Huawei P60 Pro Hands-On, Quick Review: Is The King Back?

Huawei P60 Pro Hands-On, Quick Review: Is The King Back?

Initial Verdict: The Huawei P60 Pro is one of the best cameraphones we’ve come across this year as we found in this quick review. Its camera performance is insanely impressive, showing off Huawei’s XMAGE tech, but the phone isn’t without its inherited quirks. 

Pros

  • Excellent camera performance
  • Gorgeous and tough display

Cons

  • Only 4G connectivity
  • Polarizing design

After losing their DxOMark crown to former sub-brand Honor and their Magic5 Pro, Huawei is looking to climb back up to the top of the rankings with their new P60 Pro flagship. And if you know anything about Huawei you know that they’re not the sort of company to take anything lying down, so you can bet that they’re pulling out all the stops to retake that crown via their latest flagship.

Design

The first thing you’ll notice is the ginormous camera module in the back, where the main camera has the largest module. While the design may be polarizing, it’s necessary for housing not just the large sensor but also the components needed for its variable aperture system.

Huawei always tries to do something unique with each flagship release as far as design goes. Instead of going for vegan leather like the Mate 50 Pro, the P60 Pro offers a unique, Pearl Texture Design that makes the phone shine like a pearl with the Rococo Pearl version.

If that’s too ostentatious for you,  Huawei also offers the phone in several other more traditional color variants like our review unit in matte black. Like its previous flagships, the P60 Pro is IP68 rated, so you can take it swimming with you if you wanted to.

Display

Just like its predecessor, the P60 Pro stands out with its quad-curve LTPO display that helps give it an illusion of a near-bezel-less design. Aside from having a 120hz adaptive refresh rate and 1440Hz high-frequency PWM dimming, it’s a true flagship display with its support for P3 wide color gamut and HDR10+ content.

Aside from being a gorgeous screen overall, it’s protected by Huawei’s Kunlun glass, the same glass that allowed the Mate 50 Pro to survive multiple drops on a tiled floor without damage to the screen.

Cameras

The P60 Pro employs a triple rear camera setup, and it is a stacked one: the large one in the middle is a 48-megapixel RYYB camera that has OIS and a variable aperture system similar to the Mate 50 Pro. This allows the P60 Pro to switch from f/1.4 to f/4.0 aperture on the fly and lets you take creamy bokeh shots optically instead of relying on software trickery.

Accompanying the main camera is a 48-megapixel telephoto camera with OIS and 3.5x optical zoom (90mm focal length equivalent) and a bright f/2.1 aperture–the widest we’ve seen on a smartphone telephoto camera–and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide with an f/2.2 aperture. Selfies are taken care of by a 13-megapixel shooter.

Tying everything together is Huawei’s XMAGE imaging technology which serves as the replacement for their partnership with German brand Leica. It’s what gave the Mate 50 Pro its stellar imaging technology and it’s what makes the magic happen with the P60 Pro.

The main camera as expected shot incredibly detailed photos. This interior shot comes alive thanks to the low-light capabilities of the phone and the XMAGE tech, which really makes it easy to pull off shots like this.

Huawei knows how to pull off convincing low-light images without looking fake or overprocessed, and the P60 Pro continues that tradition with arguably one of the best Night Mode settings we’ve seen on a phone.

While it’s debatable that you’d ever need that 100x digital zoom (you don’t), the 3.5x optical zoom doubles as a macro camera that allows you to pull off great macro shots.

This is just a sample of the photos we took with the phone. Make sure to watch out for our full review to see the full potential of the P60 Pro’s cameras.

Internals

Like the Mate 50 Pro, the P60 Pro uses a 4G-only version of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. Huawei still faces trade restrictions from the US, which is why the P60 Pro still does not have access to 5G.  The P60 Pro comes in 256GB and 512GB variants, though we’re not sure yet which one is arriving in the Philippines.

While it’s limited to 4G, the P60 Pro does have the ability to send and receive text messages via Beidou satellite, even without a ground signal. Unfortunately, this feature is limited to China and we have no idea when it’ll be made available to global markets.

There’s also the lack of access to Google services, though Huawei has addressed this with the integration of GBox into App Gallery. Huawei’s made some great strides in terms of software, and has for the most part made getting apps for the platform incredibly easy.

You do get a 4815mAh battery with the P60 Pro, which should last you a day before needing to top it up. Speaking of the latter, the P60 Pro supports 88w wired charging and 50w wireless charging.

Initial Verdict

Despite some of its setbacks, the Huawei P60 Pro might just take the DxOMark crown away from HONOR but we’ll have to see it in our full review.

Huawei P60 Pro Price

In China, the P60 Pro starts at RMB 6,988, or around Php 55.4k for the 256GB model. Take note that’s a direct conversion and local prices may vary once the phone is released in the country.

 

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2 Comments

  • bulbulito_binayagbag , April 11, 2023

    That is some ugly camera design ugh.

  • Cie , May 18, 2023

    Overall features and specifications of this unit are awesome, especially the Quick Menu, Night, Super Macro, Macro, Story Creator, Audio Zoom, High-res, Time-Lapse, Ultra Wide Angle Lens, Aperture, Dual-View Video, Portrait, Pro, Slow-Mo, Panorama, Monochrome, Light painting, Filter, Stickers, Documents, Master AI, Moving Picture, Snapshot, 4D Predictive Focus, Capture Smiles, Audio Control, Timer, Burst Shooting. Very well done Huawei!

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