Huawei’s latest top-end phone, the P30 Pro, has a genuinely groundbreaking new quad camera system on the back with amazing low-light performance and the first 5x optical zoom enabling a practically spycam-like 50x digital zoom.

The new £900 phone, from the firm that continues to be at the centre of a political storm, has the familiar metal frame, curved glass and all-screen design of 2018-19. New for the P30 Pro are some stunning colour options, including the pearlescent oil slick-like “breathing crystal” and the eye-popping amber sunrise. If you want a phone that gloriously embraces colour, this is it.

Stretching 6.47in from corner to corner, with a small tear-drop notch at the top, the FHD+ OLED is massive and beautiful, only beaten out by Samsung’s high resolution stunner on the Galaxy S10+.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amber sunrise on the left, breathing crystal on the right. Bright, eye-catching colour options that offset the all-black front nicely. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Build quality is exceptional. The glass back is slippery on fabric, but OK in the hand, even if it is a fingerprint magnet. A clear plastic case is included in the box in most regions.

There’s no earpiece speaker. Instead the whole screen vibrates to produce your call audio, which is indistinguishable from a regular speaker. Despite the phone’s huge screen, the P30 Pro is still fairly manageable thanks to its narrow width.

At 73.4mm wide, it is narrower than all of the similarly-sized competition, including the 77.4mm wide iPhone XS Max and 74.1mm Samsung Galaxy S10+, even if it is a smidgen wider than the 72.3mm Mate 20 Pro. The P30 Pro weighs 192g, though, which puts it on the heavy side, only surpassed by the 208g iPhone XS Max.

Specifications

Screen: 6.47in FHD+ OLED (398ppi)

Processor: octa-core Huawei Kirin 980

RAM: 8GB of RAM

Storage: 128 or 512GB plus nano memory card

Operating system: EMUI 9.1 based on Android 9 Pie

Camera: quadruple rear camera 40MP, 20MP ultra-wide angle, 8MP telephoto, ToF depth, 32MP front-facing camera

Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 5 and GPS (dual-sim available in some regions)

Water resistance: IP68

Dimensions: 158 x 73.4 x 8.41 mm

Weight: 192g

High performance, long battery life

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The USB-C port in the bottom is flanked by the sim-tray and mono speaker. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The guts of the P30 Pro are identical to the Mate 20 Pro: Huawei’s own Kirin 980 processor and 8GB of RAM. As such performance was identical. Snappy, fast and smooth all over, including in long gaming sessions. It easily kept up with the best of the rest.

Huawei has made a name for itself with long battery life and it continues to stand head and shoulders above the rest.

With heavy usage it lasted just under 35 hours between charges, meaning it would make it all the way from 7am on day one until 6pm on day two. That was as my primary device with the usual deluge of email, messages and push notifications, lots of browsing, five hours of Spotify via Bluetooth headphones, watching 90 minutes of offline movies, 30 minutes of gaming and shooting about 20 photos a day.

Even when used as a primary navigation aid and camera on holiday, it never once got below 15% by midnight. With lighter usage the P30 Pro should manage 48 hours between charges, or far longer with one of the specialised power-saving modes active.

A full charge took less than an hour, reaching 70% in just over 30 minutes via cable. It also has fast 15W wireless charging and wireless power sharing for charging some other Qi-compatible devices.

EMUI 9.1

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Huawei’s gesture navigation is one of the better options on Android. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The P30 Pro runs Huawei’s latest version of EMUI 9.1, which is the company’s version of Android 9 Pie. It looks and behaves almost identically to EMUI 9 on the Mate 20 Pro.

EMUI 9.1 has slightly refined gesture navigation options, which work very well, swiping in from either left or right side of the screen for back, up from the centre of the bottom of the screen for home, or up and hold for recently used apps. Swipe up from the bottom left or right to activate Google Assistant. The only thing missing is a quick way to get immediately back to the previously used app, as double-tapping the old overview button did. The traditional three-button navigation bar is available if you don’t like gestures and there are many other customisation options including full theme support.

EMUI’s strengths are long-term performance and battery life, with extensive automatic and manual suppression systems that stop apps draining battery in the background. Occasionally that means you miss notifications, but EMUI is getting better at alleviating the problem and a little tweaking of the per-app power saving settings can make sure your WhatsApps or Guardian push notifications get through.

Overall, Huawei is making gradual improvements, giving a fairly refined experience, but it still lags behind Google, OnePlus or Samsung in look and feel for a western audience. The speed of updates is also not the best in the industry.

Fingerprint scanner

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The optical fingerprint scanner is embedded in the bottom section of the screen. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

In-screen fingerprint scanners are all the rage at the moment as they free-up space on the device while keeping them in a convenient position on the front. The P30 Pro has Huawei’s next iteration of its optical fingerprint scanner.

It’s faster, more accurate and easier to hit with muscle memory, being further down the screen than the Mate 20 Pro. It’s still not as fast nor secure as traditional capacitive fingerprint scanners, but I found it fast and reliable enough to use without looking, making it a worthwhile trade-off.

Camera

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The camera app is fairly simple to use, which most options available with a swipe. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Large, meaningful steps forward in smartphone photography are fairly rare, but with the P30 Pro Huawei’s managed two of them in one device. The new Leica quad-camera system dramatically improves both zoom and low-light performance.

The 40-megapixel wide angle and 20-megapixel ultra-wide angle cameras are joined by a brand new 8-megapixel telephoto camera that uses a prism to direct light sideways into the body of the phone for a 5x optical zoom lens. The fourth camera is a 3D depth-sensing system called a time of flight (ToF) camera used for portrait effects and other bits.

The combination of cameras is truly outstanding. The ultra-wide angle camera is a lot of fun, producing some really interesting shots. But it is the 5x optical zoom that is unmatched by rivals, getting you far closer to your subject without using hybrid or digital zoom. Then there’s the up to 10x hybrid zoom on top, with uses the other cameras to fill in detail. In good light the differences between hybrid and the 5x optical zoom are small. If that wasn’t enough, you get a 50x digital zoom, which is visibly inferior to the optical and hybrid, but is still good enough to read text from quite some distance or spot people on a distant hilltop.

I used it as a surrogate for a pair of binoculars on several occasions to great effect. Getting to the various zoom levels is easy but holding a 50x zoom steady enough to keep your target in view takes a little practice.

The second big leap is in low-light photography. Using a new camera sensor system that ditches green for yellow pixels, Huawei has been able to dramatically improve light absorption and the results are miraculous. Ordinary point-and-shoot shots without using a dedicated night or long exposure mode can all but turn night into day illuminating full detail and colour in scenes where the human eye struggles.

Google managed a similar feat with its Night Sight mode, but that takes several seconds to take an image. The P30 Pro does better with an instant snap.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Four cameras on the back, three in the lump including the new 5x optical zoom camera, and one next to it below the flash. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

In terms of camera image quality, the results are equally impressive, matching or beating rivals in almost every scenario. Google’s Pixel still produces better detail and contrast in HDR images but only just. You can point and shoot the P30 Pro at almost anything and get a good image. Huawei’s Master AI system is also improved, but I never really felt the need to engage it – the images were mostly right without.

Even the 32-megapixel selfie camera in the small notch on the front of the device is great, capturing a good amount of detail and managing variable lightning conditions well despite being fixed-focus.

Observations

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Curved glass and slim bezels meet a squared-off end for an attractive but familiar design. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

With gesture navigation enabled, sometimes I activated Google Assistant when reaching for the punctuation slider in Gboard while typing quickly

There’s a mic hole right next to the sim tray - do not poke the sim ejector in there by accident or risk ruining the mic

The vibrating haptic feedback is nice and staccato, although not quite as sharp as Google’s or Apple’s phones

It has a single speaker in the bottom, which is fairly loud and clear

There’s no headphone socket, just a USB-C socket in the bottom

Dual-sim support is available in some regions plus a nano memory card slot

Price

The Huawei P30 Pro has an RRP of £899.99 with 128GB of storage or £1,099.99 with 512GB.

For comparison, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro costs £729 with 128GB storage, the 128GB Samsung Galaxy S10+ costs £899, the 64GB Google Pixel 3 XL costs £719 with 64GB, the 64GB iPhone XS Max costs £1,099, 128GB Honor View20 costs £449 and the 64GB OnePlus 6T costs £499.

Verdict

Huawei is no stranger to hyperbole, but not for the first time experience matches up to the claims. The P30 Pro genuinely marks a massive leap forward for smartphone cameras with game changing low-light performance and a remarkable new zoom technology.

Both make meaningful, useful additions to your photographic arsenal, giving the P30 Pro the best camera available. It’s flexible, powerful and above all, super-fun to use. Which surely is the point.

The rest of the phone is excellent, too, if not that dissimilar to the older Mate 20 Pro. Battery life remains competition-beating. It’s snappy, bright and beautiful, and even Huawei’s EMUI software is improving.

Despite being fairly narrow and therefore easier to handle than rivals with similar screen sizes, there’s no getting around the fact that the P30 Pro is a pretty large phone. Smaller hands will struggle.

At £900, the P30 Pro is certainly a premium smartphone. But if your priorities are performance, battery life and camera capability, the Huawei P30 Pro is the best phone you can buy right now and will take some beating.

Pros: incredible low-light camera, amazing zoom, fun ultra-wide angle camera, long battery life, in-display fingerprint scanner, wireless charging, reverse wireless charging, good processor, stunning colour options Cons: EMUI not to everyone’s taste, nano memory not microSD, expensive, no headphone socket, no stereo speakers, HDR not as good as Google’s

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The small notch at the top contains the selfie camera. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

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