelievably large sizes. Let's not mess with it.s.yu - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Oh they think they're Apple alright.Jostian - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
why only ever compare the Mate 30 P to the P30 P?? how does it compare to the iPhone 11 or Pixel etc. you have all the photos but then only compare the 2 Huawei's?? iPhone has more smearing especially in foliage and fine detail imho but really hoped the review would go beyond just the 2 Huawei's in terms of camera comparison...