Huawei P30 camera’s zany 50x zoom is worth a closer look

A 50x digital lens on Huawei’s latest smartphone camera is an insane idea.

The Huawei P30 handset.

A 50x digital lens on Huawei’s latest smartphone camera is an insane idea. That’s a significant zoom, something smartphones generally can’t manage. But it’s in the repertoire of the new P30 Pro, the successor to Huawei’s P20 Pro, one of the best handsets of 2018.

Phone cameras perform lots of tricks but zooming isn’t generally one of them. The 50x digital zoom managed some detail at long range. Distant signage that you barely see on a non-magnified image was readable. But these highly magnified images were distorted and show that high-resolution zoom has a way to go on smartphone cameras.

Besides, it’s hard to keep the camera steady at 50x despite the image stabilisation. At the least find a ledge to support it, a DJI Osmo handheld image stabiliser, or use a small tripod. A tripod could also come in handy for light painting at night, which this phone supports.

There’s 5x optical zoom and 10x hybrid zoom too. Generally resolution was good up to about 30x. Normal daytime shots without zoom were excellent, and Huawei’s night shots are second to none.

Huawei P30 Pro (no zoom)

Huawei P30 Pro (zoom)

Nevertheless photography is the hallmark of the P30 Pro which sports wide-angle, macro, and night photography as well. The P30 Pro has an arsenal of cameras with four lenses on the back: a 40MP wide-angle lens, 20MP ultra-wide-angle lens, 8MP telephoto lens and a time-of-flight sensor for depth sensing.

You don’t need to physically swap between lenses. A slider in the camera app seamlessly moves from a 0.60x macro to 50x zoom. Macro photos displayed slightly more detail than even the rival Samsung Galaxy S10+, but both were very impressive.

The P30 Pro’s front-facing snapper is so high in resolution (32MP) that it should take the best selfies in the business. Portrait mode includes a slider for adjusting the warmth of the colour and smoothness of your skin. Amazingly, there’s an option for making your face look thinner, although that didn’t seem to change mine much.

The phone feels a tad heavier and thicker than the S10+, its main rival, although the difference isn’t big: 8.44 to 7.8mm in thickness and 192g to the S10+’s 175g in weight.

The P30 Pro looks slick with glass front and back, and a very thin bezel. However the glass back attracts fingermarks and the glass surface makes the P30Pro feel a little slippery without a case.

So far 2019 is a neck-and-neck tussle between the Mate 20, P30 Pro and S10+. All have an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, 15 watt wireless fast charging and wireless reverse charging. You can place another wirelessly chargeable device on the phone and charge it.

The P30 Pro doesn’t support a standard microSD card. However you can add a Huawei nano memory card which offers a theoretically fast 90 megabyte per second transfer rate.

Huawei P30 Pro (no zoom)

Huawei P30 Pro (zoom to arch at end)

It’s smaller than a microSD card but there’s not much other benefit. And there’s a downside. The NM card capacity limit is 256GB which is a quarter of the 1 Terabyte microSD card you can add to the Galaxy S10+. And the NM cards are more expensive.

You may also be swayed away from the P30 Pro’s omission of a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The P30 Pro has a bright full HD+ 6.47-inch bright OLED display, although its resolution is less than both its cousin the Huawei Mate 20 and the Galaxy S10+.

It has a fast Kirin 980 8-core processor. I ran the AnTuTu benchmark, which scored the P30 Pro a healthy 285,331. The Galaxy S10+ scores better at 324,447 but both are impressive. The Huawei CPU rated better but its graphics performance was down.

The P30 Pro will retail in Australia for $1599. A cheaper version, the P30, costs $1099.

Huawei will throw in a Sonos One smartspeaker if you pre-order before April 16, when both handsets go on sale at telcos and retailers. Phones come in two colours: “breathing crystal” and “aurora”.

Huawei P30 Pro - macro lens