Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: The best camera smartphone right now

The Huawei Mate series will always be the innovative and the most powerful line of smartphones from the company and despite the recent pressure from the US government, the company still released the Huawei Mate 30 Pro without GMS and yes, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is their best smartphone to date and we’re pretty amazed at the hardware inside the smartphone.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: Design and construction

Before we talk about the circular camera setup at the back of the smartphone, let me just tell you that Huawei never failed to amaze us with its ergonomic design. Yes, the curves of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro are just perfect to my hands despite having a big screen size. The waterfall display or the horizon display of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro really added some sexy flair on the smartphone.

At the back of the smartphone is where you can find the curved glass back with a very reflective design and again, the ergonomics of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is just perfect for my hand. As expected, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro features a USB-C port and also a speaker grill below and there’s no headphone jack on this one too.

We still have here the power button on the side of the smartphone but the odd thing in here is that we’re missing the physical volume button on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. Yep, there are no physical buttons for that because in order to control the volume, you need to double-tap on the side of the horizon display and you can adjust it sliding on the display. Pretty cool feature but for some people, they might find it confusing at the start.

So the best way to take a screenshot on the phone is thru gesture in where you close your fist or just do a double knock on the display of the smartphone.

At the back is where you can find the circular camera design that I personally find it odd at first but it does look fine after I saw it in person especially with the materials used on the smartphone, the glass is just perfect along with its curves and it fits perfectly in my hand and that horizon display adds beauty to the smartphone.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro doesn’t pack a headphone jack which is already expected but there’s a USB-C port on the smartphone that supports 40W Huawei Supercharge and boy oh boy, it was really fast. Oh and the Freebuds 3 works pretty well on the smartphone so you don’t have to worry about the lack of headphone jack.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: Display

One of the biggest features that Huawei introduced in the smartphone is the horizon display. The Chinese company is proud that the smartphone features a horizon display that stretches up to 88-degrees which is why the smartphone shows a near-zero bezel on the smartphone especially on the sides and damn, it was beautiful.

You might be wondering about accidentally touching the sides of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and in my experience, I didn’t have those problems on my smartphone and the volume control of the smartphone wasn’t really that annoying to me.

There’s a notch at the top too and it’s still wide because of the sensors but don’t worry because this one offers a better bokeh on selfie mode and of course, better face unlock.

With regards to the quality, well, it’s not a Quad HD display but the panel of the smartphone is excellent. It produces really good colors and the viewing angles are still great. The brightness? It’s really damn good. Overall, the display of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is an excellent one.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: Battery

Inside the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is the 4500mAh battery and just like other Huawei flagship smartphones, this one has an insane fast charging tech up in its sleeves. There’s the 40W Huawei SuperCharge that can charge your smartphone in almost an hour and charging for 30 minutes will give you almost a half-day of normal usage on the smartphone. There’s a 27W wireless charging too in case you have a wireless charger at your office or home.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro was able to last up to a day of average use on the smartphone in my usage and in PC Mark, I was pretty happy with the result that I got on the smartphone as I was able to get 14 hours and 45 minutes on the smartphone which is great for a flagship smartphone.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro: Software

Here’s the interesting part about the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. It’s still running on Android, yes, but there’s a missing component on this one – it’s missing Google Mobile Services inside. This means that the smartphone doesn’t have Google Play and other Google apps but thankfully, there’s a way on how to install Google Apps on the smartphone. We actually made a tutorial for that one. Check it out below:

How to install Google Play on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is still running on the latest EMUI 10 with Android 10 inside and they’ve replaced the Google Mobile Services with their own Huawei Mobile Services that have their own set of APIs for their apps. But after installing Google Mobile Services on the smartphone, I really didn’t have any problems with it and it feels like a normal Android smartphone since we can download apps and other things to the smartphone.

Just like before, the EMUI is very far from vanilla Android but it isn’t bad. It’s fast and it’s very user-friendly in my usage. Everything is pretty smooth on the smartphone and most of the apps that come with it are useful. It would also be awesome if you’re using other Huawei devices and accessories like the Freebuds 3 and the Huawei Watch GT 2 too as they’ve created a pretty good ecosystem too just like Samsung.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro: Gaming and performance

One of the surprising chipset when it comes to performance is the Kirin 990 chipset. It’s very powerful and it’s one of my favorite chipsets that I’ve ever reviewed. Why? Because the thermals of the smartphone are really good with this one and the performance that we got on both benchmarks and gaming on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro was really amazing. Not only that the Kirin 990 is superior in AI. Check out the benchmarks that we got using the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.

• Antutu – 454444
• 3DMark Open GL – 5990
• 3DMark Vulkan – 5481
• GeekBench Single-Core – 780
• GeekBench Multi-Core – 2945

In gaming, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro does have some advantage thanks to the Kirin 990 processor inside. Every game that we ran on the smartphone didn’t have any problems including the recently released Black Desert Mobile however, in the mentioned game, we can’t maxed out the settings yet but the rest? You’ll have no problems setting games at ultra settings. Check out the FPS on different games that we’ve tried on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.

 

• Download Gamebench here: https://bit.ly/2Ei3daX
• Check out the Gamebench app here: https://bit.ly/2m4t0LR

We ran PUBG Mobile at HDR settings with extreme framerates and anti-aliasing along with Call of Duty Mobile at the highest settings. As proven by Gamebench, almost any games will run on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro without problems.

Not only that, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro also features a GameCenter in where we could have a launcher for different games, game acceleration, screen recording but my favorite one is  where you can enable the L/R trigger button thanks to the horizon display of the smartphone which makes it possible to have a shoulder-like buttons on the smartphone

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: Camera

Huawei is known for topping the DxOmark scores every time they release a brand new flagship smartphone and with the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, we’re pretty amazed at every shot that we got on this smartphone especially on video. But before we get down to the camera samples of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, let’s talk about the quad-camera lens co-engineered by Leica at the back.

First, we got here a 40MP Cine Camera that is made for filming ultra low-light shots and also ultra slow-motion and ultra wide-angle time-lapse videos and then there’s the 40MP Supersensing camera for better photos and then there’s the 8MP telephoto camera that is capable of 30x digital zoom and then there’s the 3D Depth sensing camera for better bokeh on photos and videos.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is also capable of shooting 7680fps slo-mo which is currently the best slo-mo in the smartphone industry. Check out how awesome the slo-mo of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is:

Another one! pic.twitter.com/LFCuG1PE3O

— Jam Ancheta (@JamAncheta) January 4, 2020

 

And of course, check out some of the shots that we took using the Huawei Mate 30 Pro:

The videos that we shot using the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is really good. Even when shooting at low light, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro did a really good job. Check out some of the videos that we took using the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.

Overall, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro has an amazing camera. Whether you want to shoot photos and videos on the smartphone, you wouldn’t have a problem with this one. The selfie camera might not be the best one but it is still a big upgrade from the predecessor.

The rear camera? It’s awesome. the AI was great and the photos that I can capture were sharp. As expected, the bokeh or the portrait mode of the smartphone is really well. Now I can’t wait for the P40 series to arrive soon.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: Verdict

There’s a lot of flagship smartphones out there and the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is one of the best camera smartphones out there and when it comes to performance, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro doesn’t disappoint thanks to the Kirin 990 processor inside. The design and ergonomics of the smartphone are also one of the best out there.

Overall, almost all everything about the smartphone is great but there’s the only thing that we didn’t like about it – the lack of Google Mobile Services. But that problem can be easily fixed with our solution and yes, you can install any Google apps and services without problems on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro after installation.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is now available for Php50,990.