DURABILITY TEST OF HUAWEI P30 PRO

The Huawei P30 Pro - the top phone from Huawei is really making some waves with its new periscope camera. While not available for sale in the USA, it's quite possibly one of the best phones on the market so far this year. It's definitely not cheap though. Huawei is calling this color Breathing Crystal. Personally, I think it looks more like a Unicorn Sneeze with it's pearly pinkish blue coloring. It's time to see if the P30 Pro is durable. Let's get started. 

Right off the bat, the phone feels and looks pretty sleek - on par with other 2019 flagships. It does have one tear drop notch up at the top. And while the back is unique, I'm struggling to decide if it reminds me more of a soft, cloudless morning sunrise, or Will Smith in the new 'Aladdin' . Maybe by the end of the video we'll get used to it. The main selling point of the P30 Pro is the quad camera set up on the back, but we'll get to that in just a second. Let's start with the scratch test. Smartphone screens can be made from a few different materials, not immediately discernible to the naked eye.Plastic scratches at a level 3. Glass scratches at a level 6. And sapphire scratches at a level 8 or 9. Diamonds are the only thing that can scratch at a level 10. It looks like Huawei is falling in the foot steps of all recent flagships and using tempered glass on their screen, where we can see scratches at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7. 

One thing that Huawei does really well is cameras. The front facing camera on the P30 Pro is a 32 megapixel beast, and pulls off some really good pictures. You might be feeling like something is missing up here at the top of the phone, and that's because the P30 Pro has no earpiece.It's taken a pages from the LG G8 and gotten rid of the physical earpiece speaker. It uses vibrations on the acoustic display to project sounds into your ear. I'll show you what that looks like from the inside if this cupcake frosting colored phone survives the durability test. The sides are made from metal, which is what we would expect from a flagship this expensive. The power button has its usual red painted in lay. The paint can be scraped off. The aluminum sides have a subtle blue shine to them. You can see it better up here at the top which is also made from metal. The top has an infrared LED for changing channels and volume on TVs. Pretty cool feature.

The other side is also made from metal. No buttons or anything over here. No headphone jack can be found when we turn the phone over to the bottom. The paint job is crazy on this thing. There is a USB-C port down here that can do 40 watts supercharging, along with a loudspeaker grill and SIM card tray - all made from metal. Huawei does include a clear case in the box which is nice of them. Inside the SIM card tray we see that the P30Pro does have expandable memory, but only with that proprietary nano memory card slot, which is basically the same thing as not having expandable memory. It does have a red rubber ring around the opening to help keep water out. 

The P30 Pro is ip68 water resistant.Underneath this scratch resistant glass panel is a wireless charging coil that can do the same power share thing that the Huawei Mate20 Pro started, and Samsung also implemented with the Galaxy S10. It can charge up other wirelessly enabled gadgets just by resting them up against the back baby blue panel. The main selling point though isn't the wireless charging or Smurf colored glass, it's the quad camera setup. With the top 20 megapixel ultra wide camera and 40 megapixel main camera there in the center, followed by a square camera lens that I'm most intrigued by. A telephoto with 5 times optical zoom that can be bumped up to a 50 times digital zoom. Accurately described by MKBHD as creepy.

The only way to truly appreciate unique hardware is from the inside with a tear down. So be sure to subscribe to see that component taken apart. Hopefully we get to see the reflective mirror sand off-center periscope pathway that Huawei is using to achieve the 5 times optical zoom. There is a 3D time-of-flight camera here as well. I'm excited to see this implemented more often. Eventually it's going to be great for virtual reality. 3D scanning and printing, and digitally measuring objects. If you're not a fan of the My Little Pony vibe of the P30 Pro, there's always more sleek and aggressive options over at brand. This is what it looks like with the Swarm skin installed. Quite a bit more modern and professional than Blue's Clues over here. Skins can also be as temporary as you want, so no judgments if you ever decide to switch back to something that looks kind of like Pokemon. Okay, just kidding. I'll stop. I'll just 'let it go.' 

The Breathing Crystal colored P30 Pro has 6.47 inch 1080p OLED display. And when hot flame's applied for scientific purposes, I assure you're you're just going to have to trust me on this one. This is tremendously scientific. While I'm sciencing with the flame, it lasts about 22 seconds before the pixels start to go white and never recover.The screen did briefly stop responding to my touch after the heat was removed, which would have been pretty embarrassing for Huawei. But after a brief turn off and turn back on again, it started working again just fine. The P30 Pro does have an under display optical fingerprint scanner. I'll quickly set up my fingerprint and scratch the surface with the deeper grooves of a level 7 pick, just to make sure the basic functionality of the phone can handle years worth of abuse and scratches. Even with the damaged fingerprint area, it still scans and reads my thumb just fine. 

The last of my standardized durability testsis the bend test. This quickly shows whether there are any structural build quality issues with the P30 Pro.Huawei's P20 Pro cracked from last year during the bend test, which was unfortunate. This P30 Pro seems to be more structural and rigid in design. That 3D curved glass edge makes this version much more solid and won't allow the glass to flex and crack like last year's phone. The curved glass does make the phone more prone to damage during drops, but structurally the P30 Pro is much more solid. So good job, Huawei. 

The P30 Pro passes the bend test. Would you like to rock a phone that looks like cotton candy?

Let me know what you think of Huawei's new color scheme down in the comments. Thanks a ton for reading. I'll see you around.