Huawei P30 Lite review

Android 9 and EMUI 9.0.1

The Huawei P30 Lite boots Android 9 Pie with Huawei's own EMUI on top, itself version 9 as well. There is a newer version 9.1 available on the high-end P30 models, which has a brand-new file system called EROFS, but it's not on the Lite.

The P30 Lite has a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and it's among the best in terms of speed and accuracy. Face Unlock is available, but it just uses the front camera, which means it's less secure and can potentially be fooled by a picture. So, if privacy is of utmost importance, you may want to avoid this option.

Fingerprint ID • Face ID

Like all EMUI-driven devices, you can set up a magazine lockscreen style that changes the picture every time you wake up the screen. Sliding from the bottom will bring out quick shortcuts to some commonly used utilities. As usual, we found it to be useful and a bit annoying at the same time because there were times when we just wanted to unlock the phone, but we brought out the menu instead.

On the homescreen you will find all of the installed and system apps but there's a toggle in the settings menu that lets you choose between the standard layout or a homescreen with an app drawer. It's a personal preference and it's good to be able to choose.

Lockscreen • Tools • Magazine unlock • Homescreen • Homescreen style

Swiping to the right from the homescreen will bring up your Google Feed while swiping down from an empty area lets you search in your apps and contacts. On other makers' launchers that last action could bring down the notification shade, but not here.

You can, however, pull down the shade by swiping on the fingerprint reader, then double tap to dismiss all notifications and swipe back up to hide the shade - no more reaching for the top bezel when using this tall 19.5:9 screen. This is a setting that you need to enable in the fingerprint ID section of the settings menu, it's not on by default.

The notification shade itself is nothing out of the ordinary. It can fit three rows with five quick launch icons for each row and right under the icons, you will find the screen brightness slider.

The notch on the P30 Lite may be minimal, but you still get the option to hide it altogether by painting the entire status bar black.

Google Feed • App/contacts search • Notification shade • Notch settings

Multitasking is a familiar affair. Holding the Recent key will let you activate the split screen mode. You could even have a video playing on top of the two windows if for some reason you find that useful.

Notification area • Toggles • Recent apps • Split screen • Split screen

As we've seen on other recent Huawei/Honor devices, on the P30 Lite you can opt for gesture-based navigation if the classic navbar is too 2018 for you. It goes like this - swipe up for Home, swipe up and stop midway for Task switcher, or swipe from the left or right edge of the screen for Back.

From the Phone Manager app, you can access shortcuts to storage cleanup, battery settings, blocked numbers, Virus scan powered by Avast, and mobile data usage.

Huawei's own Music app offers a way to listen to stored MP3s, while Huawei's Health app offers Google Fit syncing and step counting. The gallery is an entirely custom job too, but it has the usual chronological and albums views plus an AI powered highlights selection. There's a file manager app and a note-taking app. And if you don't like any of those - there is an abundance of alternatives in the Play Store.

FM radio support is available on the P30 Lite and you get a propriate app as well.

Phone Manager • Music Player • Gallery • Files • FM radio

Performance and benchmarks

The P30 Lite is powered by Huawei's own midrange Kirin 710 chipset. It's made on a 12nm process (its efficiency already proven in the battery chapter) and features an octa-core CPU in a 4x2.2 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.7 GHz Cortex-A53 configuration. The GPU is a Mali-G51 MP4. The P30 Lite is available with either 4GB (ours) or 6GB of RAM.

Huawei has made its Performance mode available to anyone and you can find the switch in the Battery settings of the P30 Lite. The Performance mode offers a small speed boost in some instances (mostly in raw CPU power), but not for long as the phone gets warm quickly and it automatically reverts to its safe settings until it cools down.

The net result is minor, if any, boost across all benchmark tests for the first run. Yes, that's it. You can get a sustainable 5% boost from the regular mode over time, while the 10% bump is for the first few minutes only. So, we are not sure if the extra heat and battery drain are worth the hassle.

When it comes to single-core CPU performance, the Huawei P30 Lite is performing admirably, bested only by the faster cores inside the Galaxy A50.

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy A50
  1715
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
  1650
• Honor 8X
  1618
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  1576
• Realme U1
  1567
• Huawei P30 Lite
  1534
• Realme 3 Pro
  1471
• Realme 2 Pro
  1462
• Sony Xperia 10 Plus
  1340
• Samsung Galaxy A40
  1325
• Huawei P20 Lite
  938

When all cores work together the P30 Lite is a match for the Snapdragon 660 (Realme 2 Pro) and not the far behind from the Snapdragon 710 (Realme 3 Pro) and Helio P70 (Realme U1).

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme U1
  6004
• Realme 3 Pro
  5881
• Honor 8X
  5651
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  5549
• Realme 2 Pro
  5531
• Huawei P30 Lite
  5523
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
  5411
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  5396
• Sony Xperia 10 Plus
  4780
• Samsung Galaxy A40
  4112
• Huawei P20 Lite
  3756

In the graphics department, the Huawei P30 Lite outperforms or matches its rivals but the Realme 3 Pro with its Adreno 616 GPU as part of the upper-tier Snapdragon 710 chip.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 3 Pro
  20
• Huawei P30 Lite
  13
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  13
• Honor 8X
  13
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  13
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
  13
• Realme 2 Pro
  12
• Realme U1
  12
• Sony Xperia 10 Plus
  8.4
• Samsung Galaxy A40
  7.4
• Huawei P20 Lite
  4.9

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 3 Pro
  11
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  8
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
  7.7
• Realme 2 Pro
  7.2
• Realme U1
  7.1
• Huawei P30 Lite
  7
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  6.9
• Honor 8X
  6.7
• Sony Xperia 10 Plus
  5
• Samsung Galaxy A40
  4.6
• Huawei P20 Lite
  2.8

The 3DMark Unlimited test score didn't turn out as good as the GFX ones, but it's in the same ballpark as its rivals.

3DMark SSE 3.1 Unlimited

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
  1409
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  1353
• Realme 2 Pro
  1291
• Realme U1
  1133
• Sony Xperia 10 Plus
  1002
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  988
• Huawei P30 Lite
  985
• Samsung Galaxy A40
  647

Over at the compound AnTuTu test the Huawei P30 Lite shows some real muscle and is on par with its peers.

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Realme 3 Pro
  155647
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  144574
• Realme U1
  144436
• Huawei P30 Lite (perf. mode)
  141600
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
  139075
• Honor 8X
  137276
• Realme 2 Pro
  132958
• Huawei P30 Lite
  129887
• Sony Xperia 10 Plus
  120573
• Samsung Galaxy A40
  106388
• Huawei P20 Lite
  87431

Kirin's latest cost-efficient chipset is a close match for the Snapdragon 660, Exynos 9610, and Helio P70, while it's not that far behind the Snapdragon 710. There is not much heat build-up on the P30 Lite even at peak loads and it rarely throttles, if at all. The phone handles gaming very well, with balanced and sustained performance, and we didn't experience any major hiccups in day-to-day OS operations.