Huawei P30 Pro - Means business?

[Cinegain]

Well, I mean, maybe business outside of the US. ? But looks impressive so far, especially regarding sensitivity.

[JurijTurnsek]

I would love to hear how DXOMARK scores are explained to the presenter of the device by manager or by developers. Higher score is better and that's all there is to it ?

GSMArena has reviewed the P30 PRO (had it for two weeks) and 4K recording is soft, especially after you add EIS. Also, EIS on Mi9 is much more impressive, but the still photo quality on P30 sure is nice.

Also, curved screens are a plague.

[Cinegain]

It's interesting that they start using RYYB sensors, wonder if there's really any merit in that and if that means that we'll be seeing that elsewhere as well.

After my ZTE Nubia Z9 I went with the P10 Plus... felt a little disappointed. Definitely been having a good time with the P20 Pro, but it's pretty lousy on the video front. Seems Parker indeed had that P30 Pro with him on that Cancun trip he earlier labelled as 'unreleased smartphone'.

 

[Andrew Reid]

Very impressive. Loved shooting RAW stills on my P20 Pro.

The aperture of the telephoto has taken a bit of a backward step though hasn't it?

And the DXOMark score doesn't seem much different.

When does it hit shops in Europe?

[androidlad]

P20 Pro users: Turn down the horrendous sharpening please Huawei!!

Huawei: Turn down for what?

[Cinegain]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

[..]

When does it hit shops in Europe?

According mister Chinglish from the video there, the availlability is 'now'. As per usual there's an early bird bonus, this time around no Leica Instant Camera or BOSE QuietComfort 35 II (or in my case with the P20 Pro back then an almost worthless USB-C 360 cam attachment)... it's a Sonos One speaker and a wireless charging pad. Though, in all honesty, all throughout the year you get freebies... and if you wait like 6 months, you get the phone for like 30% off (see Mate 20 Pro).

I'm not expecting to do a whole lot of filmmaking with this or anything, let's be honest, but the P20 Pro indeed was fun and impressive to use this last year. Definitely a hit to the premium compacts which mostly boasted with sensitivity and optical zoom to set itself apart from smartphones... the gap is closing down tremendously, which just goes to show what a shame it is that the LX100 II is such a lacklustre update.

Was really thinking about that Sony Xperia 1 too though. But it's kinda the wrong tool for the job perhaps. I just got my BMPCC4K in yesterday (after 7 months of waiting) and if you gonna do cinematic setups... it makes more sense to use a cinema camera than a smartphone. The P30 Pro makes it more approachable and purposeful when you think of the practical use of a smartphone. One thing though... my old ZTE Nubia Z9 and the Xperia 1 have a shutterbutton conveniently located under the righthand index finger when holding the phone in landscape orientation. It boggles my mind a little these 'Leica' highly camera-oriented smartphones don't have that.

[Andrew Reid]

2 hours ago, androidlad said:

P20 Pro users: Turn down the horrendous sharpening please Huawei!!

Huawei: Turn down for what?

Or shoot RAW DNG which doesn't have any sharpening whatsoever.

51 minutes ago, Cinegain said:

According mister Chinglish from the video there, the availlability is 'now'. As per usual there's an early bird bonus, this time around no Leica Instant Camera or BOSE QuietComfort 35 II (or in my case with the P20 Pro back then an almost worthless USB-C 360 cam attachment)... it's a Sonos One speaker and a wireless charging pad. Though, in all honesty, all throughout the year you get freebies... and if you wait like 6 months, you get the phone for like 30% off (see Mate 20 Pro).

I'm not expecting to do a whole lot of filmmaking with this or anything, let's be honest, but the P20 Pro indeed was fun and impressive to use this last year. Definitely a hit to the premium compacts which mostly boasted with sensitivity and optical zoom to set itself apart from smartphones... the gap is closing down tremendously, which just goes to show what a shame it is that the LX100 II is such a lacklustre update.

Was really thinking about that Sony Xperia 1 too though. But it's kinda the wrong tool for the job perhaps. I just got my BMPCC4K in yesterday (after 7 months of waiting) and if you gonna do cinematic setups... it makes more sense to use a cinema camera than a smartphone. The P30 Pro makes it more approachable and purposeful when you think of the practical use of a smartphone. One thing though... my old ZTE Nubia Z9 and the Xperia 1 have a shutterbutton conveniently located under the righthand index finger when holding the phone in landscape orientation. It boggles my mind a little these 'Leica' highly camera-oriented smartphones don't have that.

I have upgraded with EE! Cost me £30 for the phone on a £53 per month tariff with 60GB of data. Not bad. Considerably cheaper than most of the high-end iPhone tariffs at £70-£90+!! It is shipping in about 7-10 days.

At the moment I have an iPhone XS Max and very happy with it, but increasingly I've been splitting my handset use between iOS and Android devices. I have an LG V30 which I use for the quad-DAC headphone output as my DAP with a variety of headphones. I have my original P20 Pro when I want to shoot RAW and the iPhone camera doesn't cut it. Most of the time I use the iPhone XS Max as my main phone, and have been mightily impressed with the camera especially the new Portrait mode but the P30 Pro looks like it's in another league. Time of flight camera?!?! 40MP!? 50x zoom (5x of it optical!) Bring it on.

[Cinegain]

Noice, I just went with Vodafone back in The Netherlands (Vodafone means extra perks for having internet/tv with their daughter provider), going to have a Dutch phonenumber again after having spent 11 years abroad. I used to be a guy that did SIM only deals and bought my own phones outright, but with phone prices up and contracts increasingly more attractive, you're hardly paying anything on top of the price of the smartphone, really.

Nice sidebar, I recently got the Brainwavz Alara planar magnetic headphones in, usually just hook it up to a Stoner Acoustics UD125 and it's a pretty wicked awesome sounding setup (not very portable or public-friendly (open back cans)). Anyways. I'll be getting one then. ? There's some exciting features in there. Keen to see for myself what it's like. Yeah, not sure where it would be availlable 'today', but here it will take a week or so as well.

[hoodlum]

A Raw converter would need to support this new RYYB configuration, otherwise we are dependent on the huawei's processing.

[Andrew Reid]

8 minutes ago, hoodlum said:

A Raw converter would need to support this new RYYB configuration, otherwise we are dependent on the huawei's processing.

Not necessarily, as it's converted back to RGB data before it reaches the DNG file.

I have the P20 Pro and that had a Quad Bayer sensor, with a-typical RAW sensor data, and my image processing app Polarr supported the DNGs straight off the bat. I expect similar this time.

In DNG the images are incredibly natural with no Chinese processing whatsoever and dynamic range is exceptional.

Has anyone had the chance to use multi-frame RAW on the Pixel 3 and seen the dynamic range advantages of that yet?

36 minutes ago, Cinegain said:

Nice sidebar, I recently got the Brainwavz Alara planar magnetic headphones in, usually just hook it up to a Stoner Acoustics UD125 and it's a pretty wicked awesome sounding setup (not very portable or public-friendly (open back cans)). Anyways. I'll be getting one then. ? There's some exciting features in there. Keen to see for myself what it's like. Yeah, not sure where it would be availlable 'today', but here it will take a week or so as well.

Do you watch Z Reviews on YouTube? He's taught me a LOT about headphones. I saw his review of the Alara. I have too many existing cans now though, so I've peaked with my Z Review related purchases   The favourites of that odyssey were:

- Mr Speakers Aeon (Closed)

- Hifiman Ananda and Sundara

- Beyerdynamic T5p for portable use

- Focal Elear (open, very good for the price)

- ZMF Aeolus

Also the old Denon D5000 and EMU Teac variants have a unique sound signature, very enjoyable.

The Hifiman stuff is so good I am selling my Audeze LCD X and Sennheiser HD800S. Best thing is Hifiman aren't a rip off, either.

[Cinegain]

I hadn't seen his channel, no. I used to follow quite a bit of ljokerl and ClieOS on Head-Fi back in the day. But yeah, that's another hobby that can get completely out of hand, lolz... those are the kind of blackholes you can get sucked in quite deep to... luckily I managed to steer clear of going full Sennheiser HE 1. ? You're slowly working your way there by the looks of it. Nice line-up. I tell myself that stuff can't hurt too much if it gets destroyed or lost, it needs to be fairly easily replaceable, so I'm more on the bottom end of the spectrum.

[Andrew Reid]

I've had some rabbit holes, Stax L700... Meh.... Hifiman HE1000... I don't regret the H1000 but the cheaper Ananda is just as good, and Sundara unique in it's own way... A total steal at £300 when it was on sale last month at Amazon. HE1000 were closer to £3k when they came out!!!

Then there's the DACs and amps.... One of the reasons I disappeared from EOSHD for long periods at a time was because of my audio obsession!!

Check Zeos out here...

He gets a bit too excited but he's almost always RIGHT.

[Cinegain]

Brainwavz have been on my radar for like 10 years or so... so I'm not jumping on them now because they are the latest rage. All started that one time when I actually was fed up with in-ears after I tried some terrible Creative Labs ones and was on regular earbuds for quite some time, but then saw the Brainwavz Alpha were on sale. I bought like two pairs for a total of $8 (back then they retailed through MP4Nation.net , that site is dead now unfortunately) and was suprised about the comfort and audio quality one would get for that price and more soon followed...

 

(Of course back then the B2 were shared with Fisher Audio IEMs, much like the Alara apparently are the same cans as some other ones as well) I then kinda got obsessed with how great audio could sound and how cheap it could be had. Soon I was trying everything from China on a never ending quest to find the best bang-for-buck IEMs with best audio signature (it's like affordable vintage lenses and their unique looks). I made comparisons and reviews on Dutch forums. Discovered the AWEI ES800M that really blew up back then. This went on and on for quite some time. xD Then it was audio players... (tube) amps, (gaming) headphones, (bluetooth) speakers. Was one of the first to get the HM9 cans from Brainwavz back in the day:

Soon I was asked by webshops and manufacturers to review this and that... including like R/C stuff and Chinese brand smartphones. At some point though, I noticed that I wasn't having much fun with it anymore. Felt more like a job, like I was working at a newspaper ('but that grind tho!' as YouTubers perhaps would say, lol, missed chance perhaps, I could've perhaps been big like MKBHD or Unboxing Therapy are now). And I had some time for that kind of nonsense when I was on parttime, but I quit doing that kinda stuff when I went back to work fulltime. I mean, it used to be fun to inform people about the bargains they could buy, but I stopped chasing it myself and rather focused on stuff that I liked. Bit of BOSE, bit of Sennheiser, Philips, Sony... also the legendary beautifully crafted graph of mine:

I mean... 1. don't spend much; don't get much. 3. spend a whole lot... sure it's the best... but is it that much better than something a little cheaper? 2. Is the sweetspot, when you just spend the right amount of money and get a whole lot back for it. But yeah, Brainwavz still going strong after all these years and are doing what most Chinese companies fail at... staying relevant.

Anyways. So much for storytime with Cinegain. ? ... so, how about that P30 Pro tho? I'm suprised they put wireless charging in there and didn't announce a Porsche Design version that would have it and cost like 1999.

[IronFilm]

11 hours ago, Cinegain said:

 

 

Wake me up when they put a 1" sensor in a cellphone again. 

Sadly the Panasonic CM1 is still the only smartphone to do this. 

5 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Then there's the DACs and amps.... One of the reasons I disappeared from EOSHD for long periods at a time was because of my audio obsession!!

You should start up an "AudioHD" (Audio4K? Audio16K??) forum as well!

[webrunner5]

24 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Wake me up when they put a 1" sensor in a cellphone again. 

Sadly the Panasonic CM1 is still the only smartphone to do this. 

 

Heck a used CM1 is nearly 700 dollars yet! I can buy a decent Real camera for that much.

[IronFilm]

Yup, their prices are still too inflated for me to bother with vs a more modern and massively cheaper smartphone. 

Am considering buying very soon a secondhand LG V20 or a Moto G5 (not the Plus version, lacks a replaceable battery) or a LG G5 

[Adam Kuźniar]

I find it kinda weird, that no amount of lenses, chips, processing and firmware make phone videos look less.. like phone videos. I mean that Parker's video is beautifully shot with some gorgeous landscapes but it still looks like a phone video. I don't even know why.. maybe it's the oversharpening but I feel like there's more to it.

[Emanuel]

 

13 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Yup, their prices are still too inflated for me to bother with vs a more modern and massively cheaper smartphone. 

Am considering buying very soon a secondhand LG V20 or a Moto G5 (not the Plus version, lacks a replaceable battery) or a LG G5 

I am ordering the new Nokia 9 PureView to finally upgrade from my old 2nd 808 PureView unit.

 

@Andrew Reid We miss you and your insights, man, you should post more often (E : -)

[sanveer]

5 hours ago, Adam Kuźniar said:

I find it kinda weird, that no amount of lenses, chips, processing and firmware make phone videos look less.. like phone videos. I mean that Parker's video is beautifully shot with some gorgeous landscapes but it still looks like a phone video. I don't even know why.. maybe it's the oversharpening but I feel like there's more to it.

Very aggressive processing and a lot of cheating in the Image Fusion but. A perfect middle ground would be something between 1/2.55 inch and 1inch in terms of sensor with more like 20MP and a super bright lens. The CM1 had a weak processor and the Android platform itself wasn't ready for something like that. With the last processors and DRAM, a 1inch sensor in a smartphone right now could be a winner. Like the NX1, it was probably too ahead of it's time. And Panasonic smartphones aren't exactly cutting edge, either.

The P30 Pro is as good as the P20 Pro and  ot a hair better. It has more zoom but it isn't smooth, and the periscope in it seems to have less resolution at varying levels of zoom. Which is suspicious to say the least. 

 

[Inazuma]

Has the transition between out of focus and in focus areas improved?