Camera comparison: Huawei P30 Pro vs S10+, iPhone XS, Pixel 3, Mi 9, Mate 20 Pro

Twilight

It gets progressively tougher when the light levels drop and we're starting our low-light exploration with a set of twilight shots. The differences are more significant here than in the daylight comparison, with the Mi 9 trailing in detail preservation. The others are pretty much on par in terms of detail in the better lit areas, but we'd argue that the P30 Pro still has an edge in definition of fine detail - at least that's what we're seeing staring at the frieze in the center of the frame.

The Pixel 3's shot stands out as the darkest overall, with a bluest and most saturated sky of them all - perhaps a bit too much on both counts. The others have more balanced exposures, but we can't fail to notice the iPhone's tendency to turn bright lights yellow in its attempts to keep the highlights from clipping.

Twilight scene 1: P30 Pro • Mate 20 Pro • Mi 9 • Galaxy S10+ • Pixel 3 • iPhone XS

Night scenes

In very dark conditions we're seeing an improvement in the P30 Pro's shots when compared to the Mate 20 Pro (look at the fence to the left of the first scene), but it's a marginal step up from an already good performance.

The P30 Pro applies some more aggressive sharpening so the perceived finer detail could be down to that - both the Galaxy and the Pixel go easier on the sharpening. Under such conditions, the Pixel produces noticeably brighter shots (even without Night Sight), while the iPhone's are the darker than the rest - too dark perhaps.

Night scene 1: P30 Pro • Mate 20 Pro • Mi 9 • Galaxy S10+ • Pixel 3 • iPhone XS

Night scene 2: P30 Pro • Mate 20 Pro • Mi 9 • Galaxy S10+ • Pixel 3 • iPhone XS

Night mode

We mentioned Night Sight and a comparison of the night modes is due - after all it was Huawei who first came up with those hand-held pseudo long exposures. Not all of the phones here have quite the same feature - the Galaxy S10+ sort of does, but it can't be forced on, and it only engages in absolute darkness, while the iPhone XS doesn't have a night mode at all.

Night scene 2: P30 Pro • Mate 20 Pro • Mi 9 • Pixel 3

The P30 Pro is a substantial improvement in this area, when compared to the Mate 20 Pro - it has much finer details captured and no sign of the watercolor effect characteristic of Huawei's earlier night mode iterations. The Mi 9 stands between the two Huawei generations - there's some watercoloring, but not to the extent we're seeing in the Mate's shot.

The Pixel doesn't do watercoloring and even though its shots turn out noisier, we still feel they're slightly superior to the P30 Pro's. However the crop also shows some of the downsides of computational photography - look at the car headlights in its shots.

To end the low-light section, we'll just mention that we didn't shoot with the telephoto cameras in the dark. A huge part of the reasoning behind that decision comes from the fact that the phones tend to default to a zoomed in image from their main cameras when the light is low. The light thresholds are different, some allow you to force the telecamera in their manual/pro modes, others don't, it's just too many variables.