Honor introduces its first batch of 5G smartphones – the Honor V30 and V30 Pro

The smartphone industry always seems to create a hullabaloo about at least one thing at any given time. Just a couple of years ago, manufacturers were knee-deep to come up with low-bezel displays and now it’s become a common standard for any new smartphone. Also, the in-display fingerprint scanner! Coming back to 2019, the talk of the town is 5G. Well, the next-gen cellular technology is where the industry is heading towards so smartphone manufacturers have been pushing for 5G dominance. Honor, the Huawei subsidiary, is the latest kid in the block to introduce a 5G smartphone with the all-new Honor V30 and V30 Pro. Both devices share common build choices in many areas like design, SoC, etc. so there’s not much of a difference between the two phones. Anyway, let’s have a quick look at what these phones are packing!

Honor V30 & V30 Pro (5G) Overview

Display & Design

Let’s start with the display. Both phones have a 6.57-inch Full-HD+ TFT LCD screen with rounded corners and a dual punch-hole cutout on the top left corner unlike one on the right like the Samsung Galaxy S10+ or the upcoming Xiaomi Redmi K30. With this, the V30 & V30 Pro achieves a staggering 91.46% screen-to-body ratio. Personally, I prefer notches over cutouts. Also, have you guys noticed how cutout cameras have been slowly taking over pop-up cameras? Even the next-gen OnePlus 8 is rumored to pack a punch-hole display!

Moving to design, both phones are quite a visual treat with a fashionable design. With a glass back and metal frame, the phones come in Magic Night Star River (Blackish Blue), Icelandic Fantasy (White), and Charm Starfish Blue color variant, while the regular V30 also has a Dawn Orange option. All the buttons are placed on the right of the phone, with the power button also functioning as a fingerprint reader. Are side-mounted fingerprint scanners making a comeback? I sure hope so! On the back is the 40MP triple “Matrix” camera array.

Camera

Talking about cameras, both phones come with two of them upfront, and three in the back. While they share the same 32MP main shooter with “Super Night Mode” and an 8MP ultrawide camera (105º field-of-view) in the dual punch-hole cutout, there are some differences in the rear-camera arrangements.

As for the main lens, the V30 Pro has a 40MP Sony IMX600 sensor with f/1.6 aperture, the regular V30 has the same lens but with a slower f/1.8 aperture and. Similarly, the V30 Pro has a 12MP ultrawide lens though the V30 is equipped with an 8MP one. The telephoto lens, however, is the same on both devices, which is an 8MP f/2.4 lens.

Let’s get into the camera capabilities now. The V30 supports 4K video recording at 30fps (from both front and back) and 1080p at 960fps (Super Slow Motion) with OIS support on the 8MP telephoto lens only. However, the V30 Pro supports OIS on the main 40MP lens too. Similarly, both phones rear cameras are capable of 3x optical zoom, 5x hybrid zoom, and 30x digital zoom.

With such a rich camera setup, as expected, there are tons of photography modes embedded into the phone’s native camera app. You have the regular AI photography, super wide-angle, low-light photography, portraits, etc. There’s also a “Photo Resurrection Magic” feature that brings photos to life. Looking at the teaser, I found it to be wildly creepy!

Performance & Memory

On the performance end, the V30 and V30 Pro pack the super-powerful octa-core Kirin 990 chipset, which outperforms the Snapdragon 855 while falling a little behind against the newer Snapdragon 855+ (particularly in terms of gaming). The V30 has 2x 2.86GHz Cortex-A76 + 2x 2.09GHz Cortex-A76 + 4x 1.86GHz Cortex-A55 CPU and the V30 Pro has a more powerful 2x 2.86GHz Cortex-A76 + 2x 2.36GHz Cortex-A76 + 4x 1.95GHz Cortex-A55 processor. Honor has done an excellent job by packing these upper mid-range phones with such a powerful chipset.

Also read: MediaTek announces Dimensity 1000: A high-end SoC with in-built 5G modem

Moreover, as the title suggests, they are 5G capable phones. The Honor V30 Pro has the Kirin 990 5G chipset, which is integrated with a 5G modem and supports dual-mode 5G. On the other hand, the Honor V30 packing the regular Kirin 990 has Balong 5000 5G modem for 5G connectivity.

This is complemented by either 6 or 8GB of RAM with 128GB of internal storage on the V30. However, the V30 Pro comes in a single 8GB RAM configuration with either 128 or 256GB of internal storage.

Battery

Interestingly, while the lower-end V30 packs a decent 4200 mAh battery, the superior V30 Pro packs a smaller 4100 mAh cell. With the same form-factor and all, it would’ve made a better sense if they shared the same battery capacity as well, but here we are. On good news, both phones are equipped with “PC-grade” liquid cooling technology through an 8mm heat-pipe!

Both phones come with 40W Honor SuperCharge via the Type-C port, while the V30 Pro also supports 27W Super Wireless Charge and 7.5W reverse wireless charging, which makes it the first Honor phone to support wireless charging.

Miscellaneous

Despite all the US v Huawei debacle, the phone still runs on Android 10 with Magic UI 3.0.1 on top. Looks like Huawei isn’t shipping its smartphones with its own HarmonyOS anytime soon, which may be for better or worse. On a disappointing note, the 3.5mm headphone jack has been cut off from the V30 series.

Let’s take a look at their detailed specifications:

Honor V30 & V30 Pro (5G) Pricing & Availability

The ‘V’ series smartphones from Honor have been upper mid-range smartphones and this one’s no exception. The Honor V30 and V30 Pro (5G)’s pricing are as follows:

• Honor V30 (6/128GB): ¥3,299 (~NRs. 53,750)
• Honor V30 (8/128GB): ¥3,699 (~NRs. 60,265)
• Honor V30 Pro (8/128GB): ¥3,899 (~NRs. 63,525)
• Honor V30 Pro (8/256GB): ¥4,199 (~NRs. 68,410)

As for availability, V30 will be available for purchase in China from December 5, while V30 Pro will be made available a week later from December 12 only.

Check out our review of the Huawei Nova 5T!