Honor announces $550 V30 Pro with 5G Kirin 990

Doubling down on the hole-punch display

Honor has announced the V30 and V30 Pro, the latest in its range of generally impressive upper-mid-range phones. The Honor V range is usually released globally as the View series and offers competitive specs based on parent company Huawei’s latest technology: this year’s View 20 debuted with a 48-megapixel camera, Kirin 980, and hole-punch selfie camera, for example.

The V30 Pro has a 6.57-inch 1080p screen with a double-wide hole-punch cutout that’s reminiscent of Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Plus. Unlike that phone, however, Honor has included an 8-megapixel wide-angle selfie camera along with the regular 32-megapixel unit. Honor describes the finish on the device as “the world’s first aurora nano texture,” though until we see it in person it sounds like matte glass to us.

Other specs include a 4,100mAh battery with 40W charging that Honor claims can reach a 70-percent charge in 30 minutes. That’s not quite as fast as the class-leading competing solution from Oppo, but is certainly competitive with the broader market. Honor also offers 27W wireless charging that should get you to 52 percent in half an hour.

The V30 Pro uses Huawei’s Kirin 990 5G processor with integrated next-gen connectivity, while the regular View 30 makes do with a standard Kirin 990 and separate Barong 5000 5G modem. Another difference between the two is that the Pro has a higher-resolution 12-megapixel ultrawide camera while the V30’s has an 8-megapixel sensor, which could make a difference since Honor is making the same “pro-grade videography” claim for the ultrawide that Huawei pushed with its Mate 30 Pro. The phones otherwise share the same 40-megapixel primary camera, 8-megapixel telephoto, and dual selfie lenses.

The V30 Pro costs 3,899 yuan (~$550) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while the 8GB/256GB version is 4,199 yuan (~$600). The non-Pro V30 sells for 3,299 yuan (~$370) for 6GB/128GB and 3,699 yuan (~$525) for 8GB/128GB. No word on a View 30 release outside of China, but if you live in the West you’d probably want to wait for word on when or whether Huawei will ever be able to ship a phone with Google services.