Huawei P30 Lite Review

Huawei’s newest flagship series, the P30 lineup, has recently arrived in the country. Included in the list is the mid-range P30 Lite, which is the Huawei Nova 4e that was launched in China last March. Here’s our full take of this premium-but-affordable device.

Design and Construction

Design-wise, the P30 Lite isn’t that far-off from the more premium P30. The screen may be a little bigger than the P30 however, the bezels on the P30 Lite are more apparent and slightly thicker, particularly around the chin. There’s a small notch situated on the upper part of the display, and it’s where the selfie camera also resides. Right above that is the earpiece and hidden within is the LED notification light.

Located on the right are the volume keys and the power/lock button, while the microphone and the hybrid dual-SIM tray is at the top. At the bottom are the 3.5mm audio port, primary microphone, loudspeaker, and the USB Type-C port.

Turning the phone over on its rear, one can find the fingerprint scanner and the P30 Lite’s triple camera setup, protruding slightly from the device’s body. Stacked up together are the 24MP main shooter, 8MP ultrawide, and a 2MP depth camera.

The device sports a 3D curved glass back, and while it’s beautiful to look at and hold, it’s pretty much a smudge and fingerprint magnet. I’m someone who cringes at the sight of fingerprint smudges on the back of my phone, so if you’re similar to me, you might want to use the free case that comes with the P30 Lite.

Display and Multimedia

The P30 Lite comes with a 6.15-inch FHD+ display with a 2312 x 1080 resolution. The notch is a little distracting when watching in full screen then again, it’s pretty much the usual for all smartphones that have a notch, huge or small.

The display gives good contrast, with bright colors coming out punchy and the blacks displaying deep. Details are decent as well, thanks to its FHD+ display. When it comes to the speakers, the audio is clear, but it’s not as loud as what I was expecting it to be; the lows are pretty much missing as well.

Camera

As mentioned, the P30 Lite comes equipped with triple rear cameras — the primary 24MP shooter, an 8MP ultrawide one, and a 2MP depth shooter. Located on the front is the 32MP selfie shooter.

First, let’s take a look into the selfie shooter. Selfies come out pretty great, with or without the AI beauty mode. Although, as with Huawei phones, the post-processing can be a little too much for some. There are also a variety of bokeh options should you wish to blur out your backgrounds.

Here’s an album of the selfies we took with the P30 Lite:

As for the main 24MP shooter, the quality and detail of the photos come out quite impressive. I’m in love with how the colors turn out in natural light conditions. However, the story turns out a little different under low-light conditions, with details looking noisy and a bit muddy.

I’m a believer of the P30 Lite’s ultra-wide camera. It may not be as impressive as its more premium siblings in the P30 line-up, but still, pictures turn out great; details are still sharp and noticeable even with the vast range it captured.

The P30 Lite’s Night Mode isn’t anything to write home about. It takes the device a few seconds to complete processing the shot taken in Night Mode; you’d have to make sure your hand or arms are stable as the slightest movement can result in your Night Mode shots looking blurry. Noise is also apparent in the Night Mode photos, and the colors look washed out as well.

Check out our sample shots:

When it comes to video recording, the device can shoot up to 60fps at 1080p. Stabilization is nowhere near present in this one, however, so you’d need a steady hand or a tripod should you wish to take decent videos with this.

OS, UI, Apps

Similar to the more premium members of the P30 lineup, the P30 Lite runs on EMUI 9.0.1, based on Android 9.0 Pie, as its operating system. Apps are arranged in multiple screens by default, but you may change this into a drawer-style in the settings. As for navigation, this can be tweaked in the settings as well; feel free to use the traditional three-button navigation or opt for the gesture-based setting instead.

Pre-installed apps in P30 Lite include Health app, HiCare, and a Phone Clone app that’s pretty useful for when you want to transfer content from your old Huawei smartphone to this new one. Other features include App Twin, Private Space, Huawei Share, Wireless Projection, and Smart Assistance. As usual, apps from Google are pre-installed as well.

There’s 128GB of storage space in the P30 Lite so really, having those apps pre-installed isn’t much of an issue. There’s still plenty of space for the apps that I want to install, and if ever I do run out of storage, the P30 Lite can accommodate more via microSD expansion.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering up this device is Huawei’s own Kirin 710 processor, coupled with a Mali-G51 GPU. There’s 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, expandable up to 512GB. Face recognition, passcode input, and fingerprint scanning are relatively fast and accurate. Tasks such as browsing, file transfers, video streaming, and the like run smoothly as well.

Here are the benchmark scores:

• AnTuTu – 101,112
• Geekbench – 1,518 (Single-Core), 5,084 (Multi-Core), 2,611 (RenderScript)
• PC Mark – 5,433 (Work 2.0)
• AndroBench – 285.15 MB/s (Read), 154.03 MB/s (Write)

While tagged as a midrange device, the P30 Lite certainly isn’t allowing itself to lose in the race. I’ve tried playing games such as PUBG, Asphalt 8, Honkai Impact, and such on this device and I can say that it’s able to run those games smoothly. 

Connectivity and Battery Life

The Huawei P30 Lite has the usual connectivity features such as WiFi, 4G LTE, Bluetooth, and GPS. Because of the Gyroscope sensor, the P30 Lite is capable of AR as well, allowing users to make 3D Qmojis with the Camera or play AR games such as Pokemon Go.

A 3,340mAh battery capacity powers up the P30 Lite, with PC Mark scoring it at 13 hours and 30 minutes. Marks from our video loop test didn’t stray too far as we were able to get 13 hours and 7 minutes out of it. The P30 Lite takes about 2 hours to get fully charged at 100%.

Conclusion

While the P30 Lite is pretty much just the Huawei Nova 4e under a different name, it’s still worthy of being tagged as the affordable device under the P30 line-up. The device has an excellent design and quite a decent performance.

If you aren’t seriously into smartphone photography but still want something that offers quality photos, you might want to take a look at this device. The Huawei P30 Lite is priced at PHP 16,990.

Huawei P30 Lite specs:

6.15-inch FHD+ (2312 x 1080) IPS display, 415ppi
3D curved glass
Huawei Kirin 710 2.2GHz octa-core CPU
Mali-G51 GPU
6GB RAM
128GB storage
microSD up to 512GB
24MP f/1.8 (main) + 8MP f/2.4 (wide-angle) + 2MP f/2.4 depth rear cameras
32MP f/2.0 front camera
Dual-SIM (hybrid)
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.2
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
USB 2.0 Type-C
3.5mm audio jack
Fingerprint scanner
EMUI 9.0.1 (Android 9.0 Pie)
3,340mAh battery
152.9 x 72.7 x 7.4 mm
159g

What we liked:

• Great design
• FHD+ display
• 3.5mm audio port
• Wide-angle camera
• Selfie camera

What we didn’t:

• Fingerprint and smudge magnet back
• Audio quality
• Night mode isn’t that impressive