Huawei P60 Pro Hands-on
Now that we have direct confirmation that the Huawei P60 Pro is coming to the Philippines, allow me to share some thoughts after using it for about 24 hours. While I want to share as much as I can, I believe it’s best to reserve everything for my full video and full review that I will post very soon. There’s quite a lot – some are good and “mid” (as Gen Zs often say), but one thing’s for sure: this phone is packed with a lot of notable changes.
Design and Display
The design is very “Koala”. Don’t get me wrong: it’s probably one of the major things I noticed with the phone, and it actually houses the phone’s most important feature – Camera. I’ll talk more about the camera later, but let me zip back and focus on its design, body-wise.
What I got is the Black version. The phone also comes in Rococo Pearl, which I think looks more premium. The black variant seems inferior compared to the latter, but I’ve learned to love it from its texture to its more minimalist overall look. It has feather-sand glass and has an anti-fingerprint texture.
The “rounded-ness” (if there’s such a word) isn’t subtle at all, and that’s because of its quad-curved design. If you’re used to having corners on your devices, Huawei P60’s design might set you back a little bit. The quad-curved design is not for everyone, but I’m loving it so far.
The phone, as confirmed by Huawei, has an all-new generation Kunlun glass. Take note though that its screen is the only one that has Kunlun glass protection. The back panel is not protected by Kunlun, so keep that in mind should you decide to purposively drop this in front of your friends and frenemies.
We were informed that there’s something special about the Rococo Pearl variant. Each back panel is unique, and this gives a unique identity to the phone. In fact, 55% of the shipment of Huawei P60 Pro is Rococo Pearl, which is beyond Huawei’s expectations, according to Marty Bian, Director of Go-to-Market at Huawei.
Camera
Perhaps, Huawei P60 Pro’s major feature is its cameras. There are quite a lot of things to unwrap here, and let me talk about them in quick bullet points based on what I learned and experienced:
- The Huawei P60 Pro is Huawei’s first smartphone with Ultra Lighting XMAGE Camera.
- If you love shooting the moon with another subject, for example, a tower, both subjects will appear sharp and clear in your photo. This is something you cannot do on the iPhone 14 Pro Max and the Galaxy S23 Ultra. This is made possible by the combination of its Ultra Lighting Lens Group, XMAGE imaging technology, and its RYYB SuperSensing sensor.
- You don’t need to bring the camera very close to your subject when taking Super Macro shots. This is quite difficult to achieve because more light is required as you zoom in on your subject if you’re not using a Huawi P60 Pro.
- The new camera UI has been improved. You can now change the camera settings and modes conveniently with just one hand. This is a huge improvement from the previous generation.
- When using Pro Mode, you can manually control its aperture from F1.4 to F4.0 giving users more flexibility when composing their shots and playing with light.
Sample Photos
Performance
Let me address the elephant in the room: this one has a dated chipset – Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 4G. If you’re expecting more performance from the previous generation, you will definitely get more on this one. However, if you’re going to compare this with other flagship smartphones at the same price point, this is definitely underpowered.
I haven’t benchmarked this, but if we are to use Huawei Mate 50 Pro’s performance, this should be just as fast as the Xiaomi 12 Pro and Motorola Edge 30 Pro. It is enough to let you play popular mobile games at high performance but definitely slower compared to current flagship devices.
Software
I haven’t fully dived into the changes but it seems that they have improved its UI and UX. This is running on EMUI 13.1 out of the box.
Corners of icons are more rounded and added more 3D AOD (always-on display) features. As earlier mentioned, the camera UI has also been improved to bring ways to easier to control it with just one hand. Instead of just touching the gear icon at the upper right, you can now just tap our swipe from the bottom of the camera UI to change some settings from Aspect ratio to viewing all camera settings. The update appears small from the outside, but they in fact bring more quality-of-life features to Huawei phone users.
I also managed to download Google Applications via the AppGallery. The apps run with GBox, and I was able to download the apps without even signing in from Google PlayStore. I believe the only thing that you need to manage is to circumvent the way of having a Google PlayStore shortcut through a lower version of GBox. This process is widely discussed at the official Huawei Community Philppines Facebook group.
Battery and Charger
The Huawei P60 Pro has 4815 mAh battery. It comes with an 88W special charger with Type A and Type C ports. This is a welcome change as this will allow you to not just charge the phone but also charge a laptop at the same time.
Lots of things to discover
This initial hands-on is not enough to cover everything that I have discovered about the Huawei P60 Pro. There’s much to discover and experience, and I cannot wait to share more in my upcoming articles and videos.
Related Reading:
- Huawei P60 Pro Exclusive Preview
- Huawei P60 Pro is officially coming to the Philippines
- Huawei P60 Now Official
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
