[News] Honor V30 Pro (CN Edition) Review - Forbes

Hello all.

I hope, like me, that you're eagerly awaiting the V30, and V30 Pro (Likely to be called View 30 in the UK) to arrive in the UK.

Until then, Forbes have produced a review of the CN version of the V30 pro in anticiaption of hopefully an imminant launch of the View 30 pro in the west. Here are a few excerpts but I encourage you to read the full review.

The Honor V30 Pro is a powerful, future-proof smartphone at a very attractive price. Under normal circumstances, this would easily be the best new handset at this price range, but these are not normal times for Honor, and parent company Huawei.

Hardware: almost flagship level

The three most important hardware components that make for a great smartphone hardware are, in my opinion, the display, processor, and camera. And on two of those three fronts, the Honor V30 Pro offers top-tier level components.

Let’s start with the processor: powering the V30 Pro is the Kirin 990 5G. This is Huawei’s best SoC (system on chip) right now, with benchmarks putting it ahead of the Snapdragon 855+. The Kirin 990 5G is a 7-nm chip with built-in dual mode 5G support. The latter means the chip can handle both the standalone access (SA) and non-standalone access (NSA) bands that make up 5G networks around the world. Other 5G ready phones, such as, say, the Vivo Nex 3 5G or Samsung Galaxy Note 10 5G, needs a secondary Qualcomm 5G modem to accompany the Snapdragon chip, and even then, they can only support NSA bands. The V30 Pro, essentially, has access to more 5G networks around the world.

Performance

Overall performance is excellent as expected. The Kirin 990 is highly capable, and I can export a five minute 4K video (captured from the phone’s own cameras) via the app PowerDirector in under eight minutes. 

In terms of camera performance, expect industry best low-light performance via that RYYB sensor, though images can occasionally appear overly processed and cool. The triple-camera main system also includes a 12-megapixel wide-angle sensor and an 8-megapixel telephoto lens. Of these, the wide-angle is much more interesting, because it was custom built by Huawei in-house, and it’s a 16:9 sensor that gives wide-angle images a more cinematic look, which, ironically, is actually a narrower field-of-vision than just about all other wide-lens on phones right now. 

I covered the cameras briefly in a comparison piece against the iPhone 11 Pro, and for the most part, the V30 Pro’s cameras keeps up with Apple’s best — in still photography.

Same pros and cons as the Mate 30 Pro

Last year I wrote that the Honor V20 Pro was so good, it undercut Huawei’s own Mate 20 Pro. The same can be said for the V30 Pro. It offers roughly 90% of the Mate 30 Pro’s best bits, but at half the price. Starting at around 4,000 yuan in China, you’re getting the Kirin 990 5G, a large screen with minimal bezels, all day battery life, and one of the best low-light cameras around. If you were excited by the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, this phone offers most of that, except the gorgeous curved OLED screen and the 40-megapixel ultrawide camera.

But of course, the V30 Pro also mimics the biggest frustration of the Mate 30 Pro - the Google problem. It’ll be up to you to decide if that’s a dealbreaker or a non-issue.

This is Honor's best phone to date, with class leading cameras, an improved screen and full 5G support. If it launches at a similar price to the 256GB View 20, it will be a winning combinationof features and price.

We just need to see a UK release date. Any ideas Oliver and Laura?

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/2020/01/09/honor-v30-pro-review-all-the-pros-and-cons-of-the-huawei-mate-30-pro---for-half-the-price/#3747b6092f6c