Huawei P30 Review UK

Huawei P30 Review: Overview & Price

The Huawei P30 was released on April 26^th  2019 in Paris alongside the Huawei P30 Pro.

In this Huawei P30 review we will be covering what makes it different to its competitors, and giving you everything you need to know to make an informed purchase decision, as well as showcasing the Huawei P30 best contract deals.

Just like the Huawei P30 Pro pre-order deal, the P30 is on promotion too; meaning if you pre-order you will receive a Sonos One Speaker worth £199, a great piece of kit.

Huawei has priced its P30 at £699 here in the UK, making it £200 cheaper than its big brother the Huawei P30 Pro.

Check out the cheapest Huawei P30 contract deals in the UK…

The Huawei P30 specs are impressive and more than enough to get you breezing through your favourite games without any lag or stutter.

Here is some of what you can expect from the Huawei P30:

• 32MP Selfie Camera
• Kirin 980 AI Chipset
• 3659mAh Battery
• Triple-Camera Setup
• 128GB of Internal Storage

If you’re not a fan of the size of the Huawei P30 Pro 6.47-inch display, then this could be the perfect medium-sized device that can still fulfil your high specification needs.

Let’s take a look at what the Huawei P30 has to offer…

Huawei P30 Review: Design & Display

So just like the Huawei P30 Pro, the P30 looks absolutely stunning, both phones have the incredible build quality and feel very nice to hold in your hand.

For this review we managed to get our hands on a Huawei P30 for a couple of hours, to really get a feel for what the phone is like ahead of the launch.

We were lucky enough to get our hands on the Breathing Crystal colour phone, but if this is not to your taste then you also have the options of Aurora Blue or Black.

All of these colours look great, even the black has a premium look to it, they all are fingerprint magnets too, so we would recommend investing into a case and screen protector for this device if you want to keep it in top condition.

So you may be wondering is the Huawei P30 waterproof?

Well, one of the main differences between the Huawei P30 Pro and the Huawei P30 is that the P30 only actually has an IP52 rating.

This means that the Huawei P30 cannot be called waterproof, so please be careful using this phone around water.

This means that you really do not want to drop this device in water, as it can only handle a light spray and isn’t fully protected from dust either.

This is slightly disappointing as even the more basic flagship devices have a strong IP rating nowadays, and it means you will need to be extra careful when using this device near any water or in the tub.

Especially when Huawei’s competitors like Samsung and Apple ensure that all of their ranges are the same IP rating.

Another difference to the P30 Pro, is when you flip the device over, you notice that it only has 3 camera sensors on the back, don’t get me wrong 3 sensors is still fantastic and this phone is still capable of some amazing shots, but we will get on to that shortly.

Just underneath the camera set up is the clean Huawei branding in the bottom left corner of the phone, other than that the design of the phone is rather minimalist and clean.

The front is covered by that display with a small teardrop at the top that houses the front-facing camera.

Down at the base of the phone is where you will be delighted to find the 3.5mm headphone jack, strange choice for Huawei to bring this back on its P range, but nevertheless we are happy as it means they aren’t forcing you into investing in some wireless headphone.

You also have a single firing speaker too, alongside the USB-C charging port.

At the front of the Huawei P30, is where you will find a stunning 6.1-inch OLED display with Full HD+ resolution, as mentioned the dewdrop notch is the only thing keeping this bad boy from being truly edge-to-edge.

If the notch does become annoying, you have the option to hide it in the settings, as we know some people get very particular with notches but for us, it wasn’t anything major and we didn’t even notice it for the most part.

The main difference here compared to the P30 Pro, is that the P30 is a flat screen, meaning you don’t get the curved edges that you will find on the Pro model.

As well as this the P30 uses a more traditional style of speaker, whereas the Pro model uses its OLED display to help pump out sound, enhancing the quality for gaming and music.

The Huawei P30 is fully compatible with HDR, meaning you will be able to view all of your favourite Netflix and YouTube shows in HD without breaking a sweat.

The viewing experience on this phone is awesome too, thanks to its OLED display the blacks are deep and colours look bright and poppy too.

Brightness levels on this phone are very good, meaning using the phone in direct sunlight is not an issue as it can crank right up to 650 nits.

This is enough to singe your eyelids off if you accidentally pick this device up when you wake up in the middle of the night, however it is perfect for those bright summer days that are sure to come in the coming months.

The P30 features an optical in-display fingerprint sensor too, its placed nicely at the bottom of the device meaning your hand won’t cramp every time you need to unlock your phone.

Just like the P30 Pro model this means that you can have multiple profiles on the same phone, we’re not sure why anyone would want to share their smartphone but if you do, then this is a great feature that keeps all of your content locked to your fingerprint.

The sensors seems pretty accurate, we didn’t find any issues with it for the short time that we had hold of the P30, and were also advised that the AI tech inside the phone recognises how hard you usually press your finger on the sensor.

So if an intruder is trying to force your finger on the device to unlock the phone, the P30 will know that something is up and not unlock the phone, this is great if someone happens to swipe your phone, or your friends are trying to force your finger on the display to unlock your device.

The display of this thing is very good, colours are rich and viewing angles are great too, we could easily watch multiple Netflix movies on this phone, as the display quality is so good.

Huawei P30 Review: Performance

The Huawei P30 specs pack a punch when it comes to performance; the device is powered by the Kirin 980 chipset, which is an extremely powerful AI chip.

We love that it remembers how you use the phone thanks to its AI tech, for example if your using applications more than your camera, it will dedicate more memory to applications in order for them to run more smoothly and be more responsive.

The P30 also has a strong 6GB of RAM, couple this with the chip and your onto a winner, performance is this device is very strong and we found that it breezes through almost anything you throw at it.

Now we didn’t get a chance to have a quick gaming sesh with this phone, unfortunately, but we imagine looking at the chipset and specs that it should be able to handle very graphically intense games.

Thankfully we got time in this Huawei P30 review to test out some of our favourite games and found that to fly through the game on max graphics and did not drop fps at all, we expect the same could be said for the P30 and think its highly unlikely that this phone won’t be great for gaming.

The Huawei P30 comes with 128GB of internal storage as standard, this is great and is a minimum of what we have come to expect in 2019.

This amount of storage means you can download plenty of movies, photos and music on your device without any stress of running out of space.

The phone does support Huawei’s own NM card as well, which can further expand the storage up to 256GB, giving you even more room for your music and photos.

Another awesome feature of the Huawei P30 is just like the P30 Pro, it is dual-SIM. This means that if you have a personal number and a business number, you can have them both on the same phone without having to have separate devices for each number.

This makes the work/life balance so much easier as you don’t have to keep juggling phones through your day at work, dual-sim gives you the freedom to keep your business number on you at all times in case you need to take any important calls.

When it comes to software, the Huawei P30 runs Android 9.0 Pie, this is the latest version of Android and you get tons of cool features to play around with thanks to Huawei’s EMUI 9.1 skin layered over the top.

See Related:

*Google Pixel 4 Review*
*Huawei P30 Pro Review*
*Huawei Mate 20 Pro Review*
*Huawei P20 Lite Review*
*Huawei P20 Review*

The UI of this device is extremely friendly; it actually looks very similar to the UI of an iPhone, with bubbly like icons and friendly navigation.

One interesting feature we love, it that the home screen will flick between multiple different screens, so when you pull your phone out the home-screen will be different each time, it helps to keep things fresh we found.

There is an interesting ‘Simple-Mode’, this mode is perfect for older people or those who have a hard time pressing small icons, it makes everything on screen much larger and easier to press, helping with user experience.

Features like ‘Digital Balance’ allow you to track exactly how long you are spending on each application on your device, its perfect if you have a bit of social media addiction and the results can be shocking.

‘HiVision’ is a feature that is perfect for those that travel, it allows you to simply point the camera at a road sign or menu, and it will translate it into your language in real-time.

The scenarios where this feature would come in useful is off the chart, we recently travelled to Thailand and would have found it so much easier using this device when asking for a plain hamburger.

Just like the P30 Pro the P30 features IR blaster, this allows you to control devices in your house that is compatible, for example if you have a compatible thermostat, you can turn your heating on at home just in time for when you arrive in from work.

Overall there is a range of different features to use on the Huawei P30, the phones UI is extremely easy to navigate and those coming from IOS don’t need to worry.

The amount of features to play around with on this device is crazy and they all have very useful purposes.

Huawei P30 Review: Camera

Now onto the main attraction of both the Huawei P30 and P30 Pro, the camera! The Huawei P30 has a triple camera set up that is capable of taking some absolutely phenomenal shots.

Huawei has changed the way that the camera works; previously the lens would pick up RGB (Red, Green, Blue).

Now they have decided to mix things up and the lens in both the P30 and P30 pro pick up colours in RYYB (Red, Yellow, Yellow, Blue), this means that the camera can pick up additional red and green lights.

This result’s in a lot more colour being picked up by the Huawei P30’s camera, it allows the device to pick up colours that are bright and vibrant, very well.

So the main lens of the Huawei P30 is a 40MP f/1.6 Super Spectrum lens, then we have a 20MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens with an 8MP optical periscope lens too.

This set up is extremely strong and those photographers out there will love this device, there are plenty of modes to play around with here too, Pro Mode, Slow-Mo and a fantastic night mode that will turn the darkness into light, as quoted by Huawei themselves.

The low-light shots are incredible from this device, even in tricky lighting conditions this camera performs exceptionally well, the dedicated night mode does a fantastic job at giving you highly detailed shots even without the use of flash.

The image stabilisation features on this thing are great too; they use a combination of OIS and AI digital stabilisation to ensure that even with an unsteady hand, you can still grab a very clean shot with no blur.

Scene detection is implemented on this phone, meaning the P30 will use AI tech to recognise the scene that you are taking an image in, and it will automatically adjust the settings to capture a better-looking shot.

Of course, this does depend on whether you agree with the AI or not, and if not you can easily turn this off in the settings.

There is a ‘Quickdraw Mode’ that is designed for when you’re in them emergency situations and need to grab a quick snapshot of something, it opens extremely quick but we did find if your not super steady the result would often come out blurry.

The Huawei P30 also offers a 30x zoom thanks to its optical periscope lens, this feature is incredible and won’t lose you much detail at all even when zoomed right in.

We found this feature to be one of our favourite of the Huawei P30, as if your trying to grab a shot of a nearby bird then you have the capabilities to do so with this device without hindering the quality.

Around the front of the device, you will find a 32MP selfie-cam, this bad boy is incredible and will give you Instagram worth shots without breaking a sweat.

There is a dedicated beauty mode too, which works well to hide any blemishes or any uneven skin tone you may have.

The selfie cam also works very well in low light situations too, this phone is ideal for taking group selfies in a club or a dark place as the ultra-wide-angle coupled with the low light capabilities will result in a superb shot without having to bunch everyone together.

Video recording on the Huawei P30 is decent, it has the ability to record in 4K, and that’s to the OIS it means you won’t have a hard time capturing stable video footage.

The P30 even lets you record in two different modes at the same time, so you could take close up video whilst shooting with the wide-angle lens in a split-screen scenario to capture both angles.

Overall the Huawei P30 camera is great, however, the P30 Pro does have all of the juicy bits, this camera is up there with the best on the market in a smartphone to date, and we can guarantee that you won’t be disappointed with it.

Huawei P30 Review: Battery Life

Battery wise the Huawei P30 is packing a respectable 3650mAh, this is plenty to get you through around 2-3 days of average usage.

As always this depends on the individual user, if you’re going to be gaming for long periods throughout the day and watching multiple HD videos, you will find that this decreases quicker.

Now unlike the Huawei P30 Pro, there is no wireless charging on this device, it’s a shame but to be expected as the Pro model always gets the juicy specs.

That being said the P30 does charge up rather quickly, you can expect 0-100% in around 1 hour and 30 minutes, again this is still not quite as good as the 1-hour mark on the P30 Pro.

This is down to the Huawei P30 supporting 22w, whereas the Pro supports 40w.

This also means that the P30 doesn’t offer Qi charging, meaning you don’t get the luxury of charging up your friends device when they run out of charge, we found this perk to be more of a gimmick though and in the real world it wouldn’t be used too much.

For the most part, the Huawei P30’s battery is strong, lasting you easily a couple of days and charging rather quickly too.

Huawei P30 Review: Summary

So is the Huawei P30 worth your hard-earned cash?

Well its £200 less than the pro model, and offer much of the same specifications. However, it doesn’t have any of the fancy camera and battery perks that the Pro has.

The P30 still has one of the best cameras in the business though, and its ability to capture high-quality images even when zoomed in 30x is phenomenal.

Huawei gives you a well-built design and plenty of beautiful colours to choose from with this device; the colour choices are easily one of the best things about this device.

Huawei P30 128 GB 6.1 Inch OLED Display Smartphone with Leica Triple Camera, 6GB RAM, EMUI 9.1.0 Sim-Free Android Mobile Phone, Single SIM, Midnight Black, UK Version 

One thing that is very disappointing, is the fact that it doesn’t have the IP68 water resistance like its older brother the P30 Pro, this was baffling to us and we couldn’t understand why Huawei wouldn’t ensure both of them were IP68.

This means that the Huawei P30 is not waterproof, so you’ll need to be very careful using this phone around water.

As a whole, we think the Huawei P30 is fantastic and is a strong contender for anyone looking for performance, and a superb camera.

The Huawei P30 specs are extremely impressive and are plenty for those that love to game or use their device intensely.

Huawei’s ‘rewrite the rules’ slogan for this device really lives up to its name.

We do recommend checking out our Huawei P30 Pro review too, just before you make a decision on purchase as the Pro may be worth the extra £200.

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

Huawei P30 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: 165g (5.82 oz)
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
  IP53 dust and splash protection

Display:

• Type: OLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 6.1-inches, 91.3m² (-85.8% screen-to-body-ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 2340 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio (-422 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: 64/128/256GB, 8GB RAM or 128GB, 6GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary:
  – 40MP, f/1.8, 27mm (wide), PDAF, Laser AF
  -16MP,f/2.2,17mm (ultrawide),PDAF/Laser AF, 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: Yes
  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
• Radio: No
• USB: 3.1, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector

Features:

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

Battery:

• Non-removable Li-Pro 3650 mAh battery
• Charging:
  – Fast battery charging 22.5W

Misc:

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