Huawei P30 Pro Review UK

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Overview & Price

The much-anticipated Huawei P30 Pro was finally announced in Paris on the 26^th of March 2019.

In this Huawei P30 Pro review we will be going over what makes this phone unique, from its incredible camera, to its AI capabilities and charging perks.

This is set to be a serious contender for the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S10 and iPhone XS Max.

Set to be shipped out to the UK on April 6th, they have another huge perk of pre-ordering this device too.

If you pre-order this device you will get a Sonos One speaker worth £199. It has Amazon Alexa built-in and incredible sound quality for keeping your neighbours up at night.

As the Huawei P30 Pro is not one of the cheap Huawei phones, we expect nothing but quality from this device especially considering their recent controversy here in the UK.

Check out the Huawei P30 Pro best deals..

Huawei has come to power in recent years; they are no longer the underdogs in the mobile world, currently selling more phones than Apple!

So it’s no surprise they have really pushed the boat out with the release of the Huawei P30 Pro.

Here is some of what you can expect from this device:

• Stunning Colour Options
• Leica Quad Camera
• Huawei Kirin 980 AI Chipset
• In-screen Fingerprint Sensor
• 8GB of RAM

Priced at £899.99 SIM-free here in the UK, it’s just shy of the Apple iPhone XS which costs around £999.

Let’s take a look at what makes this phone a contender for phone of the year..

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Design & Display

The Huawei P30 Pro is a fine piece of smartphone technology; it has an incredible well-built design and feels very nice in your hand.

We were lucky enough to spend a couple of hours with the device before the release early on next month.

The Huawei P30 Pro comes in a range of stunning colours, Pearl White, Black, Breathing Crystal, Aurora or Amber Sunrise, all look just as good as each other but we were fortunate enough to get our hands on the Aurora colour for this review.

We did find that the phone collected fingerprints very easily but this is to be expected with glass back.

You may be wondering is the Huawei P30 Pro waterproof?

Thankfully though unlike the Huawei P30, the P30 Pro does support full IP68 water a dust resistance, meaning the Huawei P30 Pro is waterproof.

If you do happen to drop this bad boy in the tub, it will survive for up to 30 minutes at a depth of 1.5m.

Flipping the phone over, at the top left corner you have the quad-camera setup and the flash, then down towards the bottom you have clean looking Huawei branding.

The minimalist design is nice and we enjoyed how the phone felt in our hands. Down at the base of the phone is where the charging port sits, USB-C of course, then either side is where the speakers are placed.

Back around the front is the 6.47-inch OLED display, this thing is huge and literally fills the phone edge to edge, giving you a truly brilliant media experience when watching YouTube or Netflix.

Apart from the very small chin at the bottom, and the teardrop up notch where the front-facing camera is, it’s all display.

There is also an optical fingerprint sensor that is built into the display, slightly better placed this time too with it being at the bottom of the phone, making for easy access to unlock the device without cramping your hand.

The display of the device is a Full HD+, it’s not Quad HD unfortunately but colours are extremely rich and punchy nevertheless, we found the viewing experience to be second to none on this handset.

As you would expect it is HDR ready, meaning HD content is a breeze when viewing on Netflix and the likes, contrast is great and colours look awesome too.

Brightness levels on this device are insane, it can be pretty blinding if you accidentally crank it up when in the dark, however, if you’re in direct sunlight you will have no trouble viewing the display, perfect for a hot summers day.

The dewdrop at the top of the display is very small too, as previously mentioned it houses the front-facing camera, this can be hidden in the settings if you do find it irritating, but for us it was barely even noticeable.

One of the coolest aspects of the display has to be its electromagnetic vibration system. This is basically a vibration system that makes the display vibrate to produce audio when you are in a call.

As a whole, we were very impressed with the phone’s display, its nice and big which makes for a great experience when gaming or watching videos, nothing to complain about in this department.

As you can see from the Huawei P30 Pro best deals at the top of this post, the device can be attained for around £45 per month, meaning it’s not cheap.

But when looking at the design and display aspect of the phone, we were immediately blown away with the price of this phone and how little it can be attained for.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Performance

So what’s under the hood of the Huawei P30 Pro?

Well to start with you have the incredibly powerful Kirin 980 AI chipset coupled with a whopping 8GB of RAM.

This chipset is the most powerful on the market right now and is extremely good at remembering how you use your smartphone.

For example, if you’re using Snapchat 3 hours a day and Instagram for 1, you will find that the device recognises this and you will notice your Snapchat is a lot more responsive, as the chipset will dedicate more memory to this app for you.

This is plenty of horsepower to breeze through the UI and anything you throw at it, there are a couple of storage options too; 128GB, 256GB or 512GB to choose from.

Both are viable options for those who love to download movies or take tons of photos on their smartphone.

One handy feature we should point out is that the Huawei P30 Pro is actual dual-sim, meaning you can put your personal SIM and a business SIM in too, having separate numbers on the one phone.

Thanks to the in-screen fingerprint sensor, you can also have multiple accounts for multiple people using the phone, we thought this was a little strange as most of us don’t tend to share a smartphone, but if you don’t want your kid getting a hold of your private pictures then its not a bad thing after all.

We didn’t get a ton of time to play games on the phone, however, we did squeeze in a 20 minute Runescape session as standard, graphics were incredible and the phone breezed through the game with no problems at all.

See Related:

*Huawei P30 Review*
*Huawei P20 Lite Review*
*Huawei P20 Pro Review*
*Huawei P20 Review*

There wasn’t any lag to report or any strange interference that is always good, we found the gaming experience to be insane, making it a serious contender for any mobile gamers out there.

A feature we did find extremely useful was the ‘Simple mode’, this essentially makes icons bigger and reduced the number of clutter on the screen, and this is an ideal feature for those with chubby fingers or the older generation.

Performance-wise you won’t have any issues with the Huawei P30 Pro, although it is the same chipset used in the previous Huawei Mate 20 Pro, its extremely impressive, and if you’re looking at this phone then you are likely interested in the camera, we will get to that soon.

The Huawei P30 Pro is running Android 9.0 Pie as expected with it’s EMUI 9.1 laid over the top.

This skin looks very similar to IOS; so if your thinking of opting for this device and your previous phone is an iPhone, don’t be too worried as it’s a very similar setup.

Most of what’s on offer here is the same as what is on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, the likes of face unlock and well-being are present here.

We love the fact that the display actually has a magazine lock screen, meaning it cycles through a range of different lock screens every time you open the phone, so you will not be viewing the same home screen over and over again.

There is a new Huawei Hop system that allows users to easily transfer files from their Huawei device to their Huawei MateBook, a perfect combination.

Another main benefit of the Huawei P30 Pro’s software is the new file system names ‘EROFS’, this supposedly offers a 3x increase in random reads, improves startup of apps by 10% and reduces the amount of internal storage that Huawei’s pre-installed apps take up by 20% too.

So this means that you should find the Huawei P30 Pro to be a little snappier and more responsive in certain areas.

The P30 Pro also has a ‘GPU Turbo 2.0’; this again helps with the performance of the phone by keeping you running smoothly throughout the day, no matter how much stress you place the device under.

The password vault also does what it says on the tin, keeps your passwords nice and secure so no intruders can gain access to your files.

HiVision is also available on this device too, this is an awesome feature especially if your someone who travels a lot, you can simply point the camera at a road sign or map, and it will translate it into the language of your choice live in front of you.

We were first introduced to this feature on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and found it extremely impressive.

As mentioned previously, Huawei’s AI chipset is great at understanding how you use the phone, that’s why it’s Digital Balance’ feature can help you closely monitor exactly how long you are spending on your device.

This is perfect to help you overcome your social media addiction as you can place restrictions on how long you can use the device, it will block certain apps after a certain time frame that you set for the phone.

Navigating through the software and UI is extremely easy, they have implemented gestures that are very similar to the ones seen on iPhones, for example, you can swipe up for home, swipe up and halfway for the task switcher, or swipe left or the right edge of the screen for the back.

The phone also has Android virtual navigation keys too so if your coming from a previous Android device, you may find this method easier for navigating.

Multi-tasking is easy on the P30 Pro too, simply hold the recent key and this will activate the split-screen feature, allowing you to watch movies whilst texting at the same time.

Another awesome feature of the Huawei P30 Pro is the IR blaster, this lets you control all of your appliances from within your phone, so if you have ‘Hive’ tech in your house, such as a thermostat or light bulbs etc.

You can turn these on from your phone so that when you get home from work your heating is already on warming the house up for you when you get home.

This phone is jam-packed with cool features, the performance aspect of the device is incredible too, letting you fly through any task you throw at it without a second of latency.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Camera

Now onto the main event of the Huawei P30 Pro, if your even considering this device then this is the part which is going to blow you away.

The first major change here from previous Huawei models is that instead of picking up RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colours, the primary lens now sees RYYB (Red, Yellow, Yellow, Blue).

Huawei claim that this change allows the camera to pick up both green and additional reds, which make the colours and brightness so much better on this device.

The camera here is a setup up from last years Huawei P30 Pro, and you may be asking well how can it get any better? Trust me, it can.

Its main lens is a 40MP f/1.6 aperture Super Spectrum lens, coupled with a 20MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens.

There is also an 8MP f/2.4 optical periscope lens, also a ToF (time of flight) lens that can accurately measure distances between you and any subject.

Together this Quad-camera setup makes for some jaw-dropping images, thanks to the RYYB setup the colour spectrum on this thing is insane.

The camera picks up different colours than it did previously, so we found that when taking images in low light, and of brightly coloured objects, they practically jumped out of the phone display.

The camera set up here is absolutely fantastic; images come out social media ready and have incredible amounts of detail. Inside the app there are plenty of features to play around with too, you have Panorama, Slow-Mo, Monochrome, AR lens and much more.

The Huawei P30 Pro is capable of producing great detailed shots even at 50x zoom thanks to its optical periscope lens.

When conducting this Huawei P30 Pro review with a Huawei rep, the rep advised us to come to the window and point the phone camera towards a farm that looked like a spec in the distance.

So, we got our arms locked in position and pointed the device towards the farm, zoomed in to 50x and low and behold took a rather detailed shot of the farm in the distance. This literally blew us away as the amount of zoom this thing has is crazy, whilst maintaining good amounts of detail too.

Even when zoomed in to 30x at something close by, the images come out incredible and it doesn’t lose much quality or detail at all.

Low light shots on the P30 Pro are very good too thanks to the RYYB, contrast and dynamic range are both spot on too. Around the front of the device, you will find a 32MP selfie-cam, this bad boy can make even the ugliest of folk look decent.

It has a plenty modes of course too, portrait mode is our favourite to help you get that perfect Instagram worthy selfie.

There is a cool dual-view video shots mode too; this allows you to take a side-by-side selfie helping you get both of your good angles at once. However, this will be released from a software update shortly after the launch.

When it comes to video recording, the Huawei P30 Pro has you covered; it shoots in 4K and looks incredible thanks to the insane rear cameras on this device.

This phone is certainly capable of capturing some stunning footage even when in tough lighting conditions thanks to the new RYYB setup.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Battery Life

So how does the Huawei P30 Pro battery fair up?

Unlike some of the cheap Huawei phones,  the P30 Pro has an impressive 4200mAh battery, which will give you incredible endurance, around 3 days of average use.

Thanks to the 40W USB-C charger, this device will also charge from 0-70% in 30 minutes, meaning no more sat beside the cable waiting for it to drag itself up to full power.

This was one of our favourite features of the phone, as charging your device is always a pain, especially if you’re late for work.

This device means that even if you are on your lunch break, or in a hurry you can easily grab a quick 50% in no time!

The P30 Pro won’t overheat when on charge either, as it can actually handle the power that is flowing through the charger.

Also thanks to the Kirin 980 AI chip, this device has some pretty impressive power-saving modes, helping you make the most out of the last 10 or 20%.

Now just like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, the P30 Pro offers 15W wireless charging, and even reverse wireless charging. You can simply place this device on the charging doc (sold separately) and it will charge rather fast for you, not as quick as it would with the normal USB-C, but still very quickly.

The reverse charging thing is more of a gimmick we think, in real life, there was hardly any scenarios we could think of where this would be practical.

Apart from being at an airport and fighting with your sibling over the one charging socket, you could simply get them to place their device on top of your P30 Pro and wallah!

The Qi charging feature was demonstrated rather well at the Paris launch, with them placing electric razors, toothbrushes and other appliances on the phone to charge them up.

This is ideal if you own a pair of the Huawei Freebuds as you can simply place them on top of your phone to charge them up.

As a whole the battery life of the P30 Pro is incredible, and easily our favourite thing about this handset (apart from the camera).

You will have no problem at all breezing through a couple of days usage with this phone. It will comfortably get you through the long days camping or the times you forget your charger on the way to work.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Summary

So what do we think of the Huawei P30 Pro?

We absolutely love this device and know it will be a contender for phone of the year alongside the Samsung Galaxy S10.

The phone offers some incredible colours, a huge 6.47-inch display that is ideal for media and gaming.

The Huawei P30 Pro is by no means one of the cheap Huawei phones, however, the value for money on this phone is second to none.

The main attraction here for almost anyone looking into buying this phone is the camera, it is undoubtedly one of the best camera’s we have ever seen in a smartphone.

Huawei P30 Pro 128 GB 6.47 Inch OLED Display Smartphone with Leica Quad AI Camera, 8GB RAM, EMUI 9.1.0 Sim-Free Android Mobile Phone, Single SIM, Aurora, UK Version 

The 50x zoom is incredible and super fun to play around with, the fact that it uses RYYB to gather more colours into the shot is awesome and really makes bright colours objects stand out.

The camera package that Huawei offers on this device is incredible, but that is exactly what we expect of the Huawei P range. Even the selfie-cam is a solid 32MP, making for some great social media worthy selfies, even on your bad hair days.

The Huawei P30 has an incredible battery too, it will last the average user over 3 days which we thought was great, it also charges from 0-70% in just 30 minutes too!

Thankfully the Huawei P30 Pro is waterproof, unlike the P30. This means you won’t need to stress out too much if you drop it in the tub.

The Qi charging is a little impractical and we found that we hardly made use out of this feature on the Mate 20 Pro, that being said it is a cool added feature that will impress your friends.

As a whole the Huawei P30 Pro is up there with the best phones on the market to date, the value for money you get out of this thing is incredible, and the pre-order deal makes it extremely attractive for anyone looking for a beautiful, high spec smartphone.

We hope you have enjoyed our Huawei P30 Pro review and feel free to check out the Huawei P30 Pro best deals at the top of this post.

Huawei P30 Pro Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2019, March

Body:

• Dimension: 158 x 73.4 x 8.4mm (6.22 x 2.89 x 0.33 in)
• Weight: 192g (6.77 oz)
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
  IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 2m for 30 mins)

Display:

• Type: OLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 6.47-inches, 102.8cm² (-88.6% screen-to-body-ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 2340 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio (-398 ppi density)
  HDR10
  DCI-P3

Platform:

• OS: Android 9.0 (Pie); EMUI 9.1
• Chipset: HiSilicon Kirin 980 (7nm)
• CPU: Octa-core (2×2.6GHz Cortex-A76 & 2×1.92 GHz Cortex-A76 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A55
• GPU: Mali-G76 MP10

Memory:

• Card slot: NM (Nano Memory), up to 256GB (uses SIM 2)
• Internal: 128/256/512GB, 8GB RAM or 128GB, 6GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary:
  – 40MP, f/1.6, 27mm (wide), PDAF, OIS
  -20MP,f/2.2,16mm (ultrawide),PDAF, Periscope 8MP, f/3.4, 125mm (telephoto), 1/4x”, 5x optical zoom, OIS, PDAF
• Features: Leica optics, dual-LED dual-tone flash, panorama, HDR
• Video: 2160@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 1080p@30fps (gyro-EIS), 720p@960fps
• Single: 32MP, f/2.0 (wide)
• Features: HDR
• Video: 1080p@30fps

Sound:

• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: No
  32-bit/384kHz audio / Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic / Dolby Atmos sound

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 5.0, A2DP, aptX HD, LE
• GPS: Yes, with dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS
• NFC: Yes
• Infrared Port: Yes
• Radio: No
• USB: 3.1, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (under display), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, colour spectrum

Battery:

• Non-removeable Li-Pro 4200 mAh battery
• Charging:
  – Fast battery charging 40W
  – Fast wireless charging 15W
  – Power bank/reverse wireless charging

Misc:

• Colours: Aurora Blue, Amber Sunrise, Breathing Crystal, Pearl White
• Price: As seen in above post

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS ||: 4654 / Basemark OS || 2.0: 4675 / Basemark X: 45889
• Display: Contrast ratio: Infinite (nominal), 5.119 (sunlight)
• Camera: Photo / Video
• Loudspeaker: Voice 70dB / Noise 73dB / Ring 90dB
• Audio Quality: Noise -90.5dB / Crosstalk -93.0dB
• Battery Life: Endurance rating 100hours