It’s been roughly 2 months now since Huawei announced the new Mate 30 Pro as well as the Kirin 990 chipsets. As an unusual hectic fall season finally calms down, it’s been due time to have a closer look at the new the company’s new flagship device and new silicon chipset.

There’s no beating around the bush that one aspect that vastly overshadowed the actual device itself, is the fact that Huawei had been banned from using Google’s mobile services. The Mate 30 Pro consequently is one of the first phones released by the company which doesn’t come with any Google applications preinstalled. There’s a lot to talk about in this regard and we’ll address this more in depth later on in the article, but I’d like to flip the narrative upside down here first and first discuss the hardware aspects of the new phone and see if Huawei had been able to create a competitive device, and if the worry about the software actually makes sense in the first place in terms of considerations of the device.

Today we’re reviewing the higher-end model of the Mate 30 series, the Mate 30 Pro. Specifically, we’re reviewing the 4G variant of this phone. The new Mate 30 Pro promises a brand-new design with a unique 90° curved screen on its sides – a first not only for Huawei but for the smartphone market overall. The phone is powered by HiSilicon’s latest Kirin 990 processor which will be powering power of Huawei and Honor’s devices for 2020 and is undoubtedly one of the more interesting aspects we’re looking forward to test. On the camera side, Huawei employs the same main sensor as on the P30 series and adopts the 3x telephoto module seen in the Mate 20 Pro and the regular P30, but innovates on the ultra-wide-angle module by adopting a second 40MP sensor alongside its main 40MP unit, which is undoubtedly going to be a unique feature for the phone and the company’s devices in 2020.

Huawei Mate 30 Series
		Mate 30	Mate 30 Pro (Reviewed) (Mate 30 Pro 5G)
SoC		HiSilicon Kirin 990 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.86 GHz 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.09 GHz 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.86 GHz
		(HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G) 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.86 GHz 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.36 GHz 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.95 GHz
GPU		Mali G76MP16 @ 600MHz (Mali G76MP16 @ 700MHz)
DRAM		8GB LPDDR4X	8GB LPDDR4X
Display		6.62" OLED 2340 x 1080 (19.5:9)	6.53" OLED 2400 x 1176 (18.4:9) edge-to-edge
Size	Height	160.8 mm	158.1 mm
	Width	76.1 mm	73.1 mm
	Depth	8.4 mm (9.2mm)	8.8 mm (9.5mm)
Weight		196 grams	198 grams
Battery Capacity		4100mAh (Rated) 4200mAh (Typical) 40W charging	4400mAh (Rated) 4500mAh (Typical) 40W charging
Wireless Charging		27W charging + reverse charging
Rear Cameras
	Main	40MP f/1.8 RYYB sensor 27mm equiv. FL	40MP f/1.6 OIS RYYB sensor 27mm equivl. FL
	Telephoto	8MP f/2.4 OIS 3x Optical zoom 80mm equiv. FL
	Wide	16MP f/2.2 Ulta wide angle 17mm equivl. FL	40MP f/1.8 RGGB sensor Ultra wide angle 18mm equivl. FL 720p7680fps video capture
	Extra	-	3D Depth Camera
Front Camera		24MP f/2.0	32MP f/2.0
Storage		128 / 256GB + proprietary "nanoSD" card
I/O		USB-C 3.5mm headphone jack	USB-C
Wireless (local)		802.11ac (Wifi 5), Bluetooth 5.1
Cellular		4G LTE (4G + 5G NR NSA+SA Sub-6GHz)
Splash, Water, Dust Resistance		IP53 (no water resistance)	IP68 (water resistant up to 1m)
Dual-SIM		2x nano-SIM
Launch OS		AOSP 10 w/ EMUI 10 without Google services
Launch Price		8+128 GB: 799€	8+256 GB: 1099€ (5G 8+256GB: 1199€)

Starting off on the hardware side, the new Mate 30 Pro employs the new Kirin 990 chipset. This year we’re actually seeing two versions of the chip: The 4G and the 5G variant, representing actually completely different chips even though the hardware specifications of the two are quite similar to each other. We’ll be dwelling more into the new chip on the next page so sit tight.

The phone this year comes in a static 8+256GB configuration in terms of DRAM and storage. The very high base storage of the phone isn’t necessarily just a case of goodwill and more aggressive competitive positioning of the company, as the phone’s price does come at a rather steep 1099€ for the 4G model, so one would expect a higher storage configuration at this price.

The phone comes with support for Huawei’s “NM” or nanomemory card standard – essentially, it’s an SD Card alternative in the form of a nanoSIM. Huawei seems to make these cards quite widely available and the price mark-up over regular SD cards isn’t too high, but it’s still a weird peculiarity that till now hasn’t seen adoption by any other vendor.

Other internal hardware aspects for the phone that do stand out a bit is the device’s WiFi capabilities. As 2019 comes to an end, we’ve seen more vendors adopt WiFi 6 / 802.11ax being adopted by the big vendors, particularly Samsung adopting it in both the S10 and Note10 series, and more recently Apple also launching its whole new line-up with support for the new standard. Given the Mate 30 Pro’s flagship positioning and respective pricing, it is a bit unfortunate that we’re seeing the phone make due with a WiFi 5 / .ac solution.

The one aspect that there’s most to talk about the Mate 30 Pro is its screen:

In terms of specification on paper, the screen actually saw a downgrade compared to what we’ve seen in the Mate 20 Pro last year. It’s still an OLED screen, but unlike the Mate 20 Pro which was Huawei’s first 1440p device, the new Mate 30 Pro reduces the resolution. The 20 Pro was plagued by display issues both in panel quality as well as power efficiency due to a suboptimal implementation which did end up being quite a big deal breaker for the phone. This year, Huawei decided to go back to their usual 1080p resolution for the 30 Pro, although to be exact, the resolution is in fact 2400 x 1176.

The reason for the odd resolution is the display’s form-factor. Although the device itself is quite similar in size to the Mate 20 Pro (more on that later), the screen size is increased from 6.39” to 6.53”. But this isn’t your usual increase we’ve seen from other phones which was mostly due to an elongation of the aspect ratio – for the Mate 30 Pro, the aspect ratio of the panel itself actually goes down from 19.5:9 to 18.4:9, meaning it’s wider. But the phone isn’t actually much wider, the feature that distinguishes the Mate 30 Pro from other devices is the fact that its screen is curved on its sides to an almost complete 90° angle.

This design choice is definitely the phone’s defining feature and what Huawei would like people to associate the Mate 30 Pro with. While I’ve tried to get used to the design and tried to find positives about it, after several weeks I’ve come to the conclusion that Huawei’s design gamble here has been pretty much a complete miss, and the reasons for that seem to be merely technical and related to the rest of the design, rather than a fault of the curved display itself.

The most jarring aspect of the new Mate 30 Pro design is the ergonomics of the phone. In order to implement the curved screen, Huawei had to make a choice of a certain curvature radius that was reasonable in terms of actually managing to still display content. You can’t make the radius too small in this regard, but you also cannot make it too large as then you’re then encountering the issue of the thickness of the phone and how you’ll be designing the backside of the side frame. While the Mate 20 Pro and the P30 Pro were both symmetrical in their front and back curvatures, the Mate 30 Pro’s front curvature is of a lot larger radius than the back curvature, creating a very weird feeling asymmetrical design.

Because the screen is curved nearly 90° onto the edge of the phone, this means that the metal frame isn’t located in the middle of what would constitute the frame, but rather is pushed further towards the backside of the device. This also creates a “lip” that slightly protrudes out of the front and back glass, and because it’s located towards the backside of the phone, it’s a lot more noticeable in hand than say any other phone which has a flatter front glass but a more curved back glass. In fact, if you simply flip the Mate 30 Pro around, it’s suddenly a much more comfortable device to hold, but that’s really a way to use a phone now is it?

Victims of the curved design are the volume buttons which have now been completely eliminated from the phone. You now can bring up the software volume slider by double tapping either side the phone where the volume buttons would usually be located. The power button is still there, but due to the frame being pushed towards the back of the phone, is also located in a bit of an unusual location.

I might sound a bit overzealous on this aspect of the phone and maybe am a bit too negative and harsh, but for me the ergonomics of a phone are quite important and in this regard the Mate 30 Pro feels like a step backwards from the Mate 20 Pro and the P30 Pro.

The other negative aspect of the curved screen isn’t related to the ergonomics, but is more of a technical issue. Unfortunately, it seems that Huawei is again using a panel from either LG or BOE, and like the Mate 20 Pro last year, there’s one stand-out characteristic on the phone compared to other OLED device with panels from Samsung: worse viewing angles. Like the Mate 20 Pro, it’s quite immediately noticeable on the Mate 30 Pro that the phone’s display exhibits worse than usual colour and brightness shifts than usual from other OLED phones. While on the Mate 20 Pro I said that one could possibly get used to it, on the Mate 30 Pro the characteristic is a lot more noticeable thanks to the more drastic curvature of the screen.

The characteristic is noticeable in bright conditions, but especially in lower light conditions, and when viewing the phone from the side this can be excruciatingly visible as a bright stripe which is quite distracting. Everybody has their own subjective tastes, but I think I’ve made it clear that I’m not too big a fan of the Mate 30 Pro’s screen design choices.

There’s been a big change in the front design of the phone, especially the notch area. There’s still a notch which houses the cameras and various sensors, but this year Huawei has been able to get rid of the earpiece speaker and integrate it under the screen via a vibration motor that vibrates the screen, turning it into a speaker membrane. There’s no stereo audio playback here for general media.

This change allows the phone to recoup more notification area as things were quite cramped with the Mate 20 Pro’s wide notch. Aside from the narrower notch, the phone’s corners are also a lot less curved, allowing icons nearer to the edges of the phone. Naturally the less curved corners mean that the phone feels boxier than its predecessors, which again for me constitutes as a regression in terms of the ergonomics of the device.

The back of the phone has seen a larger redesign, which is a bit odd given what Huawei had promised last year. For the Mate 20 Pro Huawei had proclaimed it wanted to make the square camera cut-out design a defining feature of the Mate series that people would instantly recognize. Well this year the square is a circle, and the triple-camera setup becomes a quad-camera setup.

The flash has been relocated to the side of the phone, and the new dual LEDs are a lot stronger than what we’ve seen on the Mate 20 Pro.

In regards to the cameras, the main sensor remains the same 40MP RYYB unit we’ve seen on the P30 series, and maintains an f/1.6 aperture. The telephoto is a 8MP 3x zoom factor in relation to the main camera and seemingly the same setup as on the Mate 20 Pro and regular P30.

The big new camera addition for this generation was the addition of a 40MP super-wide-angle module. The new sensor is a native 3:2 unit and promises to be optimised for video recording, as well as promising ultra-high framerate video capture up to 7680fps – although this latter feature is mostly a software trick done through interpolation. Finally, there’s a fourth camera module which Huawei just describes as serving as a 3D depth camera.

The top and bottom of the phone adopts a similar flat design introduced with the P30 series which is relatively unique. Huawei this year opted to go for an actual speaker grill for the bottom firing main speaker instead of reusing the USB-C port as a speaker vent. While I mentioned the Mate 30 Pro is a similar form factor as the Mate 20 Pro, it’s not exactly the same, as it is 0.8mm wider and 0.2mm thicker. It’s also 9g heavier at 198g, but manages to integrate a quite large 4400mAh rated / 4500mAh typical battery, a 5% increase over last year’s model.

Overall, if it wasn’t blatantly obvious until now, I’m a bit sceptical about the Mate 30 Pro’s design. I do highly recommend trying to get an initial first-hand experience of the phone to evaluate its unique design before considering to it for purchase, as I don’t think it’ll be something that fits everybody’s tastes.

The Kirin 990 SoC

The Kirin 990 is an unusual SoC this year for the fact that there’s two variants of the chip. Huawei and HiSilicon have opted to hedge their bets in terms of silicon manufacturing with TSMC and create two versions of the chipset: The regular 4G variant is created using the existing TSMC N7 manufacturing process which was also used for the previous generation Kirin 980 processor, whilst the 5G variant of the Kirin 990 is a completely altogether different chip using TSMC’s new N7+ manufacturing node which uses EUV lithography.

Huawei Kirin 990 Family
AnandTech	Kirin 990 5G	Kirin 990 (4G)	Kirin 980	Kirin 970
CPU	2xA76 @2.86G 2xA76 @2.36G 4xA55 @1.95G	2xA76 @2.86G 2xA76 @2.09G 4xA55 @1.86G	2xA76 @2.60G 2xA76 @1.92G 4xA55 @1.80G	4xA73 @2.36G 4xA53 @1.80G
GPU	G76MP16 600MHz	G76MP16 600 MHz	G76MP10 720 MHz	G72MP12 850 MHz
NPU	2 + 1 Da Vinci	1 + 1 Da Vinci	2 Cambricon	1 Cambricon
Modem	Balong 5G	4G	4G	4G
DRAM	LPDDR4-4266 + LLC	LPDDR4-4266 + LLC	LPDDR4X-4266	LPDDR4X-3733
Die Size	113.31 mm2	~90 mm2	74.13 mm2	96.72 mm2
Transistors	10.3b	~8.0b	6.9b	5.5b
Mfc. Process	N7+	N7	N7	10FF

Although the two chipsets are two different pieces of silicon, going as far as needed different physical designs due to rule incompatibility between the N7 and N7+ nodes, the two chipsets still essentially share a lot of common features and are very similar to each other in terms of the IP they use.

Both chips follow a 2+2+4 CPU cluster setup, with two high performance A76 cores clocking in at 2.86GHz, two mid-performance cores clocking in at 2.09GHz on the 4G variant and 2.36GHz on the 5G variant, and four Cortex A55 cores at 1.86GHz for 4G and 1.95GHz for the 5G chipset. HiSilicon continues to employ a 4MB L3 cache in for the cluster.

On the GPU side, the chip uses a very large implementation of the Mali G76. At 16 cores, it’s the largest configuration of this GPU we’ve seen, and is clocked in at 600MHz.

Another auxiliary IP difference between the two variants is the fact that the 5G version employs a stronger NPU. We find a dual-core variant of the new DaVinci microarchitecture, while the 4G chipset makes due with a single core version of the IP.

Naturally, the single biggest difference between the 4G and 5G variants is implied in the names of the parts: The 5G variant comes with an additional 5G modem that isn’t found in the 4G version.

Die shot source: TechInsights - Labelling & Custom contrast: AnandTech

TechInsights has published the die shot of the new Kirin 990 5G and we took a closer look at the IP blocks that we can identify. Unfortunately, while there isn’t a public die shot of the Kirin 990 4G out there, we did have a chance to have a look at it and cross-compare the differences to the 5G version in order to better pin-point blocks such as the NPU and modem.

The Kirin 990 5G comes in at 113.31mm² which isn’t actually too big considering that HiSilicon is dedicating a lot of area to the massive GPU as well as the bigger NPU this generation. The CPU cluster at the middle of the SoC is self-explanatory and we’re able to identify the A76 as well as A55 cores. It’s interesting to see that the approach of using the same CPU IP for the “big” and “middle” cores in fact doesn’t really result in much of a physical size difference between the two groups – the biggest differences here are purely in the transistor-level implementation. This comes in contrast to Qualcomm’s 1+3 CPU configuration where the one performance cores is actually larger than the remaining three cores, partly due to the doubled L2 cache.

The DaVinci NPU would have been hard to identify weren’t it for the fact that we saw similar block structures on the 4G and 5G variants- with the difference that the 5G variant has two identical adjacent blocks while the 4G variant only has one. It’s a quite sizeable piece of the SoC so it does show that the company puts a lot of investment into AI.

The modem was the trickiest part to identify – the highlighted labelling and blocks in the image above is just my best estimate of what’s seen on the SoC. The 4G variant of the SoC completely lacks the block labelled as the 5G modem, so just by pure elimination of other possibilities we have to come to the conclusion that this is indeed the modem IP. The block is roughly a little over 15mm² in size, which while sizeable in terms of a SoC block, isn’t all that big in the grand scheme of things, especially when compared to discrete modem sizes in excess of 50-60mm².

The oddity here is that I still believe that there’s two modem subsystems and that the 4G modem as presented on the 4G Kirin 990 is still present on the 5G variant. While relocated in position, the marked group of IP must be the 4G modem IP as there’s no other difference between the 4 and 5G variants of the chip; the 5G variant merely adds in more IP blocks rathe than changing things around too much. The only major lackings on the 5G version is that I’m identifying far less interface I/O to what I believe are PCIe PHYs. Possibly because this variant of the chip has a 5G modem integrated, there’s no practical need for these additional lanes.

Finally, a big important addition to the Kirin 990 is the adoption of a new last level cache, or how we like to call it, a system level cache. The block can be identified at the centre of the chip and judging by the physical size, is 3-4MB large. HiSilicon this year is said to have paid a lot of attention to the memory subsystem and improved is performance quite a lot.

If we look at the memory latency results of the CPU, we indeed see that the company has been able shave off ~10ns of latency and achieve sub-100ns memory latency, making the new chip the fastest (Along with the Exynos 9820) in this regard, although Apple’s large caches are a different beast altogether.

It’s to be noted that we don’t see the SLC cache in the CPU’s memory latency results, evidently HiSilicon is bypassing the cache on the high-performance CPUs in order to get better latency to DRAM. We weren’t able to confirm if the middle or little cores have access to the SLC – I imagine they do as that’s also how Samsung and Qualcomm have implemented their power management policies for their SLCs.

Given that the SoC doesn’t contain any new IP, we’ll spare the readers the effort of going into detailed SPEC results. However, the overview is still interesting to look at in terms of the results. As a reminder, this is the 4G variant of the Kirin 990 which uses the same manufacturing node as the Kirin 980, as well as the same CPU IP. The differences between the two chips is the improved physical design that HiSilicon was able to implement, as well as differences of the new memory subsystem.

The overall improvements here are quite impressive – the new chip sports higher performance all whilst using less energy and power. The interesting thing here is that most of these improvements in efficiency aren’t due to the better CPU implementation; there’s definitely improvements here, but they are vastly overshadowed by the improvements we’re seeing in the memory subsystem. Benchmarks which have little memory pressure and thus mostly reside on the CPU caches have the smallest improvements in terms of energy efficiency, whilst the big memory heavy benchmarks such as 429.mcf or 462.libquantum are seeing perf/W improvements of up to 27% due to both very large performance improvements as well as actual lower power usage.

So whilst HiSilicon wasn’t able to implement the new Cortex A77 CPU IP this year into the Kirin 990, the new chip shouldn’t be mistaken as simply having the same or similar performance to the Kirin 980 or Snapdragon 855 just because they have the same A76 CPU IP. The new chip is definitely faster and more efficient than the predecessors.

System Performance

We’ve seen that the new Kirin 990 does in fact still pack quite a bit of punch in regards to the CPUs due to the new memory subsystem, so now the question is how this translates into overall system performance. The Mate 30 Pro ships with Android 10 (technically, AOSP 10), so it should be an interesting comparison.

As with other Huawei devices over the last year, we’re testing the chip in its “High performance” mode in the battery settings as this is the equivalent to the intended performance of the chip, and the default state of the phone is more of a light battery saving mode. This is in contrast to some other Chinese vendor’s High Performance modes which is more akin to a cheating mode for benchmarks.

In the web browsing test, the Mate 30 Pro here fares slightly worse than the Kirin 980 devices. I haven’t seen evidence that the Kirin 990 is scaling slower than the Kirin 980, so the differences here might be related to the new memory subsystem. If the A55 cores indeed have access to the SLC, this would mean there would also be a larger latency penalty to DRAM, and it possibly might be a reason why PCMark’s rather light web browsing test is sensitive to performance changes here.

We’ve seen the video test to be quite outdated here and mostly related to very fine scaling behaviours as well as screen refresh rates.

The Writing sub-test is the most important in the whole suite as it’s post representative of real world performance, and here the Mate 30 Pro’s performance is simply a step ahead of every other phone in the market, showcasing a similar large step-increase as we’ve seen in some of the memory bound benchmarks in SPEC.

The Photo Editing scores are also significantly better for the new phone, although due to the workload being a RenderScript task, we’re not sure if this is due to Android 10 or changes in the software stack or DVFS of the GPU of the new phone. In any case, the new results are excellent and just slightly ahead of the best Snapdragon 855 devices. It’ll be interesting to see Kirin 980 devices here once they’ve been updates with the new OS and if that improves the scores in any way.

Data Manipulation test scores are again quite high, although the differences to other phones is smaller here.

Overall in PCMark, the Mate 30 Pro takes the top spot amongst all Android devices, which given that it’s the phone with the strongest hardware to date, isn’t too surprising.

Web Benchmarks

Oddly enough, the phone didn’t do too well in the web benchmarks, sometimes falling behind the Kirin 980. I don’t believe this would be due to the hardware, but rather to maybe some software issues with the BSP and Android 10. Over the last few months I’ve seen some odd changes in WebView performance in recent updates across a larger swath of phones, some showing degradations. It’s definitely something I would blame on Google rather than Huawei in this case.

System Performance Conclusion

Overall, the Mate 30 Pro has been for me visibly the fastest Android device to date. It’s quite noticeable that it shows more responsiveness than any other device this year and is ahead of other fast devices such as the Galaxy S10 or the Pixel 4. Huawei definitely did a good job here and I think it’s one of the Mate 30 Pro’s strong points.

GPU Performance & Power

In terms of 3D gaming and GPU performance, we expect the Kirin 990 and the Mate 30 Pro to do quite well. The GPU itself is not only a large step up from the MP10 configuration on the Kirin 980, but also larger than Samsung’s Exynos 9820 MP12 implementation. Huawei also claimed to be able to achieve better performance than the Snapdragon 855, which seems quite plausible. The remaining question is how power efficiency ends up and how the Mate 30 Pro’s thermal management is able to sustain the performance of the chipset for prolonged durations.

On the 3DMark Physics test which is actually a CPU benchmark within a 3D workload, we see that the Mate 30 Pro is showcasing some extremely high results, actually taking the top spot amongst all devices in the market. The benchmark should be mainly memory intensive and the Cortex A76’s strong prefetchers as well as the Kirin 990’s strong memory subsystem would be a possible explanation for the top performance results.

Switching over to the graphics workload, the Mate 30 Pro makes a very large leap compared to previous generation Huawei flagships, but falls short of some of the better Snapdragon 855 devices as well as Apple’s newest iPhone 11 lineup.

In GFXBench Aztec, the Mate 30 Pro takes an ever so slight lead ahead of Snapdragon 855 devices, but still falls short of Apple’s new architectures.

GFXBench Aztec High Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm	N7P	26.14	3.83	6.82 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak	N7P	34.00	6.21	5.47 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Warm	N7	19.32	3.81	5.07 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak	N7	26.59	5.56	4.78 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	16.50	3.96	4.16 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	16.17	4.69	3.44 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	15.59	4.80	3.24 fps/W

The power characteristics of the chip are quite good and clearly a step ahead of both the Snapdragon 855 and Exynos 9820, sporting higher performance as well as lower absolute power.

GFXBench Aztec Normal Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm	N7P	73.27	4.07	18.00 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak	N7P	91.62	6.08	15.06 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Warm	N7	55.70	3.88	14.35 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak	N7	76.00	5.59	13.59 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	41.68	4.01	10.39 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	40.63	4.14	9.81 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	40.18	4.62	8.69 fps/W

We see similar results in the Normal 1080p variant of the benchmark.

GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm	N7P	100.58	4.21	23.89 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak	N7P	123.54	6.04	20.45 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Warm	N7	76.51	3.79	20.18 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak	N7	103.83	5.98	17.36 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	75.69	5.04	15.01 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	70.67	4.88	14.46 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	68.87	5.10	13.48 fps/W
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845)	10LPP	61.16	5.01	11.99 fps/W
Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980)	N7	54.54	4.57	11.93 fps/W
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810)	10LPP	46.04	4.08	11.28 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835)	10LPE	38.90	3.79	10.26 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895)	10LPE	42.49	7.35	5.78 fps/W

In Manhattan 3.1, what does change is that the device’s power usage goes up from 4 to 5W. Such a change usually happens when the GPU and SoC is able to achieve a higher utilisation of the silicon. Still, it’s slightly ahead of the Snapdragon 855 in terms of performance and efficiency.

GFXBench T-Rex Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm	N7P	289.03	4.78	60.46 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak	N7P	328.90	5.93	55.46 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Warm	N7	197.80	3.95	50.07 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak	N7	271.86	6.10	44.56 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	167.16	4.10	40.70 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro  (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	152.27	4.34	35.08 fps/W
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845)	10LPP	150.40	4.42	34.00 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	166.00	4.96	33.40fps/W
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810)	10LPP	141.91	4.34	32.67 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835)	10LPE	108.20	3.45	31.31 fps/W
Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980)	N7	135.75	4.64	29.25 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895)	10LPE	121.00	5.86	20.65 fps/W

Finally, in T-Rex, the results are in line with the Snapdragon 855, although this time around it doesn’t manage to pass the competitor.

Overall, the Kirin 990 and the Mate 30 Pro are good performers. In general, I’d say Huawei and HiSilicon were able to match and sometimes slightly beat the Snapdragon 855 in terms of performance all while maintaining good efficiency. In my prolonged testing I saw the phone max out at a peak skin temperature of 45°C which wasn’t too bad. What was odd though is that this hotspot was very pronounced towards the top side of the phone’s frame – so when you’re gaming in landscape mode this going to be always touching your palm or fingers when holding the phone.

Whilst the results are good in context of the competition this year, there’s the issue that we expect the next generation of Snapdragon and Exynos devices to easily be able to top the Kirin 990, and of course it’s still far behind what Apple devices are able to showcase in terms of performance as the A12 and A13 were able to sport outstanding generational increases.

Display Measurement

The display of the Mate 30 Pro is its most important feature (isn’t it for most phones?), and Huawei did some odd choices in terms of both design as well as hardware this year. I’ve covered the design choices in the introduction and fair to say I’m not too big a fan of the side curved display as it doesn’t work well ergonomically nor does it look well with Huawei’s choice of display panel. Although we weren’t able to confirm if the display is an LG or BOE panel, it’s definitely not a Samsung panel as it has issues in regards to colour shift on off-axis viewing angles.

Huawei this year also opted to downgrade the screen resolution from 1440p of the Mate 20 Pro to 1080p (well, 1176p), which does come with a notable reduction in screen sharpness, which is a pity given the device's price tag.

In terms of colour calibration and modes, we have the usual selection of a choice between a “Normal” sRGB target and a “Vivid” P3 gamut target, with three colour temperature presets which are fully customisable through a colour palette selector. Unfortunately, I didn’t see colour management working at all on the Mate 30 Pro, so Huawei is definitely behind other vendors this year (Android as a whole is quite far behind Apple to be honest).

We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the Mate 30 Pro screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using Portrait Display's CalMAN software.

In terms of maximum brightness, the Mate 30 Pro is quite conservative and we don’t see brightness levels exceeding 437 nits. Unlike the Samsung panels in the P30 series, the Mate 30 Pro doesn’t look like it has any brightness boost mode when under adaptive brightness as the maximum doesn’t change no matter the ambient light.

 
Portrait Display CalMAN

Greyscale accuracy of the Mate 30 Pro isn’t too bad. Gamma is generally ok, with an ever so slight shift with too high gamma at the medium intensity levels, meaning shades are slightly darker. Colour temperature is a bit too warm on our unit, and this error actually increases the higher the brightness setting, with 6281K at 200nits and a low 6099K at maximum brightness. This results in the screen appearing to have a red tint.

Portrait Display CalMAN

The dE2000 results end up middle of the pack; the phone unfortunately ends up being quite worse than the Mate 20 Pro as well as slightly worse than the P30 Pro in terms of accuracy.

Portrait Display CalMAN

sRGB accuracy in the “Normal” mode isn’t very good. We’re seeing noticeable hue shits in the spectrum, especially in greens. The saturation and luminosity is also off-target as tones are too bright / undersaturated. The resulting dE2000 is quite bad, which sadly enough is in line with what we saw on the P30 Pro as well as the Mate 20’s.

Portrait Display CalMAN

While the score of the Mate 30 Pro is really bad in the P3 measurements, most of the errors here is due to the wildly blue default colour temperature. Hues in this mode are actually more accurate than the sRGB mode, once of course you customize the colour temperature to more accurate levels.

Portrait Display CalMAN

Portrait Display CalMAN

In the GMB test in the Normal mode again the biggest errors are exhibited in the chromacity and hue of some tones, being a bit undersaturated as well as having hue issues in the green tones. The overall result is still acceptable and useable.

Screen Conclusion – Very Mediocre For a 1100€ Phone

The worse than usual viewing angles of the display, lower than expected resolution, low peak brightness, lower colour accuracy, no colour management all make this an extremely mediocre display for what is supposed to be a flagship device from Huawei. Unfortunately, we’ve seen the issue repeated again and again and frankly I don’t understand why vendors would opt to chose second-rate panels from LG or BOE in their flagship devices. If you’re going to build a 1100€ phone like the Mate 30 Pro, you should at least go all the way and source the highest quality panels you can get, as otherwise you’ll end up with a deal-breaker scenario for your product. The Mate 30 Pro’s screen is very underwhelming and given the phone’s price, is a deal breaker for me.

Battery Life

The Mate 30 Pro comes with a quite large battery measuring at 4400mAh rated / 4500mAh typical. This is 5% larger than its predecessor, and the new phone also comes with a new more efficient SoC. The question of how the new phone will end up in the battery charts is largely dependent on how its new screen will behave, and if it’s going to be nearly as efficient as some of the new generation Samsung panels we’ve seen employed in the new Galaxy and iPhones this year.

Starting off with the web browsing test, we do see the Mate 30 Pro edge out the Mate 20 Pro by 18% and achieving a good battery life result of 11.75 hours. While in absolute terms of a good result, it doesn’t manage to keep up with the more efficient devices from Samsung and Apple. Whilst the Mate 30 Pro has a good base power consumption of ~420mW, the screen panel’s luminosity efficiency doesn’t seem to have improved much compared to last year’s model, and this results in the Mate 30 Pro falling behind even though it has a bigger battery and more efficient SoC.

PCMark is more a heavier compute workload which puts more stress on the SoC and less on the display panel due to the lower APL, and here the Mate 30 Pro actually fares very well, landing in as amongst the most efficient devices. Keeping in mind that the performance exhibited here is excellent, the Kirin 990 does really make the phone shine.

The overall conclusion for battery life is that there’s two aspects to the phone. The phone itself is extremely efficient and sports a very large battery, however it’s hampered by a quite inefficient screen. This is a scenario where battery life will differ a lot depending on how you use your phone – if you’re the type of person using it outside at maximum brightness a lot of times, then the Mate 30 Pro won’t fare as well as the competition. If you’re using it more extensively at lower brightness levels, the inefficiency of the display will impact battery life less and here the phone’s excellent internal hardware will outpace other devices by greater margins.

Camera - Daylight Evaluation

The Mate 30 Pro camera is both boring as well as exciting in terms of what it offers. The boring part is that the main camera sensor as well as telephoto modules don’t differ from what we’ve seen in the P30 – there’s still a 40MP RYYB sensor which promises to be optimised for low-light captures, and the 3x telephoto module should be pretty competitive and represent a balanced implementation between the traditional 2x units as well as the more compromising prism-based 5x telephoto modules.

The exciting part of the new camera system is the fact that we’re seeing a brand-new ultra-wide-angle camera module at coming in at 40MP. This is a regular Bayer colour filter sensor and also a brand-new sensor we haven’t seen employed before. Huawei did sacrifice some of the field-of-view capabilities of the optics in order to implement the new sensor and as such it’s not quite as wide as other UWA cameras out there. Resolution also took a hit as in the usual capturing mode the camera will be producing 10MP pictures – down from 16MP that we saw in previous high-end Huawei flagships.

A wildcard in the whole evaluation will be the new Kirin 990’s processing abilities and how Huawei has been able to calibrate the cameras on the new chipset platform.

[ Mate 30 Pro     ] - [ P30 Pro     ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4    ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Starting off with the first scene, let’s first look at the difference in processing between the Mate 30 Pro and the P30 Pro. We first note that the Mate 30 Pro is producing a brighter picture, but that’s actually a good aspect as it was a clear sky with the sun out in the scene. I would even say that it’s still a bit dark as highlights such as the white façade of the building on the left even though it’s in direct sunlight has very suppressed highlights – there’s very little content in the last 10% of brightness of the scene. Overall, it looks like a different HDR implementation with differences in tone-mapping.

Another big difference between the two is in the details: The Mate 30 Pro has much higher fidelity in the details and the textures are a lot more naturally sharp as a result. In fact, this was one of the gripes I had with the P30’s new camera sensor and I wasn’t sure if it was something to blame on the sensor or rather Huawei’s processing. The Mate 30 Pro here proves that it was an issue of the processing rather than the hardware.

Switching over to the wide-angle, the one thing that immediately is apparent is the colour temperature. It’s just too warm and it’s being just inaccurate.

Dynamic range compared to other UWA modules from both Huawei and the competition is just vastly superior as we’re seeing better shadow retention. In terms of detail, although it’s a resolution downgrade, the actual spatial resolution of elements being captured in the scene is by far the highest on the Mate 30 Pro. Other phones have to make due with smaller sensors and here the Mate 30 Pro just wins out by brute force.

The reduced viewing angle isn’t too large in the horizontal plane, however it’s very notable that the camera cuts off a lot of content in the vertical due to its native 16:9 sensor aspect ratio.

[ Mate 30 Pro     ] - [ P30 Pro     ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] -  [ Pixel 4    ] 
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

In the next shot, I like the Mate 30 Pro’s handling of the highlights of the leaves in the trees as they’re brighter and more accurate to the scene, however the tone mapping of some of the other textures in the scene seem a bit off and flat. Detail again is excellent thanks to not having a sharpening filter being applied.

The wide angle is again excellent, although this time around it’s more of a die in terms of detail between the new sensor and the P30 Pro’s 20MP unit.

 [ Mate 30 Pro     ] - [ P30 Pro     ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4    ] 
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

This shot again exhibits the HDR difference between the two Huawei phones. The Mate 30 Pro’s shot is a bit brighter and has better dynamic range, but also is a bit flatter on textures and isn’t able to bring out quite as much contrast compared to the local tone mapping of the P30 Pro.

Detail again is a massive win on the Mate 30 Pro as no applying sharpening results in a much more natural looking pictures and we’re seeing a lot more detail in the leaves of the trees.

The wide angle in terms of processing is similar to the P30 Pro, but has again more details albeit in a more limited picture frame.

[ Mate 30 Pro    ] - [ P30 Pro    ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] -  [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

In challenging scenes such as when shooting with the sun in the frame, the phone’s HDR limitations are more visible and we’re not seeing too much differences to the P30. The pictures are a bit darker even and the phones still fall behind Samsung’s wider dynamic range implementation.

The UWA’s details are ahead of any other such module, but falls behind in terms of dynamic range and colours, with Samsung still being considerably better in this regard.

[ Mate 30 Pro     ] - [ P30 Pro    ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

The dynamic range improves a bit on the Mate 30 Pro, but again falls behind some of the newer phones such as the iPhone 11 which has amongst the best shots of this challenging scene.

The UWA’s shot is excellent and again ups the bar in terms of what we’re seeing from modules of this class. I do find it a pity that the viewing angles are a bit more limited now.

[ Mate 30 Pro    ] - [ P30 Pro    ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4   ] 
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

In easier scenarios such as shooting away from the sun, the Mate 30 Pro behaves more similar to the P30 Pro and other phones. Big difference against the predecessor flagship is the detail which is maintained on the Mate 30 Pro.

[ Mate 30 Pro    ] - [ P30 Pro    ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ]

Comparing the Mate 30 Pro’s shot against any other phone the biggest strength is again the near pixel-perfect sharpness and retention of details that is far ahead of any other phone. The HDR and local tone-mapping feels a little flatter in some elements such as the pavement, but I’m not sure if I should see this a more natural look or if it’s simply making things flatter than they should be.

This is also visible in the wide-angle camera where I would actually prefer the P30 Pro’s processing as it’s able to better maintain highlights of the scene, giving the pavement more texture and depth.

 [ Mate 30 Pro    ] - [ P30 Pro    ]
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4    ]
 [ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Excellent detail showing by the Huawei phone, but yet again I feel like there’s an aspect of flatness in the picture as the local tone-mapping is being too linear. Comparing the shot to the iPhone 11 I feel like Huawei is losing notion of depth, particularly visible in the road’s curvature as well as in the grass on the right.

[ Mate 30 Pro     ] - [ P30 Pro    ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] -  [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Next shot is challenging colour temperature wise for a lot of phones. The Mate 30 Pro is more gray than the P30 Pro and this is actually a mistake for the new phone. Where the phone again shines is in terms of detail as it’s by far the best performing device out of the comparison lineup. Dynamic range is also excellent.

This is a scene where the new UWA’s sensor did fantastically and the amount of detail captured is far above that of any other phone. Colour temperature and exposure are excellent.

[ Mate 30 Pro    ] - [ P30 Pro    ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] -  [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Not too big differences in exposure for indoor shots compared to the P30 Pro. The Mate did fare better with the more accurate colder colour temperature, and again much better details.

The UWA is excellent, however it’s in scenes like these where you’ll be missing having the more vertical space of a 4:3 sensor instead of the more cut-off 16:9 aspect ratio of the Mate 30 Pro’s unit, so while not being as detailed or as good dynamic range, I would prefer having the P30 Pro’s module here.

[ Mate 30 Pro    ] - [ P30 Pro    ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Here we see another aspect of the relatively too aggressive tone-mapping of the HDR on the Mate 30 Pro. We see it flattening some of the highlights in the cauliflower heads making them appear to lose depth, something we saw in most of the scenes in the comparisons today.

Camera Daylight Conclusion

Overall the camera performance of the Mate 30 Pro in daylight is excellent, albeit it has a few hiccups here and there.

On the main camera, we’re seeing a few changes compared to the P30 series even though it’s the same camera sensor. Huawei had done away with the sharpening processing that was present on those models, reverting back and actually beating the detail retention we saw on the Mate 20 Pro. In fact, the new detail retention we’re seeing on the Mate 30 Pro is pretty much outstanding and the best we’re seeing on any smartphone camera out there today.

The change to a new SoC and ISP did see some changes in the processing style of the new photos. Sometimes it’s similar to the P30, but more often than not I feel like it just looks flatter. The tone-mapping of highlights is a tad too aggressive and this results in textures being less pronounced and objects sometimes losing depth. In general, I can’t say that HDR has improved all too much this generation for Huawei – Samsung still has more raw dynamic range and Apple has the best and most balanced approach.

The new ultra-wide-angle module is a step-function increase in capture quality compared to previous generation modules. Whilst Huawei’s 20MP UWA unit was amongst the best in terms of detail in the past, the new 40MP sensor beats it even though it produces 10MP images now, and the rest of the competition can’t really keep up either. The negative of the new sensor however is that it’s a smaller field-of-view than before. The horizontal reduction isn’t too bad, but because it’s now a 3:2 instead of a 4:3 sensor it means framing in the vertical is a lot more limited now.

The 3x telephoto module is in line with what we’ve seen in the past, it has a bit limited dynamic range sometimes, but detail is excellent and short of the 5x telephoto units out there, is ahead of any other 2x unit and beats even software trickery by phones such as the Pixel 4.

The Mate 30 Pro camera is very competitive, although I wished some bigger improvements this year in terms of the HDR processing capabilities.

Camera - Low Light Evaluation

Low-light performance of the Mate 30 Pro should be pretty straightforward. Huawei has been in the leading position for over 2 years now thanks to its raw hardware capabilities and big custom sensors. I expect the Mate 30 pro to continue to hold on to the lead, but let’s see if there’s been any changes in the processing with the new SoC.

[ Mate 30 Pro       ] - [ P30 Pro       ] 
[ S10+ (S) ] - [ S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4     ] 
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

In the regular shooting mode, we’re seeing that the characteristic of the new phone not applying a degrading sharpening filter also applies to low light photography, and the Mate 30 Pro is able to achieve much better detail than the P30.

We also see that the tone mapping has improved slightly, there’s a bit more depth in the lightning on the building and walkway which was flattened out on the P30.

Switching on Night mode which makes use of image stacking, we lose details in the shot, but do make it brighter with better dynamic range. The night shot differences to the P30 here are extremely minor.

Using the new UWA in low-light, we’re presented with a whole new view of the world. Where previous generation UWA modules completely failed at low-light, the Mate 30 Pro is able to breeze through the scenario without much of a sweat and produces an outstanding result. There’s no other phone that can keep up with it.

[ Mate 30 Pro       ] - [ P30 Pro       ] 
[ S10+ (S) ] - [ S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4     ] 
[ G8X ]

On the next scene there’s a very big change in colour temperature, and unfortunately the Mate 30 Pro got it wrong this time around as the more orange look of the P30 was the actual representation of the scene with the sodium lamps. While the colours are wrong, again the detail retention of the Mate 30 Pro is outstanding, although the Pixel 4’s Night Sight as well as the iPhone 11 with deep fusion are competitive with it.

The ultra-wide-angle is accurate in its colour temperature, and again it’s leagues ahead of the competition in all aspects of picture quality.

[ Mate 30 Pro       ] - [ P30 Pro       ] 
[ S10+ (S) ] - [ S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4     ] 
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

In the next scene we see a bit better dynamic range on the part of the Mate 30 Pro compared to the P30 Pro, retaining better gradients and also better shadow detail on the background building for example.

Using night mode loses out in terms of detail, but improves light capture in the darkest parts of the scene.

One odd thing I need to note, is that for some reason using night mode on the ultra-wide-angle crops the picture to a 4:3 frame, losing out the sides. I would also argue the usefulness of the feature on the Mate 30 Pro as it introduces a lot of blur.

[ Mate 30 Pro       ] - [ P30 Pro     ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4     ] 
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Going into lower light scenarios, the Mate 30 Pro is still excellent and a top performer, but here we see phones such as the Pixel 4 able to catch up in terms of light capture and detail. Huawei’s Night mode by now looks relatively flat in comparison. Of course, without the computational photography, the Huawei devices are still far ahead due to sheer sensor power.

This sensor power is again exhibited by the ultra-wide-angle, which although this time isn’t doing well in terms of focus and detail, is still ahead of the competition.

[ Mate 30 Pro       ] - [ P30 Pro     ] 
[ Galaxy S10+(S) ] - [Galaxy S10+(E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4   ] 
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Not too big difference to the P30 here. The phone is faring very well. The ultra-wide-angle again leads the pack ahead of other devices.

[ Mate 30 Pro     ] - [ P30 Pro     ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] -  [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Oddly enough the Mate 30 Pro had trouble focusing on this scene and all my shots with the main camera ended up being out of focus and blurry which is a pity.

On the UWA, it’s actually better to stay in the regular shooting mode rather than using the night mode as the latter is actually a degradation. The ISO51200 of the sensor in the regular mode is able to get better results than the image stacking of ISO1600 pictures in night mode.

[ Mate 30 Pro   ] - [ P30 Pro   ] 
[ Galaxy S10+ (S) ] - [ Galaxy S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4   ]
[ G8X ] - [ Xperia 1 ]

Indoors in very dim light again for some reason the Mate 30 Pro end up blurrier than the P30 Pro. This isn’t exhibited by the Night mode shot which is similar in result to its sibling but does have better colour temperature. The results here are the best of any smartphone.

Low-Light Conclusion

Overall, we expected the Mate 30 Pro to fare extremely well in low-light, and that’s exactly how the phone ended up performing.

Huawei’s raw sensor strength is maintained this generation, and the phone’s picture capture quality has been improved in the regular shooting mode with better details and better dynamic range processing. Night mode is largely similar to what we’ve seen in the P30 Pro – but now sometimes actually isn’t as good detail-wise as the regular shooting mode as it’s not able to preserve as much details. The Pixel 4 Night Sight and iPhone 11 are the only phones able to be competitive with the Mate 30 Pro in some scenes.

What’s really a big improvement to the low-light ability of the phone is the new ultra-wide-camera sensor. While it’s not as good as the main sensor in low-light, it’s a massive jump compared to other modules of its class and now makes low-light capture actually viable.

Video Recording

 

Starting off with 4K30 on the main sensor, we notice that the image looks quite flat and lacking contrast. Throughout the various parts of the recording we see that this actually changes quite a bit depending on the lighting. Recording against a brighter background we however see a fundamental limitation of the camera and processing: it’s not able to deal that well with high dynamic range scenarios. The sky is either too blown up, or the foreground is too underexposed.

Zooming in while recording, the phone has issue with balancing exposure correctly and it takes a long time for the telephoto lens to focus, if at all.

Using 60fps recording I feel like the picture quality is actually better. This isn’t because it’s 60fps or somehow the bitrate is higher, in fact the bitrate of the resulting videos is seemingly capped at 28Mbps in the HEVC recording mode, no matter if it’s 30 or 60fps. The 60fps mode looks better because the EIS is disabled and the phone is just better able to hold details.

In the higher rate recording mode, you can only use the sensor with which you start with and not switch around. On the main camera I noted focus issues in this mode as the phone had trouble to autofocus on near objects, either taking a really long time or not doing it at all and requiring a manual tap in the viewfinder.

On the ultra-wide-angle, we see a similar slow focus. This time around, the camera is very slow in focusing out in far objects and takes up to a second to realise it needs to change. At 4K30, image quality in terms of detail is similar to the main camera, which I feel is a bit bitrate bound, the 4K60 footage looks better as less detail is blurred by the EIS.

Unfortunately, the exposure handling in switching between the main camera and the ultra-wide is just quite terrible in the scenes I shot, with extremely uneven exposures and slow switching between the modules.

Huawei always had weaknesses in regards to video recording, but I expected them to be able to achieve more this generation. The Mate 30 Pro just really isn’t competitive with what Samsung and Apple are able to offer in terms of quality.

Speaker Evaluation - Pretty Bad

Speaker quality on the Mate 30 Pro isn’t very high end. The phone only has a single mono bottom firing speaker for media playback – while it does have an under-screen speaker vibrator which uses the display panel as a speaker membrane, this can’t be used for general audio.

In terms of the audio quality of the main speaker, it’s very mediocre. While the unit has good lows, it’s lacking in the higher frequencies and thus sounds quite muted compared to what we’re used to from other flagship devices. It’s also doesn’t get nearly as loud as what we see from the competition, and seemingly is also quieter than what we saw from some previous generation Huawei devices.

Overall, audio quality on the Mate 30 Pro isn’t very up to par. The fact that Huawei still continues to leave out the headphone jack on the more expensive “Pro” models and choosing to integrate it in the regular models such as the Mate 30 still boggles the mind as to what exactly they’re thinking. Well, don’t answer that, I guess the company’s offering of wireless headphones is self-explanatory.

Google Services Missing- #1 Dealbreaker?

Having gone through the most of the hardware aspects of the Mate 30 Pro, the one missing piece of the puzzle that we didn’t cover is the fact that the device is lacking Google’s services out of the box. I’m a bit torn here in regards to trying to evaluate this aspect as there’s a lot of different people who will have different opinions on the matter, and it will highly dependent on whether you consider yourself an enthusiast Android user or whether you just want a phone that works out of the box.

For me, installing the Google services and the Play Store on the Mate 30 Pro was a quick task that was done within 5 minutes upon me receiving the phone. There’s an installation package floating around on the internet which makes use of Huawei’s internal APIs that allows the installer to install the core Google services APK as system applications – and almost everything works completely without issues. The only things missing is that the phone isn’t passing the SafetyNet checks, which means some applications which are relying on this will not work, such as banking apps or Netflix. The application has since been removed from its “official” site, however there are still ways to install it and to get the Google services working.

Now, for people who don’t care tinkering even the slightest bit with their phone, is the lack of Google services and the Google Play store a deal breaker? I would definitely say that yes, it is a deal breaker.

While it’s possible to side-load the vast majority of applications that one uses on a phone, there’s a few core applications that for me would be critical. If not the Google Play store itself, then it would be Google Maps and YouTube. Whilst these are still accessible via browser, they’re not the same streamlined experience as the applications themselves.

The matter of fact here is that the Mate 30 Pro is simply a lesser device without the Google services and core applications. For people who cannot live without these apps, then the Mate 30 Pro isn’t a device for you.

Conclusion & End Remarks

While the Mate 30 Pro missing Google services is an extremely important aspect of the phone, it should be put into context into the grand scheme of things of how the phone performs. If GMS missing is your #1 priority then read no further here as there’s no point in even considering the phone. However, if you don’t care too much about GMS and it’s not an issue for you, the very next question is whether all other aspects of the Mate 30 Pro actually make it a device worth considering?

In terms of design, Huawei wanted to make something very different this year and to differentiate itself from the competition. The Mate 30 Pro achieves this thanks to a bezel-to-bezel screen design which as the display panel and glass curved to the sides to an almost complete 90° angle, making it essentially purely screen from side to side.

Personally, I remain completely unconvinced of the design decision, for purely practical reasons. The biggest I have with the phone is that I feel the ergonomics just don’t work out. The device just feels odd in the hand, with the front of the phone having a larger curvature radius than the back, even though the more natural way of having a phone fit in your hand would be the other way around (Literally, flipping the phone the other way is actually more comfortable).

Huawei’s gesture navigation system always had side-swipe gestures as a thing, but with the new screen design this is now again weirder than before, although Huawei did a very good job in terms of calibrating the edge gesture activations to be accurate and working well.

Alongside the ergonomics of the design, the biggest nit-pick I have is with the viewing angles of the screen and how the curve just manages to draw attention to this fault of the display. When viewing things head-on, it looks fine but show showcase darker edges on the sides – a gradient fading to dark isn’t a bad thing. But when viewing the phone from the side, there’s a very apparent stripe of light that just looks gimmicky and cheap.

The core issue I see is that I just don’t understand the benefits of the design other than Huawei being able to say that they’re amongst the first to adopt it. It’s ergonomically inferior, you don’t have any practical advantages in regards to screen content available on the side of the screen, and the technical limitations due to the panel’s viewing angles make it look half-baked in practice.

The panel’s technical limitations are very much hindering the device from being something more than what it is. Huawei’s choice of regressing on the screen resolution compared to the Mate 20 Pro is akin to an admission the company isn’t able to achieve the feature in a technically correct and efficient manner. The Mate 30 Pro isn’t as sharp as the Mate 20 Pro and that’s just an odd generational change to make. Huawei this year again resorted on a panel from either LG or BOE and this shows in the lackings of the display – it doesn’t get as bright as the competition and doesn’t even get as bright as the Samsung panels on the P30 series. Colour calibration is again very mediocre and Huawei hasn’t improved over the P30 or Mate 20 Pro – some aspects being the same or even worse.

The screen is also hampering the battery life of the phone. Whilst the very large 4400/4500mAh battery of the device does have it land with “good” battery life in our charts, it’s short of what the competition from Samsung and Apple are able to achieve when using higher resolution, more efficient screens.

The Kirin 990 is a very good chipset and does end up being very competitive. In terms of CPU performance, even though HiSilicon opted to still use a Cortex A76 this generation, is actually improved more than just the increase in the clock frequency thanks to the new improved memory subsystem of the chip. While I do think it’ll be outpaced by the new flagship SoCs from Qualcomm and Samsung, it remains to be seen how big the gap will be. The Mate 30 Pro’s overall device performance is amongst the best of any Android smartphone out there, and definitely feels as amongst the most responsive and snappy devices on the market right now.

On the GPU side, the Kirin 990 is a little big better than the Snapdragon 855. The Mate 30 Pro also fares well in terms of sustained performance as well as keeping thermals in check. Again, while it will be outpaced in a few months’ time, I do expect it to remain competitive.

On the camera side of things, Huawei did some good improvements overall, although there’s some rough edges here and there.

Although the phone has the same main camera sensor as the P30 series, Huawei did changes to the processing. The biggest change visible is the removal of a degrading sharpening filter, allowing the phone to actually take advantage of the pixel-sharp clarity that the sensor is able to capture. In daylight as well as in most low-light scenes, this allows the Mate 30 Pro to showcase amongst the best spatial resolution and detail retention of any phone currently on the market.

I did wish Huawei generally would have improved the processing a bit more – Apple and Samsung still have better dynamic range in a lot of scenes, and the Mate 30 Pro’s HDR can be better tuned to better retain textures and depth of objects as it’s currently a bit funky in some parts compared to other phones and even the P30 series. I have no doubt that the phone will receive a lot of software updates in the future to possibly address this.

The new 40MP ultra-wide-angle lens is also a big step up in terms of picture quality. Huawei had the lead with their previous generation 20MP sensor, and although pictures land in at 10MP on the new unit, thanks to the bigger sensor, it’s a lot clearer than any other phone. This aspect is particularly prevalent in low-light photography, where the new sensor is just leagues ahead of any other UWA camera module out there. The negatives about the new unit is that it has a smaller field of view compared to its predecessors, especially in the vertical dimension, due to native 3:2 aspect ratio of the new sensor.

Video recording on the Mate 30 Pro fells short of Huawei’s promises. The processing here just isn’t any good and the new “cinema” sensor that acts as the UWA module is just wasted. There’s a severe lack of dynamic range, colours, and the bitrate at which the camera app records is just far too low.

While the Mate 30 Pro can be considered as amongst the best still-picture shooters, I feel that it has a lot of aspects that it can improve upon.

At the end of the day, the question is if the phone is worth its asking price. Google services issues aside, I do have the feeling that Huawei is asking too much for a phone that is cutting several corners. The lack of stereo speakers, a better-quality screen, and a more complete camera experience (HDR processing, video quality) are I think the three main gripes about the phone. 1099€ is just too much to ask given these weaknesses.

There’s a lot of uncertainty for Huawei's future in the western markets given their situation under us trade sanctions and the inability to ship their phones with Google services. If the situation continues, the company will need to deliver great or outstanding hardware experiences in order to convince buyers that it’s worth living without Google; the Mate 30 Pro unfortunately is merely “good”, and not great nor outstanding.