Reviews |Huawei P30 Pro: specs we’d like to see

Huawei P30 Pro: specs we’d like to see

How to set up the Huawei P20 Pro
Review

UPDATE: It’s finally here! Click here to read our Huawei P30 Pro review

Technology moves fast these days, and though the Huawei P20 Pro is only just about a year old, Huawei’s flagship phone is likely due for an upgrade soon.

Last autumn Huawei released the Mate 20 Pro, which upped the ante even further with a camera that even Huawei says outpaces the P20 Pro.

So given that the P series is its senior smartphone range in terms of photography, it seems all but certain that a Huawei P30 Pro release date will be announced soon. And it seems likely that the P30 Pro will inherit some of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s new camera technology, and build on these with new spec.

So what Huawei P30 Pro specs can we expect to see? We’ve shot with every iteration of Huawei’s P and Mate ranges, and know them quite well. Below is a list of the Huawei P30 Pro specs we expect to see, as well as a few wishlist items we’ve thrown in for good measure!

What would you like to see on the Huawei P30 Pro? Let us know in the comments!

Huawei P30 Pro specs we think are likely

How to set up the Huawei P20 Pro

01 Drop the black-and-white sensor in favour of a wide-angle camera

The Huawei P20 Pro famously debuted the first triple-camera setup on a smartphone, and of these three was a black-and-white camera that has a monochrome sensor in order to boost detail levels in your images.

Huawei ditched this black-and-white camera on the Mate 20 Pro in favour of a wide-angle camera; in other words, an RGB sensor paired with a wide-angle lens.

We suspect the Huawei P30 Pro specs sheet will include this as well. A lot of people love the P20 Pro’s results in black-and-white mode because of the extra detail and gradation you get – just like Leica Monochrome.

But at the end of the day, more people probably prefer a wide-angle lens to stronger detail in monochrome – us included.

Both Huawei and Leica have said that RGB sensors have improved to the point that they can resolve enough detail.

In our review of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro we found black-and-white results are still very decent, but admittedly there’s a little less to play with.

02 Eye AF

Eye AF is a feature that was popularised by the Sony A9, and has since become widespread. It’s such a useful tool, that Sony has even expanded its functionality to animals!

We suspect Huawei might add Eye AF capability to the Portrait mode on the P30 Pro.

Shooting landscapes with P20 Pro: Greenery

03 More AI

This is a no-brainer. The AI-driven scene modes on the P20 Pro are so good at recognising subjects and applying the right settings. There were around 19 scene modes on the P20 Pro, and Huawei has been fine-tuning these with each subsequent smartphone release.

We have no doubt that Huawei will introduce more AI scene modes on the P30 Pro, if not doubling the number. Original modes included scenes like Greenery, Blue Skies, Beach, Waterfall, Food. We suspect the more general scene modes will become more specified.

Huawei P20 Pro Camera Review: Image shot in low light

04 Faster Night mode

The Huawei P20 Pro’s Night mode is one of its more impressive achievements. In low light the camera will detect not only the light levels, but how stable the phone is and set an exposure accordingly.

The P20 Pro then captures a series of exposures, stabilises them, harvests the best bits of each and combines them into a surprisingly pin-sharp final image which you shot handheld in the dark!

In the P30 Pro we suspect we’ll see a faster Night mode, meaning that the P30 Pro cameras will capture more images and composite them in less time.

 

 

05 10x zoom

The Huawei P20 Pro offers a very good 5x zoom that allows you to get close to your subjects from afar, which is great for street photographers. We think Huawei will push this zoom reach to 10x with the P30 Pro. The rumours have been strong that Huawei is working on a periscope-style lens structure.

The fact that rival Chinese smartphone maker OPPO is now developing a 10x zoom smartphone camera makes us feel even more certain about this.

06 New sensor

Huawei will likely debut its new P30 range smartphones at the upcoming Mobile World Congress, and regardless of how many cameras the new P30 Pro employs (we think it will still be three), we suspect Huawei will use Sony’s new six-series 1/1.8-inch, 38-megapixel IMX607 sensor.

Shooting landscapes with the Huawei P20 Pro

07 OLED display

Last year Huawei reserved the OLED display for the P20 Pro only, but we suspect that both the P30 Pro and P30 versions of the new flagship phones will boast OLED panels.

There have been a lot of rumours about this, and the consensus is that Huawei wants to move the fingerprint scanner to within the display, and this functionality only works with OLED screens.

08 Bigger screen

The Huawei P20 Pro offers a sizeable 6.1-inch screen, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Huawei push this up to 6.4 or 6.5 inches in the P30 Pro.