Huawei P30 Pro: Outperforms rivals in premium segment

Chinese tech major Huawei, battling a ban in the US, has put up a strong fight against rivals like iPhone maker Apple and South Korean giant Samsung in the premium smartphone segment with flagship P30 Pro.

Known to be a stylish trendsetter -- it was the first smartphone player to bring a triple camera system in P20 pro last year - Huawei's P30 Pro comes with the world's first RYYB sensor aims to disrupt the digital imaging space.

The new RYYB sensor, which uses yellow sub-pixels instead of green for the main camera, replaces the RGB sensor found in most smartphones.

According to the company, the new sensor would let in up to 40 per cent more light than an RGB sensor.

The Huawei P30 Pro costs Rs 71,990 - nearly Rs 2,000 cheaper than Samsung Galaxy S10+ (128GB variant) and way cheaper than the 256GB variant of iPhone XR that costs Rs 91,900 and iPhone XS with 64 GB internal storage that is priced at Rs 99,900.

The device brings to table a cluster of rear cameras that promise extraordinary zoom capabilities, great night photography and dynamic image range.

We used the "Breathing Crystal" colour variant with 8GB RAM and 256GB onboard storage for roughly five days and here's what we think of it.

The P30 Pro's USP is its rear quad camera system that puts Galaxy S10+ and Apple flagship iPhone XS to shame.

There's 40MP main sensor, a 20MP ultra wide-angle and an 8MP 5x optical periscope zoom lens along with a Time of Flight (ToF) sensor.

The P30 Pro offers the best zoom on a smartphone camera to date.

It combines image data from the telephoto sensor and the main image sensor to produce hybrid but "lossless zoom". While it does a great job, we also noticed a little loss of sharpness as we zoomed into 10X. But the loss in detail was negligible.

The biggest feature of any phone has to be its low-light camera performance. Google Pixel 3 (with its night sight feature) may have been the undisputed leader in low-light imaging but the P30 Pro is much better in this department.

Compared to Samsung Galaxy S10, the P30 Pro is a winner that refrains from oversaturating the photos. Notably, iPhone XS fails to compete with the bigger sensor of P30 Pro.

The phone is powered by Huawei's homegrown Kirin 980 chipset that also fueled last year's Mate 20 Pro.

The chip makes it one of most responsive phones out there today.

The EMUI software, which was quite bulky, was a disappointment. It was quick but wasn't free of bloatware like reminders to enable "HiCare".

Another let down was a single speaker and the lack of a 3.5-mm standard headphone jack.

The vivid and bright 6.47-inch OLED FHD+ display gave us pronounced colours and deep blacks.

The display features an almost negligible waterdrop style notch and underneath this screen lies the earpiece speaker as well as the fingerprint scanner.

A 4,200mAh battery ensured the high-performance phone lasted almost two days on a single charge under moderate usage. We got almost 70 per cent juice in 30 minutes with the fast charging technology.

The memory on the phone can be expanded only via Huawei's proprietary nanoSD card -- similar to what we saw on last year's P20 Pro.

Conclusion: While the Huawei P30 Pro isn't cheap but it offers much more than its competitors. An excellent low-light camera coupled with flagship specs make the device a great buy over the iPhone XS or Galaxy S10+.