Huawei P30 Pro Camera Review- The Best Camera Smartphone?

Last year Huawei announced the P20 Pro in India and towards the end of 2018, we saw the flagship Mate 20 pro with triple rear camera. Now the company is launching their latest flagship smartphone in the P series, the P30 Pro with quad rear camera in partnership with Leica. Huawei P30 Pro is currently the best camera smartphone available right now according to DxO Mark with a total rating of 112. The camera hardware is top of the line and offers a plethora of modes and options to choose. So let’s see how the camera performance is and here is the detailed Huawei P30 Pro Camera Review and let’s see if this is the best camera on a smartphone.

The Hardware:

In terms of camera hardware, Huawei P30 Pro comes with the 40MP primary camera with an F/1.6 aperture and OIS. There is also a secondary 20MP ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture. The third lens is an 8MP periscope lens with F/3.4 aperture and OIS included which can do 5X optical zoom. The 4th camera is a Huawei Time of Flight camera. There is also Huawei’s AIS included in the phone. There is also dual tone dual LED flash included. That’s the rear camera set up on P30 Pro.

Taking about the selfie camera, it packs a 32MP shooter with f/2.0 aperture and has screen flash for low light selfies. There is AI mode available for both rear and front cameras. The camera interface of the P30 Pro hasn’t changed much with what we saw on Mate 20 Pro. The UI offers a plethora of modes to choose including monochrome mode.

Camera Samples (Daylight):

Talking about the daylight captures, by default, the camera takes images in 10MP resolution due to the Quad-Bayer filter, but if you want, you can still opt to save the 40MP image. This is a new sensor made by Sony specifically for Huawei and has RYYB color filter instead of the traditional RGGB filter and the company claims that this helps in getting 40% more light than the traditional RGGB sensor.

The first thing you notice about the photos is the details. The photos taken with the primary camera have come good with excellent details and accurate color reproduction. The AI scene detection works flawlessly and can detect more than 1500 scenes and does a really good job. Even if you zoom into the pictures, you seldom see any noise or loss of clarity. The Dynamic range is pretty good and it resolves the shadows very well. But at times, the AI mode messes up with the dynamic range which doesn’t happen all the time though.

Overall, there is high-level detail, good dynamic range, accurate colors, superb contrast, and, overall excellent processing with the camera.

Ultra Wide Angle Camera:

Another important feature of the camera is the ultra wide angle mode which uses the 20MP camera. While the photos are very good, it doesn’t have the details like the primary sensor, but overall does a great job. This is particularly useful when shooting historical places. The wide angle photos have great colors and there isnt any visible chromatic aberrations.

The wide angle camera can also do super macro mode which can be either toggled from settings or the AI mode automatically selects it. It can shoot as close as 2.5cm and does an impressive job.

Telephoto Lens (5X Optical Zoom, 10X Hybrid Zoom, and 50X Digital zoom):

Now coming to the third periscope telephoto lens, which is an 8MP shooter. Huawei saves the images as 10MP, probably by upscaling the images and you can see the results are really good. The 5X optical zoom and 10X hybrid zoom does the job exceptionally well with good details, sharp images, and great colors. the 50X digital zoom is just for you to see something too far away and even for the digital zoom, it deoes quite a good job there. The5X optical zoom is by far the best we have seen on any smartphone till date.

There is also a monochrome mode where you get the normal, aperture, portrait and pro modes for black and white images.

Portrait Mode:

Moving to the portrait mode, the phone uses the 40MP primary camera and the TOF camera for depth sensing. There are few bokeh highlights shapes – circles, hearts, swirl or discs which you can choose. The edge detection is very good and the subject seperation is more or less accurate and one of the best we have seen. Portrat shots are a bit warmer in tone.
There is also the aperture mode where you can change the blur even after the image has been captured. It can go from  f/0.95 to f/16 and does a good job.

Low Light (Night Mode):

Now let’s talk about the low light abilities of the camera. You can shoot in low light using all the three cameras in both regular and night mode. The regular photos taken in 10MP came out impressive and it is more or less similar to what we have seen on Mate 20 Pro, but with f/1.6 aperture, image is a tad brighter and resolves details better. The night mode photos came out well and are usable with low noise and blur-free images. You can also do 5X and 10X zoom in night mode and results are quite good. The colors are retained perfectly well with good details.

Night mode works just like any other Huawei flagships and it captures a bunch of photos and stacks them to produce a final image of accurate exposure and lower noise.
While in some cases there wasn’t a considerable difference between regular and night mode, it can still be helpful in getting more details.
The sensor is capable of ISOs up to 409600 and this means even in pitch dark, the sensor is able to capture details even without night mode.

This is the 1080p sample taken with the P30 Pro and it does a really good job with stabilization and also details on offer.  The device can also shoot slow-motion videos in 720 at 960fps and 240fps and in 1080p resolution at 120fps. There is also 4k at 30fps with OIS offered but the device cannot shoot in 60fps at 4K.

Selfie Camera:

Talking about the selfie experience, the 32MP selfie camera can shoot amazing selfies. When we reviewed the Mate 20 Pro, we mentioned that the selfie experience needs to improve and this is exactly what Huawei has done. the selfie camera has impressive details and has sharp selfies. The dynamic range is also very good and the color reproduction is spot on.

The front camera has a portrait mode with a lot of effects. The edge detection works quite well most of the times, but occasionally you can see that it misses out especially if you have complex backgrounds.

So that was the detailed review of the Huawei P30 Pro camera. So summing up, the P30 Pro is one of those phones which gets you the best camera available right now on a smartphone. The camera impressed us in multiple areas and is arguably the best we have now. The ultra-wide snapper also does a great job with autofocus. but the biggest performer here is the 8MP periscope camera which impressed with its zoom capabilities. The capabilities of the P30 Pro’s camera is immense and we are not really sure if we have done justice to the mode and features it offers.  If you are looking for a flagship smartphone with a focus on the camera, without doubt, the Huawei P30 Pro is the best.

No phone is perfect and Huawei P30 pro has its share of small cons in the camera department and they are lack of 4K at 60fps and also selfie camera is a fixed focus with edge detection not being accurate all the time. But these are minor cons when you consider the immense capabilities of the camera.

Overall, we would say as of 2019, this is the best camera smartphone you can buy.