The Huawei P30 & P30 Pro Reviews: Photography Enhanced
by Andrei Frumusanu on April 18, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- P30
- P30 Pro
GPU Performance
Much like the System Performance section, I’m not expecting any big surprises in the GPU performance section. The Kirin 980 uses a Mali G76MP10 at 720MHz and while the chip isn’t blazing as much as the competition, it still performs adequately well and is a significant upgrade to last year’s Kirin 970.
In the 3DMark Sling Shot physics test, the P30s are taking the top spots in terms of performance, both in peak as well as sustained figures. The limitation here lies mainly on the part of the CPU as well as its thermal throttling characteristics. Both the P30 and P30 Pro barely throttle in this regard, at least not in GPU power constrained scenarios.
In the graphics test, we see expected results on the P30 Pro, however on the smaller P30 there’s essentially no thermal throttling at all, which is extremely peculiar.
P30 Overheating Warning & App shutdown
Shockingly enough, I didn’t manage to make the P30 throttle at all in any of the tests, as before it could even get to a point of thermal equilibrium, the OS would shut down the application and raise a thermal overheating warning. I don’t know what’s going on with devices nowadays that this keeps happening as I’ve encountered the issue in last year’s Qualcomm Galaxy S9+ with release firmware as well. The last time this happened, it was due to disabling of the thermal throttling when the OS was detecting benchmarking applications, however in our case we’re using altered application IDs. Still even with this the smaller P30 overheated repeatedly. The fact that this is an OS warning means it’s triggered by a different driver than the usual SoC thermal drivers, so something must be off on the current firmware.
In the GFXBench Vulkan High benchmark we see both P30 and P30 Pro neck-in-neck with quite excellent performance. Again what is interesting here is that both devices perform significantly better than the Mate 20s and the View20 with the same chipset. I explain this through the fact that the P30s come with newer GPU drivers, and Arm must have made more significant improvements in their Vulkan drivers.
In the Normal variant of the Aztec benchmark, we see the P30 Pro throttle a little more, yet it still manages to showcase much better performance figures than the Mate 20, and also higher peak figures than the Mate 20 Pro & View20. The smaller P30 here posts the best figures, however its sustained performance is so high simply because the device is getting extremely hot. I’ve argued if I should be posting the figures for the P30 at all since if you continue to load the device in this manner it’ll simply crash the application.
Overall, GPU performance of the P30s is in line with that of last year’s Snapdragon 845 phones, which is still great. Huawei and HiSilicon still trail behind Samsung’s Exynos Mali GPU implementations, although the difference isn’t all that big this generation.
I hope that Huawei figures out the thermal issues on the smaller P30 and issues a firmware update, I’ll be updating the article with the relevant data once this is all sorted out.
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jabber - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
I have to remind myself...these are phones?StrangerGuy - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Gotta really see the reaction from the DSLR diehards on this one.philehidiot - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
I don't understand. DSLR photography is a totally different ballgame to mobile phone photography. I'd say phones like this make compact cameras almost totally irrelevant.DSLR photography is a different kettle of fish - can you even alter the aperture on these phones? Now if you're buying a DSLR for casual photography and never plan to change from the kit lens and just keep it on auto, then yeh... these phones are kind of a kick in the teeth. To those of us for whom using a DSLR is an art and we have insane macro lenses, tripods and occasionally attach them to a telescope.... a good DSLR is going nowhere.
Also, the qualitative beauty of the dynamic range of a DSLR is something subtle and can make or break a photo. Phones tend to go for brash, impactful but ultimately flat photos. You go "wow" when you see them but you can't compare them to the subtle beauty created by a DSLR sensor when used properly by someone who actually cares to do more than point and shoot.
emn13 - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
DSLR's are almost certainly dead in the medium to near term, even for professional use. What I *really* can't wait for is the kind of imaging that's going to possible once this kind of advanced processing is *combined* with higher-end optical systems, as should be possible even on compacts and mirrorless systems. Full-frame is all hyped up and stuff, but the optical sweet spot is almost certainly smaller; the kind of apertures possible even on aps-C and 1-inch sensors are quite sufficient for almost impractically small depth of field; and really, that's optically the *only* advantage there is (at least - assuming people would bother to sell high-end lenses for smaller sensors, which they currently do not).I mean, can you imagine something like this on even just an rx-100 style body? Ideally available in versions with zoom or prime? It would be completely bonkers, and portability isn't that much worse than a modern smartphone.
Frenetic Pony - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
Ahh, the usual internet "experts". The hilarious part is even thinking SLR's are somehow cutting edge, which shows how behind everyone here is. Every camera company now has a mirrorless version, which actually different as it's not an SLR at all, for one!I'm just a casual, hobbyist photographer. But my older, APSC mirrorless camera absolutely CRUSHES my Galaxy s8 in terms of image quality, even with the custom Pixel camera APK installed. And I want a newer camera as I'm severely limited in dynamic range, lowlight image quality, and what resolution I can get good images at (4k just isn't doable). Not to mention my image edges are still soft even with a nice prime lens.
Maybe in a few years, when those smartphone and "Light" partnerships show up, and they pair up like 5 cameras into one image successfully, then big sensor mirrorless cameras time will be limited. But for now, there's no contest.
philehidiot - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
How arrogant. So we are using DSLR as a descriptor for brevity and you decide to use that as some way of proving we are all wrong. No, there just isn't a handy accronym for mirrorless big ass camera with interchangeable lenses. You know perfectly well what we were discussing so why not add to that discussion rather than being picky for the sake of it? And yes, a decent large sensor will, in the right hands, destroy a phone but they are different propositions.tuxRoller - Friday, April 19, 2019 - link
https://petapixel.com/2018/03/14/death-dslrs-near/s.yu - Friday, April 19, 2019 - link
I advise you to stop reading Petapixel, those people are more amateur than GSMArena (who do a pretty good job despite the name) and Androidauthority (who are real amateurs) when it comes to image quality review so I don't know if they're actually qualified.jabber - Friday, April 19, 2019 - link
I think I've been reading 'the death of DSLRs' for at least 12 years. If it is a death its a very loooooong one.zodiacfml - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link
No. emn13 knows what he's talking about. I'm I die hard RAW shooter of APSC cameras but high end smartphones definitely comes close considering the size, features, and cost. I did not expect smartphones to come this close so soon as I always believed size is everthing in image quality.Limited to a 4k display, it is really close to an APSC camera with a kit lens.