HUAWEI P30 PRO FLAGSHIP REVIEWS

Huawei P30 Pro review: A long-distance relationship

How do you definitively say something subjective, like the quality of a photo, or song, or piece of art, is the best? Our culture has been trying to do it for years, rewarding and awarding the most popular or acclaimed tenets of each category, as fact. Because people like certainty, and they increasingly rely on experts to tell them what to watch, read, listen to — and buy.

In the smartphone world, the iPhone has benefited most from that marriage of acclaim and pop culture acceptance; it's a great phone, yes, but it's also the default phone in much of the West. Hollywood celebrities use the iPhone, even when they're paid not to — with embarrassing consequences.

But in the rest of the world, the iPhone is a footnote. An aspirational product that, yes, has an outsized effect on product and software design, but a footnote nonetheless. In the rest of the world, people buy Android phones, and the company they increasingly patronize is Huawei.

With the P30 Pro, Huawei has released by far its best phone yet, and it's not a particularly difficult leap to make that it's going to be incredibly successful outside of the U.S.

Down Periscope
Huawei P30 Pro

The good
Incredibly versatile camera system
Delightful, space-optimizing design
Unmatched battery life and charging options
EMUI is finally free of huge usability issues

The bad
Lower resolution display than most flagships
Loses a speaker over the P20 Pro
Not officially available Stateside

About this review
This review was written after spending two weeks with an unlocked version of the European Huawei P30 Pro (L29). It was used in Paris, France on the SFR network, and in Toronto, Canada on the TELUS network. It received one update during the review period, to EMUI 9.1.0.124, which purportedly improved camera quality in select situations.

Huawei P30 Pro The Hardware

The 6.47-inch OLED display is very good, and with a bit of tweaking it can be both rich and color accurate. By default, it's tuned to the DCI-P3 color gamut, but I found the white balance to err on the warm side so I changed the color temperature to hew bluer and it was fine.

I then enabled the Vivid mode, which doesn't adhere to any calibration standard but it is nonetheless the one my eyes prefer — oversaturated colors that pop off the screen. Still, compared to the Mate 20 Pro's lackluster display, this one feels much closer to what you'd expect from a flagship.

The downside is that the 2340x1080 resolution is relatively low compared to the Galaxy S10 and other 1440p phones, but I'd challenge anyone to tell the difference. I'm certainly not defending Huawei's decision — I'd rather have a higher-resolution panel, especially on a phone this pricey — but I'd also rather have a rich, accurate, and responsive 1080p panel over a crappy, sharper one.

In some markets (though not in Canada), the P30 Pro comes with a clear case in the box, just like its predecessor — that's a welcome inclusion because, as most other glass-backed phones available today, this phone is slippery. At 192 grams, it's also heavier than most, accelerating its potential descent as it slips off a table and hurtles towards the unforgiving ground. I hate clear TPU cases so I quickly purchased my own, a colorful, textured option from Anccer, but there are plenty of great cases from well-known brands like Spigen already available.

The P30 Pro loses its front-facing speaker in favor of a smaller notch. I think the trade-off was worth it.

As mentioned, the P30 Pro uses its OLED display as a speaker, directing audio through the OLED membrane and aurally transparent Gorilla Glass. The trick works — surprisingly well, in fact — with phone call audio coming through nice and clear. Huawei also anticipates a bit of confusion for newbies, so it actually directs users to place their ears in a certain spot on the screen. Unfortunately, the area doesn't work so well as a speaker, so you lose the stereo separation of the P20 Pro.

The single bottom-firing speaker is better tuned than its predecessor's — it's clearer and doesn't distort as easily — but it also lacks warmth and that little bit of low-end afforded by a deeper cavity. The trade-off is worth it given the reduction in notch size, but only slightly in my opinion. Also, no headphone jack, nor any adapter in the box, but there is a decent pair of USB-C headphones included, which is appreciated.