When it comes to flagship phones, companies try their best to out-do each other. And that kinda works in our favor. It’s us who get to see those cool pieces of technology, and with the latest devices announced from Huawei, it’s nothing short of “Wow”! The company announced two phones: the P30 Pro and the P30 at an event in Paris, successors to last year’s game-changing camera phones, the P20 Pro and the P20. With them billing them as #ReWriteTheRules, let’s see what these have to offer.
Huawei P30 Pro Overview
Since the ‘P’ in Huawei’s P-series stand for photography, it’s the cameras that see the most improvement. With a quad-camera setup at the back, that too, of Leica lens, Huawei’s flagships have been dominating the camera sector. In addition, with a DxOMark score of 112, I’m sure it checks all the right boxes.
The quad camera setup consists of a SuperSpectrum 40 MP wide-angle primary camera with f/1.6 aperture. Well, a 40 MP camera is no news in today’s times. But the special thing about this is that instead of your regular RGB Bayer-filter that is used in all other smartphone cameras, this one uses an RYB filter. Meaning that it swaps the green pixels for yellow, and yellow being the brightest of colors, it lets in 40% more light into the sensors. And that makes for great some great low-light shots! Aptly named, Super spectrum!
As for other cameras, you get a 20 MP ultra-wide angle lens, and this is the only thing that remains similar to last year’s Mate 20 Pro. You can capture all that you want in it, with that 120-degree field of view, or get some close macro-shots. The other lens is an 8 MP Periscope lens – meaning that it’s essentially a periscope (a more complex form of what you might have seen in your science labs as students). That lets you get up to 5X Optical Zoom. And if you want more, you can get up to 50X Digital Zoom! Sure, the quality takes a hit, but with this, you don’t need any binoculars! The final one is not exactly a camera sensor per se, but a TOF (Time-Of-Flight) lens. This one resolves the distance between the subject and background, for better portrait shots. Also, it possesses AR capabilities as well. However, we’ll have to wait for its full functionality to come around.
Besides the cameras, the Huawei P30 Pro has not changed much. You have a glass design sandwiched in an aluminum frame. You have a tiny water-drop notch up front on the 6.47″ Full HD+ OLED display, housing a 32 MP selfie camera. It seems they won’t be going QHD anytime soon, like the Samsung flagships. With the notch-size gone down, you don’t have an IR sensor for Facial Recognition now. But it does pack an Optical In-display fingerprint scanner.
Under the hood, their’s the Kirin 980 chip at the helm and an 8 GB of RAM. Internal storage starts at 128 GB and goes up to 512 GB. In addition, it’s expandable but uses Huawei’s proprietary nano-memory, which is kinda scarce. There’s a large 4200 mAh battery, with the 40W SuperCharge, along with its Reverse Wireless charging. The phone is also fully IP68 rated for Water and Dust resistance.
This phone comes in five different colors: Breathing Crystal, Amber Sunrise, Pearl White, Aurora and Black. Pricing starts at a €1000 for the base 128 GB variant, €1100 for the 256 GB and moves up to €1250 for the top 512 GB model!
P30 Pro Specifications:
- Design: Glass body front and back, aluminum frame
- Display: 6.47″ OLED display with Full HD+ resolution (1080 x 2340 pixels), 19.5:9 aspect ratio
- Rear Camera: Leica Quad-camera setup, 40 MP SuperSpectrum sensor with f/1.6 aperture (RYYB filter) + 20 MP Ultra-wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture + 8 MP Periscope telephoto lens with f/3.4 aperture & 5 X Optical Zoom (50X Digital Zoom) + TOF (Time-Of-Flight) sensor
- Front Camera: 32 MP camera with f/2.0 aperture
- Processor: Octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 980 chipset
- GPU: Mali-G76 MP10
- RAM: 8 GB
- Storage: 128 / 256 / 512 GB, expandable via Nano memory up to 512 GB)
- OS: Android Pie with EMUI 9.1 on top
- Battery: 4200 mAh, 40-W SuperCharge, Reverse Wireless Charging
- Sensors: Fingerprint (under display), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, color spectrum
- Colors: Aurora, Amber Sunrise, Breathing Crystal, Black, Pearl White
- Price: €999 (128 GB) / €1099 (256 GB) / €1249 (512 GB)
- Huawei P30 Pro Price in Nepal: Rs. 1,19,900 (256GB)
Huawei P30 Overview
The Huawei P30 is generally, a toned down, less expensive model of the P30 Pro. Flagships have been doing this for quite a while now. This is the successor to the Huawei P20. With a few cutbacks on the specs, it cutbacks a few 100 Euros in the price as well.
First off, there are only 3 cameras on the P30, not four. The term ‘only’ may be an understatement, but well, there is one camera, less, on the P30. You get the same 40 MP SuperSpectrum as the primary lens, but a slightly toned down 16 MP ultra-wide sensor. The 8 MP telephoto is also not your Periscope camera, so, it offers only a 3X optical zoom. Digital zoom, too, won’t go as far as 50X for sure. But the selfie camera is the same 32 MP lens. What it loses, is the TOF sensor, but its other lenses get the job done while capturing portraits. So, it is not much of a loss.
On the aesthetics side, most of it still remains the same as well. Unlike on the Mate 20 Pro and the Mate 20, both these phones have an in-display fingerprint scanner, albeit Optical ones. The P30 is slightly smaller, with 6.1″ OLED display and the same water-drop notch cutout.
Inside, Kirin 980 powers the phone with up to 8 GB RAM as well. The battery is slightly smaller at 3650 mAh. But it does have a 22W Fast Charging. This phone is also available in the same 5 colors and pricing starts at €800.
Both these phones come with Android Pie, with EMUI 9.1 out of the box. What’s more? EMUI 9.1 is heavily optimized to make it a lot faster and user-friendly, as per Huawei’s claims.
P30 Specifications:
- Design: Glass body front and back, aluminum frame
- Display: 6.1″ OLED display with Full HD+ resolution (1080 x 2340 pixels), 19.5:9 aspect ratio
- Rear Camera: Triple camera setup, 40 MP SuperSpectrum sensor with f/1.8 aperture (RYYB filter) + 16 MP Ultra-wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture + 8 MP telephoto lens with f/3.4 aperture & 3 X Optical Zoom
- Front Camera: 32 MP camera with f/2.0 aperture
- Processor: Octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 980 chipset
- GPU: Mali-G76 MP10
- RAM: 8 GB
- Storage: 128 / 256 / 512 GB, (expandable via Nano memory up to 512 GB)
- OS: Android Pie with EMUI 9.1 on top
- Battery: 3650 mAh, 22-W SuperCharge
- Sensors: Fingerprint (under display), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, color spectrum
- Colors: Aurora, Amber Sunrise, Breathing Crystal, Black, Pearl White
- Price: €799 (128 GB)
- Huawei P30 Price in Nepal: Rs. 84,900 (128GB)
