Huawei P30 & P30 Pro Launched – Tech Community Going Nuts Over Them, Especially P30 Pro

Amidst a lot of fanfare, Huawei has announced the latest additions to the P series – Huawei P30 and Huawei P30 Pro. At first look, you don’t think these phones are anything out of the ordinary. But on a closer inspection, you will understand why the tech community is going nuts over them, especially the P30 Pro.

It’s all about the cameras. Yeah.

Internals

I don’t even want to explain in length about the internal specs on these phones coz they don’t matter much. You’ve got the Kirin 980 inside both of them. P30 starts with 6GB of RAM and P30 Pro starts with 8GB RAM. No 1 TB models have been released. The fingerprint sensor is under the screen but it’s optical.The notches are now in the waterdrop shape. And the P30 Pro doesn’t have an earpiece for the phone call. It uses the maglev technique to vibrate the screen. We’ve seen this tech from LG phones in the past. It’s not that new. Reverse wireless charging is present in the Pro model but is omitted from the P30.

P30 has a 6.1 inch AMOLED screen compared to 6.47 inches on the P30 Pro. P30 has a headphone jack but P30 Pro does not.

And that’s about it for the internals. They are powerful and top of the line. But, they are not that interesting. What’s interesting are the cameras on the P30 pro. P30 has a near similar setup as that of the Mate 20 Pro.

Now, the cameras

Huawei partnered with LEICA to put quad cameras at the back of the P30 Pro. I could go into details about the Megapixel count of each of these cameras, but I don’t think that’s necessary. I will just talk about the features that makes these cameras so unique.

The main sensor

The main sensor in this camera setup is a 40MP Huawei SuperSpectrum Sensor with optical image stabilization (OIS). THis sensor is different from all the other camera sensors in the market because its not a Bayer Array Sensor. A Bayer Array Sensor is a sensor that uses what’s called an RGB matrix.

But with this sensor, Huawei has gone with an RYB matrix. That is, they have chosen to go with Yellow instead of Green. What good will all this do? Huawei says this will let the camera capture up to 40% more light than before. This will have an impact on photos from all lighting conditions but night time shots will benefit significantly.

The star of the show

The other new feature in the camera setup is the 5x optical periscope-style zoom. We’ve seen this type of technology before from Oppo in the past. Huawei’s technology allows for a 5x optical and 10x Hybrid Zoom for distant objects.

Since this level of zoom requires more space, a rectangular prism is used here, which redirects the image by 90 degrees inside the device and leads it through a periscope system with five lenses until it hits the sensor.

In hybrid mode with a combination of the zoom sensor together with the 40MP main sensor and the artificial intelligence, you get 10 times zoom. The image quality is very good and sharp. If you feel crazy enough, you can digitally zoom up to 50 times into your shots. You’ll have to see the videos of this camera in action to believe it. This zoom feels magical. It feels like using stealthy binoculars.

Of course, as with the Mate 20 Pro launched last year, Huawei P30 Pro has an ultrawide sensor. There’s nothing much to talk about that camera.

There’s also a time of flight sensor below the flash that is used to capture depth information and all that. This completes the quad camera setup on the P30 pro.

Final thoughts

Huawei isn’t hiding anything from anyone here. They haven’t hyped any other feature of this phone except the cameras. It’s clear that they have made P30 Pro to beat every other smartphone camera on the planet. They want people to buy this phone because P30 Pro has the best camera. And you know what? The P30 Pro might just be a good all rounder phone with the best camera in the market right now.