Cinema-like camera that fits inside your pockets – A close look at the Huawei Mate 30 Pro

Offering mind-boggling innovations on its camera alone, the Mate 30 Pro is Huawei’s best of 2019. To test out the phone’s impressive cameras, I took the phone with me to my trips in Hong Kong and in Osaka. As Huawei promises, the Mate 30 Pro delivered for photography, so much so that you may want to drop your bulky full-size camera and opt for this handy device instead for your next trip.

Here’s photo evidence in various scenarios:

Day Time

It’s no surprise that the Mate 30 Pro will work absolutely well when given enough good light to work with (this is true for particularly any smartphone cameras worth their salt).

Portrait

With the Mate 30 Pro, you can create beautiful portrait images. Bokeh’s are much more natural and human figures look fresher and more vibrant without making them look too unnatural (read: plasticky).

Daytime Moving

Zoom

Mastering Zoom from their previous releases like the P30 Pro, the Mate 30 Pro follows up on this well. Coupled with amazing image stabilization and Master AI, the Mate 30 Pro can create stunning images no matter what the distance is. Check some samples above. Some real world application would be during our Golden Temple visit in Kyoto where we had to content with throngs of visiting tourists as well. The Mate 30 Pro enabled me to stay in one spot and frame everything really well. No more buwis-buhay shoots with this one!

Night Time

For night-time photography, Huawei Mate 30 Pro delivers the impossible. While we already know how good the night mode of the Huawei smartphones (P20, P20 Pro, P30, P30 Pro, Mate 20 Pro) we pushed the limits of what it can achieve. I always wanted to take mounds of photos at the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto and that’s also one of the reasons we traveled up from Osaka during this trip. Unfortunately, our group arrived quite late and that meant there was very little light left. One photo above have absolutely almost zero light, but with Huawei’s Night mode, we were able to still take decent shots despite the almost impossible lighting situation.

Another thing that separates the Mate 30 Pro from the rest of the pack is its insane video capabilities. Huawei understood that more and more people are quickly becoming content creators, whether it’s a new profession that they want to get into or just to preserve personal memories in the most pristine way possible, video is in.

Here at Ungeek, we pride ourselves of only opting for mobile devices in capturing any and all event coverage. Here’s a quick video we created to commemorate this amazing vacation weekend we had at Osaka.

Sure, it was rendered in Adobe Premier, but because of the phone’s amazing OIS and AIS stabilization, I hardly had to post process any clips – and everything was shot handheld without the use of any 3rd-party gimbal or device. THAT’S a rare feat as I have the worst hands among the whole team. I.Kid.You.Not.

The Osmo Mobile 2 gives up when I use it. THAT’S HOW BAD MY HANDS ARE, OKAY! ☹

Aside from the camera, Huawei packed the Mate 30 Pro with so much innovation it’s mind-boggling how they could have priced it at just under Php 50,990.

Just a couple of innovations we enjoyed are:

• To open up more screen real estate, Huawei removed the volume rocker physical buttons on the sides. Instead, you’ll be controlling your volume and anything sound related by double tapping the sidebars on either left or right sides.

• This intelligent phone will follow the direction of your face to auto-rotate the screen for your convenience, 1 hide notification details or re-lock the Apps if someone else is looking at your screen to protect your privacy, and remind you if you are too close to the phone for your eye health. All the intelligent care is integrated in an easy and natural way

• All this innovation means little to zilch if the phone can’t sustain it with a sizeable battery. Don’t worry, it’s massive! How Huawei was able to fit in a whopping 4500mah high-capacity battery in a very small form-factor is beyond me. Oh, and as always, the Mate 30 Pro is equipped with a 40W SuperCharge wired fast-charging and a 27W wireless charging capabilities.

• The Huawei Mate 30 Pro comes with Huawei’s latest EMUI 10 as well giving you a better/ fresher UI look and feel.

Utilizing Huawei’s best-in-class Kirin 990 processor – a powerhouse that provides excellent computing power, coupled with 8GB of RAM and you have a machine that can practically run anything you throw at it…except for Google (somewhat).

Life without Google on the Mate 30 Pro is weird, to say the least. It takes a lot of getting used to but I certainly appreciate how clean everything is. Plus, more companies are throwing their support towards Huawei by providing official workarounds and apps on their own App Store.

Still, if you do not want to be bothered by re-learning a new App Store and familiarizing yourself with its interface, there is a way for you to hook your Mate 30 Pro with Google and all its apps. We’ll explore that on a next feature but for now, on paper, and just on the sheer power of the phone alone, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is worth checking out. Even if you’re skeptical about it, pick one up at your local Huawei concept stores and play around with it for a few minutes. It might just make a believer out of you.