This is a complete review of Huawei Mate 30 Pro smartphone. But we have not given this phone a star rating due to the software issues you will read below. If in the future Huawei sends Google services to the device, we will make sure to check the star rating.
In 2018, Huawei arrived with its fantastic P20 Pro, a genius of images that surprised reviewers. Then, the Mate 20 Pro surpassed it practically in every way. And finally, the Mate P30 Pro lifted the lid on the image of the smartphone with its incredible zoom.
Many People think that Huawei was bordering on untouchable. They were wrong! Huawei could not work with Google. And in turn, the Mate 30 Pro does not work, I do not have access to Google Play Store, so it is practically impossible to recommend it to anyone outside of China. That said, if we forget that for a moment and focus on the phone’s specifications, this is clearly a top-level smartphone.
It has a huge 4,500mAh battery, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, a new Kirin 990 chipset and a 6.53-inch OLED screen that is practically enveloping, all packaged in a rich glass and metal design.
That’s also bold; there’s no volume button here, and advanced notch sensors allow gesture controls.
If the association with Google’s curriculum and Huawei Mate 30 Pro get official access to the Google Play Store, it would be excellent. In fact, we’ve been using it with Google Play services downloaded successfully for a week. So, it will convey our experiences; but it will also cover the reality of life without Google.
Huawei Mate 30 Pro Launch Date and Price:
Unclearness of availability in most places outside of China. Costs €1,099 (Around $1,200/£970/AU $1,700). It is not clear if you can buy the Huawei Mate 30 Pro anywhere other than China at this time.
There is always the possibility that ‘you can import the phone if you can.’ Do not buy it through national outlets, but as it is, won I do not have Google services. Sideloading on the phone is not guaranteed, even if you are comfortable doing it. In our time with the phone, the lateral load capacity was not available for a few days.
As for the price, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro costs €1,099 (Around $1,200/£970/AU $1,700), which gives you 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That is for the 4G version of the phone. Huawei also offers a 5G variant for €1,199 (Around $1,300/£1050/AU $1,850).
Design and Exhibition:
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6.53 inch OLED display 1176 x 2400
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The curved screen looks great
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The IP68 water and dust resistance
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is big, but not quite Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus with its smaller 6.53-inch screen. However, its design is outstanding with a true curved edge-to-edge screen that, when viewed from the front, seems to be wrapping the phone.
Huawei Mate 20 Pro weighs 198gm, compared to the 226gm of the iPhone 11 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus of 196gm. Like those smartphones, the Mate is made of glass and metal. Although they don’t have a matte finish on the back like the iPhone and OnePlus 7T.
With Gorilla Glass 6 curved on each side, Huawei Mate 30 Pro does not simply feel rich and comfortable. It has a good dose of scratch resistance, which together with the IP68 water and dust resistance ensures that the elements win to get the best out of it.
Having said that, the phone doesn’t include a pre-installed screen protector, and there is a lot of glass here. So I don’t recommend leaving it soon.
The only port is a USB-C in the base. There is no headphone jack which will irritate many potential buyers, and there is also a mono-bottom speaker. They are not the ideal audio credentials of a flagship. That said, it sounds good, and on the top of the phone, there are an IR Blaster – little mercies huh?
As for the buttons, there is only one – a power button. Yes, that’s right, without volume control; what was Huawei thinking? The company has devised a simple way centered on the screen to increase and reduce the volume; double-tap the side of the screen and slide up or down. This always worked for us. But categorically you can’t control the volume when the screen’s off, which frankly is a bit ridiculous.
With its 18.5:9 aspect ratio, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is slightly wider than 19.5:9 smartphones like the Asus ROG Phone 2. But it’s significantly thinner with 8.8 mm, and it feels much more like a ship Traditional polished badge with a touch of ‘tomorrow’s tech today’ pulled on.
The Mate 30 Pro The curved OLED screen spills over the side of the device at an angle of almost 90 degrees. It has a resolution of 1176×2400 pixels and supports the full DCI-P3 color space, as well as HDR10.
While it’s not OnePlus 7T Pro sharp, the Mate 30 Pro The pixel density of 409 pixels per inch still looks amazing, it’s just behind the new Pro Series of iPhone 11, but the iPhone 11 improves.
The phone The maximum brightness is excellent indoors and outdoors. Although with a bright light it does not rise as high as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus.
While the viewing angles are respectable for an OLED screen, thanks to the extreme curve on both sides, the vignetting is more noticeable than on any other smartphone. The purists of the integrity of the image may disagree with that fact, but there are some corrections in the configuration.
To start you can customize the intensity and temperature of the screen color, and there is also a dark mode, as well as always on screen (AOD). You can also hide the notch in the Mate 30 Pro, and in response to the previous vignetting problem you can hide the edges. That means that with a quick change, you can reduce the curved edge to make it look much more subtle, comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus 5G.
One thing that impressed us incredibly was the palm/edge rejection. The tactile edge sensitivity is triggered when necessary. In games, when the edge is used as L and R triggers, but we didn’t do it. We didn’t find ourselves accidentally triggering things.
Video Credit: Supesaf/YouTube
Battery Duration
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4,500 mAh capacity lasts up to two days.
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40W SuperCharge charger included.
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27W reverse wireless charging.
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With a 4,500 mAh battery, the Mate 30 Pro can be one of the best energy smartphones.
A 90-minute HD video played at maximum brightness only drained it by 5%, that’s sensational, topping our flagship leaderboard, but the Mate 30 Pro’s high battery doesn’t stop there.
First wireless charging; with speeds up to 27W – Huawei. The latest flagship has higher loading rates than Apple’s iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro work when plugged in. They have a limit of 18W. If you want to tie your Mate 30 Pro to a wall, you’ll benefit from the 40W SuperCharge technology; which can fill it flat in less than an hour and 15 minutes.
Within the configuration, there are Huawei power-saving standard features that go one step beyond the standard Android. These include power saving mode, ultra power saving mode, application startup (So you can configure which applications start automatically) and power consumption details.
This is also where you can enable or disable performance mode when you have some spare battery and want maximum gaming performance, and you can also enable reverse wireless charging here.
As expected, we managed to spend a full day of intense use with the Mate 30 Pro with enough power to reach day two. Meanwhile, light users shouldn’t I don’t have much trouble getting 48 hours.
Camera
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40MP+40MP wide/ultra-wide combo.
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8MP 3x telephoto lens+fourth ToF camera.
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32MP selfie camera.
The launch event of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, the cumulative 120MP in the front and the back were combined with high promises and incredible still images and video samples that were displayed on the screen. Since then, Apple has unleashed the iPhone 11 Pro, which finally has a night mode, and the Pixel 4 has leaked everywhere.
That said, Huawei instantly promises something that others don’t do its pixel power. While the Mate 30 Pro takes 10MP images by default, you can increase that number to a full resolution of 40MP for shots taken with great light that you may want to blow.
For the most part, the benefits of shooting in 10MP are numerous; Low-resolution shots have a better dynamic range, less noise and take up less space.
The Mate 30 Pro camera set consists of a 40MP wide camera with a 27mm f/1.6 lens loaded with optical image stabilization (OIS). The telephoto camera offers a 3x zoom, has a resolution of 8MP and has an f/2.4 and OIS lens, while the new ultra-wide-angle film camera has a resolution of 40MP, the focal length of 18 mm and an f/1.8 aperture.
The images captured in automatic mode through cameras are loaded with impact. The colors are vivid, the dynamic range is good to better and the details are wide with a precise focus. Huawei suggested that the Mate 30 Pro can focus up to about 2.5 cm, although we found that it looks more like 4 cm. But still, given the fact that all three lenses have autofocus, it’s still a versatile macro snapper.
The ultra-wide-angle camera can capture many details and an impressive dynamic range. Although in very challenging conditions, we notice a lot of purple edges; which is a shame and puts its ultra-wide-angle firmly behind the iPhone 11 Pro for photos. However, when it shoots well, it’s still one of the best ultra-wide.
However, the telephoto camera is only surpassed by that of the Huawei P30 Pro and the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom, and it does a fantastic job both in the photo and in the video to take it to a distant action and keep things stable.
Where the Mate 30 Pro still manages to stay on top is the night mode. Unlike many other iconic smartphones, it doesn’t force you to a different way to take great images in low light, and when you activate the dedicated night mode. It captures an unreal dynamic range, even if its color accuracy isn’t always perfect.
It is also worth noting, unlike the Sony Xperia 5, for example, which makes night images seem taken at night, the Mate 30 Pro illuminates them a lot, which might not be for everyone’s taste.
As for the video, ‘The shots at a speed of up to 4K 60 fps, and with OIS through wide and telephoto lenses, stay fantastically together. Most ‘camera’ isn’t as ultra-wide as the Mate 20 Pro or Galaxy Note 10, but it doesn’t have an ultra-wide GoPro-Esque distortion, and it does a decent job of handling noise.
The video quality impresses in all lighting conditions, and although it is not excellent in the dark with DSLR or mirrorless camera standards, it certainly surpasses other smartphones.
There is also incredibly slow slow-motion capture of 7680 fps at 720p: an excellent party trick when combined with a lighter and technological marvel in well-lit conditions, but in most environments, it’s really too slow, practically stopping time completely.
Meanwhile, the front camera captures selfies at 32MP or video at 1080p at 30fps. The photo quality is excellent and works well in portrait mode, but without autofocus or 4K capture, it’s not a selfie camera as versatile as the Samsung Galaxy S10.
INTERFACE AND RELIABILITY
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Android 10 but without Google applications and services.
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Superimposed with EMUI 10.
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It includes a practical eye tracking function.
With Android 10, Huawei Mate 30 Pro is as prepared for the future as things get, or at least it should have been. Without Google Play Store, application support is terrible. Huawei’s store itself, AppGallery, lacks all the key applications that are used today including WhatsApp and any UK banking application, and file uploading is always full of risks.
Most of the time, we spent with the smartphone. We had to download Google Play Store and, frankly the experience was perfect. However, in our time without Play Store and Google’S other applications, it was a horror show. Web counterparts aren’t as integrated, and third-party solutions were rarely so intuitive for someone accustomed to Google services that they only worked.
As for the rest of the interface, it’s the company’s EMUI 10. Compared to EMUI 9, Huawei’s user interface has received a new layer of paint, simplified menus and, we can confirm, it looks better.
The new specific features of the Mate 30 Pro include eye monitoring, which stops the automatic rotation of the phone sideways when I don’t want it, making sure it is synchronized with the orientation of your eye, and it worked like a dream.
The smartphone also has two strange gesture controls; place your hand on the screen and close your fist to take a screenshot or slide your finger up and down to scroll.
The scrolling doesn’t make any sense, but the screen capture gesture makes sense since the Mate 30 Pro can’t take screenshots using traditional volume presses+power button (After all, it doesn’t have volume buttons). Fortunately, this function (fist … shot?) Works well, but so does a double-tap with a knuckle to take one, thanks to Huawei’s KnuckleSense, presented on P8.
The fingerprint scanner under the screen also worked perfectly and unlocked the phone quickly. Although Huawei Mate 30 Pro has advanced face unlocking feature often exceeds it with sensors loaded in the notch that works with great effect and offers greater security than the standard facial unlocking with the selfie camera.
Also worth noting, Mate 30 Pro works with Huawei’s M Pen, which supports up to 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity. This is useful if you were going to pick one up anyway. However, the M Pen is sold separately and isn’t as well integrated into the user interface as Samsung’s S Pen is, so it’s not enough to get away from a pen addict of the Galaxy Note 10 Plus.
PERFORMANCE AND SPECIFICATIONS
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Kirin 990 high-end chipset
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8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage
With a 7nm Kirin 990 chipset combined with 8 GB of RAM, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro offers stellar performance, especially when it comes to games.
The additional GPU cores mean that it drops fewer frames than the Huawei P30 Pro, and EMUI 10. The revised game mode takes full advantage of the Mate 30 Pro’s curved screen with L and R triggers that can be activated.
These appear in the upper left and right of the curved-screen when playing in landscape orientation, and are reassignable and receptive, adding value beyond the va-va-voom design to the Mate 30 Pro’s mega curves.
The phone’s 256 GB of storage is also ample, although it’s also exactly what we’d expect given its price, and there’s a nano memory card slot to compliment it too.
VERDICT on Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review:
Huawei Mate 30 Pro is a victim of circumstances and a bittersweet phone to review, excellent, but with a fatal flaw. It’s not perfect; we miss the volume control. But everything else at least is excellent, and its low-light photography capabilities are stellar for a phone.
That said, It is also practically impossible to recommend to anyone who lives in a region of Google Play Store like the United Kingdom or Australia.
That is also not cheap at €1,099 (Around $1,200/£970/AU $1,700), which makes the fact that it lacks a central part of any smartphone, a competent application experience, impossible to overcome.
WHO’S THIS FOR?
Enthusiasts who don’t worry, side-loading applications and those who hate Google could get along with the Mate 30 Pro. If you’re ready to invest in it, you’ll be rewarded with one of the best cameras for smartphones known to man, impressive design and an incredibly durable battery.
SHOULD YOU BUY IT?
Probably not sadly; until access to the Play Store is restored at least on the phone if it ever is.
The Mate 30 Pro is an expensive option for serious enthusiasts with a little money to spare. However, if you’re looking for a smartphone without Google Play Store, no other Android phone has been released from the great G’Eye that sees everything can contain a slow-motion match of 7680 fps.
COMPETITION
There are a number of strong alternatives to the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, without the software of this phone. Below you will find three of the main ones.
Huawei’s P30 Pro remains a fantastic camera phone half a year after its launch, with a more powerful optical zoom than the Mate 30 Pro and most of the same main features: reverse wireless charging, 40W SuperCharge technology and excellent duration of the battery.
That is also significantly more affordable and with the Play Store support guaranteed by Huawei. It is set to offer an excellent application experience where the Mate 30 Pro currently can’t.
ALTERNATIVES
iPhone 11 PRO MAX
Anyone thinking of Huawei Mate 30 Pro because of the fact that it doesn’t run with Google Apps services. iPhone 11 Pro Max is an excellent alternative with the same type of camera setup: wide, ultra-wide and telephoto.
With iOS, it offers a premium ecosystem, although closed, but compatible with applications on Apple. The range of iOS is exceptional.
SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 10 PLUS
Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus is better and worse than Huawei Mate 30 Pro. It has better pen input, a better screen and the most obvious: access to Google Play Store. That said, the Mate 30 Pro offers better image capabilities, specifically at night, not to mention better-charging speeds and battery life.
