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
Video Recording
Video recording on the Mate 30 Pro is said to have been significantly improved, and the inclusion of the new 40MP “Cine” camera that also serves as the new ultra-wide sensor. Huawei was very keen on the new video recording capabilities of the phone, so let’s set out to test new modules.
Starting off with 4K30 on the main sensor, we notice that the image looks quite flat and lacking contrast. Throughout the various parts of the recording we see that this actually changes quite a bit depending on the lighting. Recording against a brighter background we however see a fundamental limitation of the camera and processing: it’s not able to deal that well with high dynamic range scenarios. The sky is either too blown up, or the foreground is too underexposed.
Zooming in while recording, the phone has issue with balancing exposure correctly and it takes a long time for the telephoto lens to focus, if at all.
Using 60fps recording I feel like the picture quality is actually better. This isn’t because it’s 60fps or somehow the bitrate is higher, in fact the bitrate of the resulting videos is seemingly capped at 28Mbps in the HEVC recording mode, no matter if it’s 30 or 60fps. The 60fps mode looks better because the EIS is disabled and the phone is just better able to hold details.
In the higher rate recording mode, you can only use the sensor with which you start with and not switch around. On the main camera I noted focus issues in this mode as the phone had trouble to autofocus on near objects, either taking a really long time or not doing it at all and requiring a manual tap in the viewfinder.
On the ultra-wide-angle, we see a similar slow focus. This time around, the camera is very slow in focusing out in far objects and takes up to a second to realise it needs to change. At 4K30, image quality in terms of detail is similar to the main camera, which I feel is a bit bitrate bound, the 4K60 footage looks better as less detail is blurred by the EIS.
Unfortunately, the exposure handling in switching between the main camera and the ultra-wide is just quite terrible in the scenes I shot, with extremely uneven exposures and slow switching between the modules.
Huawei always had weaknesses in regards to video recording, but I expected them to be able to achieve more this generation. The Mate 30 Pro just really isn’t competitive with what Samsung and Apple are able to offer in terms of quality.
Speaker Evaluation - Pretty Bad
Speaker quality on the Mate 30 Pro isn’t very high end. The phone only has a single mono bottom firing speaker for media playback – while it does have an under-screen speaker vibrator which uses the display panel as a speaker membrane, this can’t be used for general audio.
In terms of the audio quality of the main speaker, it’s very mediocre. While the unit has good lows, it’s lacking in the higher frequencies and thus sounds quite muted compared to what we’re used to from other flagship devices. It’s also doesn’t get nearly as loud as what we see from the competition, and seemingly is also quieter than what we saw from some previous generation Huawei devices.
Overall, audio quality on the Mate 30 Pro isn’t very up to par. The fact that Huawei still continues to leave out the headphone jack on the more expensive “Pro” models and choosing to integrate it in the regular models such as the Mate 30 still boggles the mind as to what exactly they’re thinking. Well, don’t answer that, I guess the company’s offering of wireless headphones is self-explanatory.
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s.yu - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
"a unique 90° curved screen on its sides – a first not only for Huawei but for the smartphone market overall"...IIRC NEX 3 with the same screen curve design was launched 3 days before this model.
But the comments regarding the ergonomics certainly push me further towards the ROGP2.
"The new sensor is a native 16:9 unit" really surprises me as I thought it was a 3:2, since it shoots stills in 3:2, in this case the 4:3 crop in night mode would be even more of a compromise cutting out a larger portion of the sensor, essentially highlighting how severe the falloff and in cam shadow lifting is.
But this doesn't explain the poor DR of the new unit.
If I were shooting an UWA I'd probably prefer a narrower one, as the ~12mm FoV is overdramatic and incredibly difficult to master, but this isn't the main issue as I don't believe a significantly relevant proportion of users of these ultimately consumer devices actually understand photography enough to have that in mind.
The night mode on the UWA still has severe smearing that hasn't been resolved, especially obvious in the shot of the theater, whose exacerbation in edges and corners under a certain lighting threshold is observable in the 2nd sample on the stairs, so what I observed from GSMA's very few night samples turns out to be universal, that the UWA night mode on this big big sensor is actually worse than Samsung's tiny tiny sensor with a far wider FoV. Peculiar.
So the conclusion here is: When not much FoV is needed, DR isn't too extreme, and lighting is either sufficient enough not to need night mode or lacking enough that Samsung's tiny sensor tends to capture no data, this new UWA has the advantage.
A minor detail regarding "The ISO51200 of the sensor in the regular mode is able to get better results than the image stacking of ISO1600 pictures in night mode." The ISO1600 is probably calculated from the accumulated shutter durations of the burst, I don't believe it's likely that a burst could be captured without vibration under this lighting with each shot at ISO1600.
Finally, I was expecting a sprinkler test of the "7680fps", and preferably a test on effective video resolution, shame this wasn't included.
Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
You are right about the 3:2, I was absentmindedly writing 16:9.In regards to the slow-mi, Ian did an article few months back:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14897/a-day-with-th...
The capture is just 2000fps interpolated 4x, I investigated this in the software.
s.yu - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Yeah I know, just that a running tap was too slow, while a sprinkler test would yield more as to how the interpolation is done, e.g. the NPU technically should be able to afford some object tracking resulting in much better interpolation than mere averaging or something.Also a comparison of resolution between all the slow-mo that on paper appear to be 720P could help assess actual quality, my second point.
Dazzler86 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Eventhough the DR is not up to the unrealistic level of Samsung, its subtle enough & flagship grade.Whining about Night Mode? The Mates doesnt even need to use Night Mode to beat other competition, its still a low light king, as stated by the review.
Funny that you only stated negativity about the camera phone but ignores its pros that beat others. Best UWA implentation, best detail preservation on a smartphone camera, ever.
I dont care about your other post about their politics, but i know i made the right choice, choosing Huawei for a point & shoot camera along with my main Leica Q & Fuji X-E3.
s.yu - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Oh I know a Huawei fanboy when I see one alright."Eventhough the DR is not up to the unrealistic level of Samsung, its subtle enough & flagship grade."
So more DR than Huawei equals unrealistic? lol. Apple's UWA output also has more DR and is quite realistic. The processing of the two Samsung variants is also different, and not entirely less realistic than for example P30P.
"The Mates doesnt even need to use Night Mode to beat other competition"
Rather that it would lose to others where it might have won without night mode?
The Mate, which on auto:
https://images.anandtech.com/galleries/7356/Mate30... beats Samsung's night mode(for as wide as its FoV would cover): https://images.anandtech.com/galleries/7356/S10E_2...
loses handily to Samsung's night mode with its own night mode: https://images.anandtech.com/galleries/7356/Mate30...
with much narrower FoV, much more severe smearing etc.
This inconsistency, a strong argument against night mode use in many nighttime conditions, is a liability, because the user is forced to guess when night mode works better and when it's far worse, and the penalty for making a mistake in judgement is a heavy one.
Andrei left out a lot of individual analysis between samples, but clearly there are too many catches for it to be declared outright "king", which I summarized as "When not much FoV is needed, DR isn't too extreme, and lighting is either sufficient enough not to need night mode or lacking enough that Samsung's tiny sensor tends to capture no data, this new UWA has the advantage."
Note that I acknowledge the advantage, where there is one, only I also acknowledge the disadvantage, where there is one, unlike you who does nothing but brag.
"Best UWA implentation"
is, again, false. You don't say that a 21/2 is better than a 12/5.6, because the drastic difference in FoV makes then incomparable, and the UWA, already ~18mm in stills, a 1.5x crop compared to Samsung and Apple's UWA, is a ~21mm equiv. FoV in night mode's forced 4:3 crop, so no matter how much cleaner it is, you can't call it something along the lines of "the best". Your claim is akin to "my 16-35/2.8 is better than your 12-24/4", or "my 50/0.95 is better than your 75/1.4", which is nothing but ignorant fanboy talk. You're lucky this is Anandtech, or else you'd be laughed at commenting like that under DPR.
Also some things I left unsaid as I already covered some of Mate30P's performance in the comments of the Pixel 4 review, I felt no need to repeat them.
"Leica Q"
You bought an expensive toy that will go to waste in your hands. Your X-E3 purchase does expose your taste for JPG filters over material performance gain though, not surprising for a Huawei fanboy.
SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Thank You Andrei for your great review!After all this years of Android it is really disappointing that still at the end of 2019 no one seems to be able to beat the iPhone 11 PRO display accuracy.
phils1969 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Anyone else had an issue with the Nano Memory card not being detected? Dual sim works so the slots fine, but 1 sim and 1 NM card and its not seeing the NM card, the wifes Mate 20 Pro sees it fine so its not the card?Calista - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
If anything this shows we really need properly split Alphabet/Google from Android. Android being open source, it belongs to the world. But that's not much use if it's still locked to a single company in a country more than happy to be both judge, jury and executioner when it comes to world politics. All the major cellphone vendors should work together to replace the Google services with open alternatives. It's easy to pick on Huawei, but what's the next target? Samsung? Oppo? LG? Sony? Some other company not from USA?liquid_c - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
In the pfw chart, the iPhones get 2 subsections (cold/peak and hot) while the other devices, don’t. Why is that?AidenP - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link
Looks decent (except for those extra curved sides) ,and the specs are up there,it seems, I think at 500-600 Euros would be a realistic value offer , but for now I will stick to my iPhone 8,for at least a few more years .