Huawei P30 Pro one year later - Is it still worth buying - Android

Twelve months after its release, is the Huawei P30 Pro still worth buying or can you grab a much better bargain else where?

It’s a year since the arrival of the Huawei P30 Pro, a phone we praised for offering a superior camera setup and long battery life than its competitors. The handset was a pioneer of low light photography and rich with flagship defining features, making it one of the best buys of 2019. Providing it was available in your country that is (sorry, US folks).

But do those design wins still hold up 12 months later? Especially now there’s the revamped Huawei P30 Pro New Edition on the horizon with a retail price set at £699 (~$859). That’s a little bit higher than you can grab the original P30 Pro for, which retails for around £600 (~$750) at the time of writing.

In this Huawei P30 Pro long-term review we’ll be judging Huawei’s P series phone with fresh eyes to see if it’s still worth buying one year later.

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Huawei P30 Pro review recap

Before we get started, why not take a trip down memory lane and read our original written Huawei P30 Pro review and watch our video review below!

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Does hardware age well these days?

The smartphone industry moves fast and a year feels like forever when it comes to new technology. However, you don’t always have to be on the bleeding edge to end up with a high-end experience, and the Huawei P30 Pro still packs in competitive flagship hardware that can compete with the best of phones of 2020.

The phone boasts a snappy in-display fingerprint scanner, IP68 dust and water resistance rating, fast-ish 15W wireless and reverse wireless charging, Bluetooth 5.0, aptX HD wireless audio, a huge 4,200mAh battery, up to 8GB of RAM, and 128GB or 512GB of storage. These specs and features have aged well and work just as wonderfully as in modern flagships. You can also upgrade the P30 Pro to Android 10 and EMUI 10 via an OTA update. What more could you expect from a 2020 flagship phone?

Without 5G, the P30 Pro isn't a futureproof purchase.

Well, 5G for starters. While most consumers are still out of reach of a 5G network, worldwide rollouts are well underway. If you’re contemplating the move to a 5G tariff at some point in the next two or three years, the Huawei P30 Pro won’t fit the bill. The phone is also stuck with a 60Hz display, rather than the swanky 90Hz and 120Hz panels you’ll find in 2020 flagships. Having become accustomed to high refresh rate phones, this felt like a step backward using the phone today, but certainly not a deal-breaker. Finally, yes, Huawei’s (comparatively expensive) proprietary expandable storage — dubbed Nano Memory — remains an irritant a year down the line, especially if you have the 128GB option.

Performance-wise, the phone also raises an eyebrow. The Huawei P30 Pro’s Kirin 980 processor isn’t going to wow today’s gamers, not that it did that back in 2019 either. 2020’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 models fly past in graphics benchmarks, but the phone is a bit closer to Samsung’s Exynos 990. Despite looking a little sluggish on a graph, the phone’s processor is still fine for modest gaming, handles all of my day-to-day apps without stutters, and is a power-efficient 7nm chip for multi-day battery life.

Speaking of, the battery life on the P30 Pro remains insanely good. The large 4,200mAh battery is competitive with today’s flagships, easily taking you into a second day of use. The handset’s 40W wired and 15W wireless charging solutions are still at the higher-end of the market when it comes to topping up your phone’s battery. Although 2020 flagships like the OnePlus 8 Pro are starting to push faster 30W wireless charging capabilities.

Related: The best Huawei P30 Pro cases

The P30 Pro camera is still one of the best around

Of course, the Huawei P series is all about photography prowess. The Huawei P30 Pro set a high bar back in its day, with the industry’s first large 1/1.7-inch 40MP RYYB sensor, a wide-angle shooter, a 5x optical zoom lens, and time-of-flight sensor for accurate bokeh. That’s a package that still keeps up with many 2020 flagships. But has its quality been surpassed by more recent handsets like the Galaxy S20 Plus, the Google Pixel 4, or even the latest P series phone, the Huawei P40 Pro? Let’s take a quick look at a few Vs camera samples to find out.

Broadly speaking, the Huawei P30 Pro is a pretty accurate shooter. It aims for natural rather than oversaturated colors, produces high levels of detail, and offers accurate edges for bokeh blur. The only real drawback is that the camera’s white balance is often a tad too warm compared to Samsung and Google’s latest phones. This is something Huawei rectified with the P40 series.

The P30 Pro’s big win versus even 2020 handsets is that it can take a great low light picture in a single shot, thanks to its RYYB sensor. Meanwhile, other phones rely on four to five second exposure night modes for comparable luminosity but often inferior smudged details.

Be it in low light or at range, the P30 Pro is still a quality camera package.

Compared to the Huawei P40 Pro, Huawei has definitely made some improvements with its current-gen flagship. The P40 Pro’s dynamic range and white balance are better. Colors also have a little more sing to them, although still err on the side of realism rather than oversaturation. This isn’t to say the P30 Pro is bad, just that photography technology continues to move forward at a brisk pace.

In terms of detail and low light performance, the Huawei P30 Pro holds up really well but again the P40 Pro nudges ahead, as you might expect. The 5x camera sample showcases better colors and more fine detail for the P40 Pro. Although you have to pixel peep to make out the differences. Even so, the Huawei P30 Pro still pulls details from its 40MP sensor and zoom camera that match or exceed other 2020 phones. However, there are other competitive shooters definitely worthy of your attention this year.

Camera shootout: OnePlus 8 Pro vs Galaxy S20 Plus vs Huawei P40 Pro

The consistency and range of options keep the Huawei P30 Pro as one of my favorite smartphone cameras of all time. It’s certainly not strictly the best across every segment, at least not anymore, but it’s good in virtually every scenario. The P30 Pro is still an unquestionably great camera package for the price, offering great detail, low light shots, and zoom functionality.

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