Death, taxes, and Huawei’s P30 lineup leaking; or at least that’s how the famous adage should probably go as far as the least half a year or so are concerned.
Despite having some of the strictest non-disclosure agreements for media partners in the industry, Huawei also appears to be leading one of the loosest-even operations in terms of information control; both the P30 and P30 Pro were sighted more than once per day on average for several months now, whereas credible information about the upcoming devices started emerging as early as the third quarter of 2018.
One such detail is a high-tech triple-camera setup found on the back of the P30 Pro. While the regular P30 will now also feature a three-lens system, its more expensive counterpart is set to debut an unprecedented solution supporting 10x optical zoom. The system was once again sighted earlier today, as evidenced by the images below, which also serve as yet another indication that the higher-performing member of the new phablet family will lack a 3.5mm headphone jack, whereas the P30 port should revisit that popular audio connector after its direct predecessor missed out on it.
Such magnification capabilities are virtually unheard of in the context of regular phones; even today’s standard 2x zoom cameras most often protrude from their host handsets by a rather noticeable degree; surpassing that expectation of quality by a factor of five would hence be impressive even i the P30 lineup didn’t look as sleek as it did. By virtually every credible account, the camera bumps on the back of the incoming Android phablets are only a couple of millimeters thick, as was the case on their predecessors.
Truth be told, it appears OPPO made a similar breakthrough in the mobile photography department over the course of the last year as it already confirmed plans to commercialize a 10x lossless zoom system in a matter of months, having said as much in late February during its appearance at the 2019 edition of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Still, the next smartphone camera push is now quite clearly coming from China and not South Korea or the United States, with the power exchange occurring about a year ago when Huawei first swept the floor with competitors with the P20 series which introduced the world’s first mainstream triple-camera setup. A virtually identical system appeared on the back of the Mate 20 Pro launched some half a year later, with this year-old solution being yet to be truly surpassed across the board, which is a rarity in the fast-moving mobile industry.
The P30 range should finally take the undisputed mantle of the new mobile photography king, especially after Samsung failed to do so with the S10 family which surpassed Huawei‘s currently available devices in some aspects but isn’t a clear level above the 2018 flagships, according to a number of experts, including imaging benchmark specialists at French company DxOMark.
The P30 series is scheduled for an official announcement on Tuesday, March 26. The launch event is taking place in Paris, at the same venue where the P20 range debuted last year. The two high-end phablets are likely to debut alongside a limited-edition luxurious variant of the range with Porsche branding, as well as a similarly named mid-ranger in the form of the P30 Lite. All four handsets are expected to hit the store shelves in Europe by mid-April and almost certainly won’t be coming to the United States in any official capacity.
#HuaweiP30Propic.twitter.com/uAoHH9hAuJ
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) March 22, 2019