Author: Vlad Savov / Source: The Verge
What if you could have it all: super fast performance, marathon battery life, a bezel-starved screen, and a camera that competes with the Google Pixel for quality and pocket cameras for zoom? Huawei would have you believe that its new P30 Pro Android flagship is precisely that sort of no-compromise device.
Announced at another gala event in Paris today, the P30 Pro addresses the few downsides of Huawei’s already excellent Mate 20 Pro from last year, and it adds a sophisticated new camera system that promises up to 10x lossless zoom. You won’t be able to buy it in a US carrier store, but this will still be one of the best-selling high-end devices across the globe this year. And probably one of the best.Getting to grips with the P30 Pro is easy because it’s the same size, shape, and thickness as practically every other Android flagship phone on the market today. Putting this up alongside Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Plus, the handset Huawei hopes to outshine with the P30 Pro, the differences between them are minute. Huawei’s phone has a chin that’s about a millimeter thicker, and it features probably the world’s smallest notch to date, which is literally just a cutout for the camera. Huawei is omitting an earpiece on the P30 Pro, making innovative use of electromagnetic levitation to vibrate the top of the screen to generate call sound. That means there are no stereo speakers on this phone, and there are also more discreet phone calls because call sound will only propagate in one direction.
My two biggest gripes about the Mate 20 Pro were its curved screen edges and the inconsistent in-display fingerprint sensor. The P30 Pro still has curved glass on both the front and back, but it’s a much gentler slope, something a lot closer in form to Samsung’s latest Galaxy S devices. I’m a fan of this subtler curvature both on Samsung and on Huawei’s phones. It achieves the intended softening of the edges of the device and makes for a prettier, more cohesive design, but it doesn’t deprive me of useful screen space. Huawei also says that its new in-display fingerprint scanner, which remains optical (as opposed to pressure-sensitive alternatives like Samsung’s ultrasonic one), is 30 percent faster than the one on the Mate 20 Pro.
Before getting lost in all of the details about Huawei’s new quad-camera system, it’s worth quickly noting the salient specs of the P30 Pro. This new phone is built around the 7nm Kirin 980 processor that Huawei designs itself, which I really enjoyed in my time reviewing the Mate 20 Pro and the Honor View 20. It’s still a flagship-quality part, and it’ll remain so for the foreseeable future. Huawei will pair that with a typical 8GB of RAM and storage options from 128GB to 512GB.
The display is a 6.47-inch curved OLED panel with 2340 x 1080 resolution and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. On the inside, there’s a massive 4,200mAh battery, which can be topped up to 70 percent full in 30 minutes using Huawei’s 40W SuperCharge wired charging. The P30 Pro also supports 15W wireless charging as well as reverse wireless charging. So yes, you’ll be able to charge your Samsung Galaxy Buds off the back of this phone, if you wish.
Huawei is today also launching a non-Pro P30, which scales the screen size down to 6.1 inches, has a smaller 3,650mAh battery, and accepts slower 22.5W charging. The P30 Pro is IP68-certified certified for dust and water resistance, whereas the P30 only extends to IP53. That may or may not be because the P30 still has a headphone jack and an earpiece, both items that the Pro model lacks. The smaller phone will also have a simpler three-camera setup, omitting the periscope zoom and the fourth, depth-detecting sensor.
The post Huawei’s P30 Pro is a photographic powerhouse with a tiny notch appeared first on FeedBox.