Surprise! Huawei’s latest flagship smartphone, the P30 Pro, has shot straight to the top of DxOMark’s thorough yet contentious mobile camera benchmarks, continuing the company’s domination of the results table in 2018.
With an overall score of 112 points, the P30 Pro comes in three points ahead of previous chart leaders the Mate 20 Pro and P20 Pro, both also from Huawei.
Of course, nobody is really surprised by this result. Given Huawei’s track record and heavy pre-release promotion which focused almost exclusively on the camera, anything less than first place would have been viewed as a massive disappointment for the controversial Chinese company.
Updated specs
Speaking at the phone’s Paris launch this week Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group announced a triple camera P30 Pro featuring a raft of improved specs and new features including the highly-anticipated 5x zoom periscopic lens, an entirely redesigned main sensor, an ultra-wide lens, and new depth-sensing hardware.
The biggest upgrade - Zoom!
The P30 Pro’s new periscopic 5x telephoto lens is the biggest single addition to the new flagship and delivers true 5x optical magnification.
To fit what would otherwise be a large, protruding lens inside the smartphone’s ultra-thin body, Huawei uses a mirror to reflect light into a long lens mounted lens horizontally phone’s case. Such lenses are currently a rarity, but we’re likely to see this technique used in future products from several manufacturers including Samsung.
The new telephoto camera features an 8MP sensor with an optically stabilized f/3.4 lens. The output of this camera is merged with the other two as necessary to create a smooth zoom effect. Huawei then uses multi-frame imaging techniques to achieve an effective 10x zoom factor.
It’s no surprise then, that DxOMark found zoom capabilities of the P30 Pro to be excellent, scoring 95 points on the Zoom test and easily outperforming every other smartphone on the market.
Much improved light sensitivity - but at a cost?
Much of Huawei’s launch presentation was given over to promoting the low-light performance of the P30 Pro, featuring several impressive shots taken in near darkness as well as impressive shots of the Milky Way. These were made possible thanks to two major hardware improvements found in the latest phone.
The new 40megapixel main camera features an f/1.6 lens which lets in around 25% more light than the f/1.8 model found in the P20 Pro. This is coupled with a 40Mp imaging sensor which uses a new RYYB filter arrangement instead of the near-ubiquitous RGGB layout. A yellow filter lets in both red and green light, thereby capturing twice as much light as a green filter. It’s then down to the smartphone’s image processing to separate the red and green components in software.
This approach results in a sensor that boosts light capture by a further 40%, but it’s not without compromise. DxOMark’s test results reveal some colored artifacts in high-contrast areas and the review goes on to speculate that these may be an unwelcome side-effect of the RYYB filter.
It’s worth noting here that DxOMark doesn’t currently test any camera modes designed specifically for shooting in low light. This means we don’t get to see the P30 Pro pitted against the Pixel 3’s superb ‘Night Sight’ mode. Indeed, Huawei shied away from any comparisons with the Google flagship, preferring instead to focus on the iPhone XS and Galaxy S10 (which the P30 Pro easily outperformed).
Best Ever Bokeh - Maybe
The P30 Pro’s other significant hardware update is the new ToF (Time of Flight) sensor - a camera dedicated to measuring distance rather than light, which enables more accurate depth information to be captured. This depth information is then used in the creation of, among other things, artificial depth-of-field and bokeh effects.
DxOMark the P30 Pro’s “upgraded” bokeh mode as “the currently best you can find on a smartphone” and cites the phone’s ToF sensor and super-resolution technology as the technologies behind its success. The tests found the P30 can reproduce superior detail and more accurate bokeh effects than either the Mate 20 Pro or the Xiaomi Mi 9.
But wait a minute! The P30 Pro’s bokeh score of 70 points is exactly the same as that of the P20 Pro which features neither of these technologies. Further investigation is obviously required here but for now, it seems that there’s no point in upgrading from a P20 Pro to a P30 pro in order to get better portraits.
Dynamic Range - A Step Backward?
Disappointingly, DxOMark notes that dynamic range, or the ability to capture bright light and deep shadow at the same time, is slightly reduced compared to the Mate 20 Pro. Dynamic range is often critically important, especially in backlit situations or low-light situations where much of the details are in shadow.
The P30 Pro still performs pretty well in this regard according to DxOMark, but I would consider any backward step like this to be entirely unacceptable. The issue won’t show up in the majority of photos but is all-too-apparent in DxOMark’s indoor detail and noise test where blown out highlights ruin an otherwise excellent photo.
Worse for Video?
Although the result was clearly displayed on screen during Huawei’s presentation, Yu quite understandably made no mention of the P30 Pro’s DxOMark Video score of 97 points. The reason being that it, like the Mate 20 Pro before it, falls one point below that of the P20 Pro.
DxOMark testers pointed in particular to issues arising from automatic variable frame rates, noise in low light and instabilities in exposure and white balance. That being said, the P30 Pro still achieves excellent results compared to the competition. Don’t forget that it also comes with a very useful ultra-wide lens not present on the P20 Pro and not tested by DxOMark.
Better Options Available For Selfies
DxOMark devotes an entirely separate review to selfie performance and the P30 Pro’s new 32megapixel front-facing camera easily outperforms both the P20 Pro and the Mate 20 Pro, scoring 89 points compared to 72 points and 75 points respectively.
However, Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Plus and the Google Pixel 3 both easily outperform Huawei when it comes to selfies according to DxOMark’s testing.
Conclusion
As always, DxOMark tests almost exclusively at default settings (the bokeh test being one notable exception) so a thorough camera review is required before drawing final conclusions. However, the P30 Pro brings many important hardware upgrades over the P20 Pro. Enhanced low-light performance and the new periscopic lens are the stars of the show, while the addition of an ultra-wide lens allows new shooting possibilities beyond the scope of DxOMark’s testing.
However, despite several big steps forward, problems with dynamic range and video frame rates really need to be fixed. Thankfully, both of these problems are of the type which could be easily rectified in a future software update as they aren’t a result of any issues with the hardware itself.
If the P30 Pro is available in your country, it’s most definitely worth a look!
