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VPNs for ad-blocking However, Huawei’s recent woes with Google and the US have given many punters reason enough to hold off from dropping dough on Huawei’s latest, especially with the recent news that the Mate 30 Pro will launch in Australia without Google. Unfortunately, it’s the same story for the P30’s more budget-friendly alternative, the P30 Lite. Which is a damn shame because, like its flagship forefather, the P30 Lite is a cracker of a smartphone with the best bits of the P30 and only a few features missing to justify the massive discount. For a little extra, you get both of these features with the P30 Lite as well as a camera that more closely resembles what the P30 and P30 Pro are rocking. The Huawei P30 Lite ships with an 18W fast charger. In our testing, we managed to go from flat to fully charged in just under an hour and a half. That’s not as lightning-fast as more premium handsets on the market but it is manageable. And it’s got to be manageable because one thing the Lite doesn’t have going for it is battery life. More on that further down the page. Like the Y9 Prime, you’re also foregoing the P30’s IP53-rated dust and splash protection so the P30 Lite might not people who spend a lot of time around water or dusty workshops. This is especially relevant if you use wireless Bluetooth headphones with your smartphone In our testing, the P30 Lite’s selfie camera struggles just as much as the Y9 Prime when it comes to portrait shots and fancy effects like stage lighting. The selfie camera struggles to separate the subject and background, even in ideal lighting. In a normal portrait shoot, this simply results in a couple of blurred edges, particularly around lighter colours, but for effects like stage lighting, the P30 Lite massacres it. The P30 Lite has a higher resolution primary camera than the P30 but it’s the few key features missing with the Lite that give you a picture-perfect snap with the P30, such as optic image stabilisation (there’s also no 4K video sport for those crisp holiday videos). Despite the quality camera, the P30 Lite is stereotypically midrange when it comes to contrast. Photos taken in auto have some very strong contrasts and punched-up colours. Some people like it that way but it comes at the cost of some finer details. You get a much better shot with HDR switched on but shooting in HDR is a manual process and not as snappy as auto. Still, you’d be stretched to find a night mode quite as competent at this price. That’s great news because the P30 is a schmick looking smartphone. If you favour style over substance, you could be rocking a below $500 smartphone with all the class of a smartphone that normally costs upwards of $800. The one saving grace is that the P30 Lite (where the Y9 Prime does not) so even when I’m running low, it’s nothing half an hour on charge can’t fix. It has a much smaller battery (3340 mAh) than the Y9 Prime (4000 mAh) but the Y9 Prime is also a larger phone and requires more juice to power its 6.59-inch display. We can’t be sure but it could have something to do with the difference in each phones’ chipsets, which also seems to impact the P30 Lite’s performance. The P30 Lite is packing the more than capable Kirin 710 but I was surprised to find it struggles with everyday functions, such as searching and switching apps and processing high-quality snaps. This was the sort of performance I expected from the cheaper Y9 Prime but to my surprise, the Y9 Prime barely struggled to keep up at all. My expectations were completely flipped. I can’t say for sure whether this is the cause but the Y9 Prime seems to have a slightly modified Kirin 710 chipset. The iteration found in the Y9 Prime may be better optimised. That might explain the difference in performance and extended battery life on the Y9 Prime but again, we haven’t been able to confirm that. Whatever the case is, I’m finding it hard to recommend the P30 Lite over the cheaper Y9 Prime. Unless you’re attached to NFC and fast-charging, the Y9 Prime is just a better value proposition and what is the P30 Lite meant to be if not a better value alternative for the manufacturer’s premium range. Here’s a selection of the most popular SIM-only plans on the market according to WhistleOut’s comparison engine.
