Huawei P30 Pro

One camera changes everything for phone photos. Okay, technically it’s four cameras…

Last year, the P20 Pro was the phone that demanded everyone sit up and take notice of Huawei. The company instantly went from being a budget upstart to a serious Samsung and Apple competitor. It’s a hard task for that phone’s successor to live up to, but the P30 Pro zooms its way straight to the top of the pack.

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Not only is the device loaded with the lightning-fast Kirin 980 chipset that debuted in the Mate 20 Pro late last year, but the P30 Pro also comes with buckets of memory and storage, a smaller notch, a significantly bigger battery, and a new camera system that’s genuinely revolutionary.

It’s that camera that really helps the P30 Pro stand out. The impressive 3x optical zoom of the P20 Pro has been increased to 5x optical zoom, and that’s paired with a 10x lossless hybrid zoom feature that uses AI to sharpen up your shots and remove blur from hand movements. This is seriously impressive stuff.

And it’s not just about the zoom... Huawei has rebuilt its camera system from the ground-up – a complete overhaul that starts with the sensor in the new quadruple-camera system. Rather than opting for the standard RGB (red-green-blue) sensor of every other smartphone maker, Huawei has gone for a RYYB (red-yellow-yellowblue) sensor in the P30 Pro, because yellow sensors can absorb much more light than green ones, which means they gather more information. This meant reengineering how the images are processed in every part of the phone… but the results are worth it.