The Honor V30 Pro reached our EU office and yes, if you really want to, you can procure one outside of China as well. With a bit more effort, you can even get Google Play services side-loaded onto it. However, as things currently stand geopolitically, the V30 and V30 Pro are China-only releases and as such Google-free out of the box. Whether we like it or not, this definitely needs to be factored into a potential purchase decision.
Harsh and unfortunate political realities aside, the V30 Pro has plenty going for it. As per a recent poll, we ran, most of you seem to agree as well.
As usual, we will reserve any in-depth exploration and rulings for the upcoming full review, but even upon first inspection, certain aspects of the V30 Pro are undeniably attractive. Its “glass sandwich” body, for one, looks gorgeous and feels premium in Ocean Blue, Galaxy Black as well as Icelandic frost.
The same can also be said about internals. The V30 Pro comes packed to the brim with advanced connectivity and flagship features, including what is arguably a flagship 5G experience done right. Or at least better than some of the competition currently employing less-efficient, external modem designs in their flagship silicon.
The HiSilicon Kirin 990 (7 nm+) has an integrated Balong 5000 modem to provide both SA and NSA, Sub-6GHz 5G support. Whether or not it’s a good idea to start jumping on the 5G early-adopter bandwagon quite yet is a topic for a whole other discussion. But, if you have decided to do so on a Sub-6GHz carrier, the Honor V30 Pro really seems like a tempting offer.
While the camera setup on the V30 Pro is not really quite on the level of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, it does come really close, at what is essentially half the Mate’s launch price tag. The only thing it really skips on in this department being the 40MP ultrawide snapper, substituting a 12MP one instead.
The Honor V30 Pro camera definitely deserves its proper share of attention, which it will be receiving in the full review, but in the meantime, we do have some preliminary photos and observations, you can check out in this captivating Beijing photo tour.
Honor V30 Pro 10MP main camera samples
Circling back to the Huawei Mate comparison, there is another hard-to-ignore downgrade – its IPS display in place of an OLED. That being said, not all LCD panels are born equal. Hence, we’ll definitely be sure to look into its potential redeeming qualities in the review.
Of course, when you really drill down into this comparison further, other smaller details start popping-up as well, like the lack on an IR blaster and a slower USB port. We’ll see if all those minute details add up to a compromised experience or if the V30 Pro really is a bargain at that price. Stay tuned!
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