VIDEO REVIEW

We have been using the Mate 30 Pro and we think it is easily the best phone Huawei has ever made.

It’s absolutely gorgeous, it ships with one of the most sophisticated camera setups we’ve seen on a smartphone, the phone’s display is beautiful to look at and it has almost a 90-degree curve on each side but… it has one major flaw to consider – the Mate 30 Pro does not ship with Google Play services, yet, or at least officially. 

What can you do about that? Install them manually! It literally takes less than 2 minutes to do that and there are even several ways to do that. My Mate 30 Pro works with all Google apps I’ve tested it with. That means that even if you buy the Mate 30 Pro from China it will work fine in your area as far as Google Services go. 

Another thing you can do – wait until the phone is launched in your region and Huawei will push Google Services as soon as this entire political (US-China trade war where the US is “punishing” China) thing is over. Huawei is quite confident that they will find a solution to sell their phones with Google Services pretty soon. 

Otherwise, they would not have announced the European pricing of the phones. By the way, the devices won’t be cheap as you need to be ready to shell out more than 1000 EUR, just like for any other high-end flagship these days. Huawei has also a very ambitious backup plan of replacing Google services altogether by further developing its own AppGallery which already has plenty of apps but we will see what happens in the near future. 

A massive investment of 1 billion dollars shows how serious Huawei is about its smartphone business. In fact, I shared my experience on the AppGallery in a dedicated video last year and I thought it was pretty good. 

DESIGN, FEATURES, BATTERY LIFE

Now let’s take a look at the Mate 30 Pro and see what it has to offer. I honestly believe this is one of the most beautiful and powerful devices you can get.

It all starts with a sharp and colorful Horizon display that has industry-leading almost 90-degree curves on each side. Initially, I was skeptical about palm rejection but after using the phone I can say there are no issues with accidental touches and things of that nature. Those curves look really beautiful and you simply have to see them yourself. 

The panel itself is one of the best we’ve seen on a phone, despite the fact that on paper, it does not have the highest resolution. The screen is tack sharp, it has vibrant colors and deep blacks. 

There was space only for one button on this phone. As a result, you need to double-tap on the edge of the screen to open up a virtual volume rocker that has a nice tactile feel to it. I still prefer physical keys but I have to say this solution works really well in practice. 

The notch is still here but it’s now narrower and it is, what Huawei claims, the most sophisticated notch we’ve had on a phone. It houses a selfie shooter, a dedicated depth sensor, gesture, proximity, and ambient light sensors. The face unlocking feature works really well in any light. Under the display fingerprint scanner is really fast and accurate too. 

The earpiece-less design should not worry you at all as call quality has been excellent all the time, just like all other connectivity options on this phone. 

The device looks and feels really premium thanks to a metal frame, nice curves on the sides and good weight distribution despite the fact it houses a massive 4500 mAh battery that supports super-fast wired, fast wireless and reverse wireless charging. 

So far I’ve been really impressed with the battery but I’m not surprised as all of the previous generation Huawei models were one of the best in this department. I could get over 11 hours of screen on time even while using the phone intensively, for example, I took more than 300 pictures, shot a lot of videos and used max. screen brightness setting quite a lot. Excellent battery life. 

The phone does not have a headphone jack and it’s got only a single bottom-firing speaker but it is so good that it can easily rival any dual stereo speaker systems. 

There is no LED notification light but we have a highly customizable always-on display. Other little but important features: there is an IR blaster and storage expansion option via Huawei’s nano memory card. The Mate 30 Pro comes in a variety of colors and finishes including vegan leather if you are tired of glossy, slippery and fragile glass. 

If you have more than 2000 EUR to spare, there will also be a Porche edition model with a real leather finish, highest hardware configuration, and a custom skin to let you know… that you have a very expensive phone. 

PERFORMANCE

There will be 4G and 5G versions of the Mate 30 Pro and both of them are powered by the home-brewed Kirin 990 CPU which has significant improvement in terms of performance and power efficiency. There are also 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. In other words, the device can handle pretty much anything you throw at it whether it would be the latest 3D games or just using the phone for the basic stuff. The 5G model is said to break mobile internet speed records but we will see when it’s actually released.

CAMERAS

Huawei further improved its camera system which is now embedded into this circle which is a signature element of the design of the phone – whether you like it or not. I personally love but it is the matter of personal preference.

The camera setup consists of 40 MP, f/1.6, 27mm wide camera (1/1.7″, PDAF, OIS), 8 MP, f/2.4, 80mm telephoto lens (1/4″, PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom), 40 MP, f/1.8, 18mm ultrawide shooter (1/1.54″, PDAF) and 3D TOF camera.

Huawei phones have always been one of the best when it comes to image quality. I took quite a few shots and so far I’m really impressed with the results despite the fact the phone runs on a very early software build. 

There is still no one that can beat Huawei in optical or hybrid zoom and night mode delivers stunning results. 

7680fps makes the Mate 30 Pro the new slow-motion video champion. We’ve never seen anything like that on a phone but Huawei made it possible and the results are quite impressive. In fact, you may even find objects or subjects moving too slow in the video that you may want to switch to 960fps mode that produces nice quality video. 

The Mate 30 Pro can finally shoot 4K at 60fps videos that are very smooth and stable, and there is plenty of detail.

Overall, the Mate 30 Pro’s camera is really impressive and it’s easily one of the best out there. 

USER INTERFACE

Huawei has always been criticized for the EMUI but the Mate 30 Pro ships with a completely redesigned user interface that is built on top of Android 10. Now the UI looks cleaner, more polished and it’s very smooth.

Despite all the features and customization options, the phone is super fast and I’m yet to see it stutter or lag. In fact, the Mate 30 Pro is one of the fastest phones we’ve tested this year. Really impressive overall performance. 

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, I really like the Huawei Mate 30 Pro for a lot of reasons, despite the fact that it does not ship with the Google services pre-installed but, as I said in the review, it takes just a minute to do that and they’ve been working absolutely fine.

I also love the Mate 30 Pro for its beautifully curved and sharp display, premium design, killer cameras, excellent overall performance, probably the best battery life among flagship phones and improved software. 

The shortcomings? No LED notification light, no headphone jack and… no official launch date in Europe just yet.

Despite that, I still think the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is a killer phone and it’s easily one of the best and most feature-packed flagships of 2019. 

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