[Huawei Mate 30 Pro Real Life Review] kyero985:
I've had my M30P imported from China for just under a week now at the time of writing this. Before that, I was using a P30P for 6 months.

My overall experience and feelings for it is very positive. It's my most favorite Huawei smartphone to date and I don't have too many complaints about it so I'll just be honest and upfront about everything I've personally liked and disliked.

There wasn't anything wrong with my P30P from before and I loved most things about the phone (which you'll see me reference it a lot in some of the points below) but the Chinese prices on the M30P and to be first in line for the latest updates for once just tempted me too much - I paid 5800¥ (which is about $820/€736/£634. I'll be basing most of my experiences and comparisons on the P30P as a result since it's the only other, closest rival phone I can match it against and I suspect a lot of people will want to know how they both stack up anyway :)

Display and Build Quality:

+ Display appears slightly brighter than the P30P with very punchy colours, contrast, deep blacks and decent sunlight readability. The panel isn't quite up there with the Note 10+ but it's still really good and you won't be disappointed.

+ No bezels or even much of a chin as the gorgeous looking waterfall display that spills on to the edges.

+ IP68 rated + equipped with Gorilla Glass 6 whereas the P30P didn't have any form of Gorilla Glass Protection, and the M20P had v5 (still worth putting a screen protector on though!)

+ I am a big fan of the (innovative?) virtual volume buttons that trigger when you double tap on the top left or right edges of the display

+ Supports *AOD* after a recent software update!

- Has a notch even though it's smaller than most other notches, including the iPhone 11, Pixel 4 (if you can count its giant forehead), as well as last year's M20P

- Doesn't have 90hz refresh rate despite some of the strong rumors and leaks that had been circulating around beforehand

Camera:

+ Consistently handles noise, artifacts and retains small details better than P30P in both daylight and night shots - this is due to the newer, improved ISP on a hardware level and camera tweaks on a software level.

+ Industry-leading best in class wide angle lens. It's huge f/1.8 aperture and the sensor size of 1/1.54" that really shows its prowess in both day time and night shots that no other competitor can currently go against at the moment. Let's not forget it defaults to pixel binning since it's actually outputting 10mp shots and the new ISP further enhances it (namely in dealing with noise). All in all, you get more preserved details in both the shadows and highlights, better colour balance, nicer dynamic range and the hardware front here really delivers in all aspects of the shooting conditions. I compared it with an iPhone 11 and a Note 10+ at my local Samsung and Apple stores respectively and the M30P's wide angle is just miles ahead better and I can't see other brands having a superior wide angle lens anytime soon.

+ Sometimes, in ideal lighting and certain scenarios, I will get even BETTER daytime shots on the wide angle than the main sensor as it's not RYYB and the fact that it's got an even bigger sensor size than that actually gives it some advantages to the main lens and compared to generally most other wide angle lens from other phones.

+ Video recording seem better stabilized, with less choppiness when panning around the scene and it can finally record 4k in 60FPS too due to the newer ISP. Wide angle video capture is miles better than the P30P's one due to the significantly superior hardware, especially in low light.

+ I love its quad rear camera design and its shiny ring more than similar rivals' implementations by the iPhone 11, Pixel 4 and even the M20P - just feel like saying it as I've grown to like it now!

+ ToF sensor feels slightly better than the one found in the P30P - my portrait mode shots and bokeh effects tend to be more precise with less clipping and better edge detection around subjects

+ 7680FPS video recording isn't just a stunt as it does work and is fun to use when you want to show off something cool and playful with it. No other smartphone in the industry comes close.

+ Night Mode shots with both the primary and wide angle lens has been improved further against the P30P which was already the king of low light - it captures the smaller details better (mainly only noticed when you zoom or crop in), has less noise and better colour balance in almost every shot I took in low light.

- Occasionally renders warm, red tinges to my photos when shooting with the primary main sensor, but rarely ever happens in all circumstances when using the wide angle sensor (most likely because it's not RYYB). Hopefully resolved with future software updates.

- No periscope 5x optical zoom and 50x digital zoom capability. You now get 3x optical and 3x digital instead which isn't entirely a dealbreaker as most people won't be using this all the time but I feel it needs to be said anyway.

- I've seen some minor lens flare that I did not ever seem to get on the P30P, or on any other phone I've owned to date.

- Front selfie camera has improved a bit from the P30P but it still applies a lot of digital make-up to my face and smooths out my skin a bit too much for my liking, and that's even with the beauty level set to the lowest in the UI. It's once again still not on the same league as the iPhone 11 or Note 10's front cameras.

- No super macro-mode for close up shots of up to 2.5cm from the subject which used to be found on the P30P - I understand this is due to the new sensors that no longer allow it

- Still lacks an automatic HDR toggle - you need to enable it manually each time under "More" in the camera settings

Battery life and Charging

+ Lasts really long due to the combination of the Kirin 990 on the newest 7nm+ EUV node, a massive 4500mAh battery which Huawei claim also uses "AI" to understand your usage patterns and potentially even being based on Android 10's behind-the-scenes battery optimizations/algorithms (I got more SOT than my P30P)

+ For me, the lack of GMS/Google Play Services definitely improved my battery life too

+ 40w supercharge which tops up the battery incredibly quick without overheating my phone (about 0-70% in 30mins just like before). I've also got a 40w Huawei SuperCharge power bank which is compatible with the M30P.

+ 27w wireless charging - I don't have a wireless charger to test but this makes it vastly superior to most wired charging speeds from other brands.

- "3x faster reverse wireless charging" is still largely a gimmick as it's not that much of an improvement from the previous gen (from 2.5W to 7.5w now) in every day practical use but I can see how it can be useful in emergency situations where even a few % can be useful for a friend if he/she doesn't have a portable charger

Performance and Software

+ Android 10 + UFS 3.0 (being used for the first time by Huawei) + 8GB of RAM = an extremely fluid, snappy and responsive system all-round with no lag!

+ I can still use most of my essential daily apps without Google Play Services by sideloading them, including Brave (which I prefer over Chrome anyway), Google Maps, Google Keyboard, Gmail (via the native Huawei mail handler), Instagram and WhatsApp

+ GPS accuracy in apps such as Google Maps, Cellular strength and mobile data speeds equally as fast and reliable as my P30P or if not slightly better from what I've noticed

+ Kirin 990 chipset performs well despite not using ARM's newest Cortex A77 cores, and shines in the battery life department and in games due to the optimizations to both the CPU +GPU

+ First in line to get the latest software updates if you purchase the Chinese LIO-AL00 model - I've already had 4 in less than a week and most were at least 1GB in size so they weren't all minor patches

- No Google Play Services out of the box, so you'll need to somehow restore your phone using HiSuite with a known working backup that has it or find alternative apps that don't rely on it

- My CN LIO-AL00 had a lot of bloatware that I couldn't easily uninstall and disable under the Settings, so I had to remove a lot of them via adb on my Desktop which took up a lot of time

- I still would've preferred the Kirin 990 to feature the newest A77 cores, as the upcoming Snapdragon 865 is guaranteed to have them (nonetheless the optimized A76s for power efficiency easily match and beat the 855+ in most areas

Audio quality

+ Phone call and speaker sound quality (especially at mid to higher volumes) feels a fair bit louder, fuller, clearer, richer and better balanced than the P30P

+ Audio capture when recording videos seems to be improved by a minor amount over the P30P

- Still has a single downwards firing speaker. Where's the dual stereo nowadays?

Other final thoughts:

+ Under display fingerprint sensor is incredibly fast and responsive - definitely ahead of the one in the P30P

+ Excellent build quality which is to be expected from another Huawei flagship - the whole device feels very premium and screams quality in the hands

+ Battery life is even better than the P30P which was already the Android battery champ!

+ Great price if you can somehow import it over from China - I paid 5800¥ for the 128GB model to a friend who brought it to me (approximately $820/€736/£634)

I hope people will find my well-balanced comparison helpful between the M30P and my P30P!