Huawei has unveiled the latest entry into its flagship P series of smartphones: the P30 and P30 Pro. Both handsets include a number of upgrades over their predecessors, including the faster Kirin 980 chipset that debuted with the Mate 20 Pro, a smaller notch in the display, better battery life, and improved cameras.
Huawei claims the updated cameras on the P30 series have “rewritten the rules of photography,” but while the P30 Pro gets closer to living up to this overweening tagline, the P30 certainly doesn’t. Instead of rewiring any rules, the smaller sibling is content to catch-up with all of the camera features that were reserved for the Pro variant last time around. And that’s absolutely fine with us.
Picking up the Huawei P30 for the first time, it’s immediately clear this is a premium product. The days of the slightly cheap, hollow-feel to the aluminum cases of the likes of the Huawei P9 and P10 are long gone. It’s also clear that Huawei’s muse has changed in the last few years: whereas earlier P series devices looked like an unconvincing police E-FIT of the latest iPhone, the P30 feels much closer to the latest entry in Samsung’s Galaxy S range.
