It’s not easy when you’re trying to compare the top players on the DxOMARK list, specifically talking about the 1st and 5th spot holders. The manufactures behind these have given us some legendary phones and cameras in the past and I’m pretty sure that they’ve combined whatever they’ve learnt over the years to break boundaries this time around as well. These smartphones are the pride of the respective manufacturers and are worthy flagships of the year. If you haven’t guessed it by now (even from the title and pictures) then I’m talking about none other than Huawei’s P30 Pro and Samsung’s S10 Plus.
This is going to be a camera showdown rather than a full phone review, we’ve reviewed the P30 Pro over here if you wanna see that. I’ll, however, try to cover as much as I can about these feature-packed smartphones but at the same time, I’ll keep it concise trying to detail and review only what you’d come across on a daily basis rather than going all geeky on it.
When you load the camera, you get a very default viewfinder with all the things you’d expect on both devices, from switching between the different options to the different modes that the camera offers. Samsung has been gradually cutting down on over-the-top and rarely used features, not only within the camera app but throughout the phone as well. I say this because the viewfinder is very straightforward with no or very few bells and whistles across the entire camera app. There’s no “MORE” section with different fancy modes that Huawei has neither does it have the smooth skin/beauty effect for the front-facing camera. To be honest, me being the geek that I am, I preferred the added bits and pieces that Huawei had to offer. I got to play around with more modes not as much as I’d like to but it’s definitely nice to know that it’s right there when I’d need it.
P30Pro’s wide-angle framing is on point 
S10+ does a brilliant job in detailing 
The P30Pro gets a lot of image in one frame 
The details captured from the S10+ are superb
You’re probably leaning in towards Huawei cause of how feature packed it’s going to be and you should be but it’s only fair to give the S10+ some love as well cause Samsung focuses all of its tech into the pictures, which works most of the time. The features on the P30 Pro might not be used on the daily but giving that niche option to users if they wanna use it is a nice added bonus, especially when we have more content creators coming up. With modes like light painting, moving picture aka GIFs, macro mode plus a bunch of downloadable modes – the possibilities are endless! Now on the other hand, if you’re a minimalist and all you want is to get your phone and just click the picture, Samsung delivers this brilliantly as well.
A plethora of Modes to choose from on the P30Pro 
A rather simple approach by Samsung on the viewfinder
Both these devices feature the similar kind of shooting modes: the normal Photo mode which loads by default, the pro mode where you get to tweak the ISO, shutter speed, exposure and white balance among other things, video modes and a portrait mode. Samsung does the Portrait mode a bit differently by calling it Live Focus where you can control how the background distorts from the foreground through a few cool options. Huawei has a dedicated Portrait mode meant for actual facial portraits which lets you adjust the beauty level along with a bunch of lighting and bokeh effects that you can choose from, whilst also giving you the option to zoom in by 3x. The P30 Pro also has a sort of extension of the Portrait mode called the Aperture Mode which blurs out the background from the foreground depending on what aperture setting you choose, this really works well for close up shots of flora and fauna, food etc.
While the S10+ might not have all of this directly, it does have a food mode which gives you the option to adjust the color temperature along with adding a radial blur which works alright but I don’t see myself using it as much even for food shots cause the default photo mode works pretty well anyways. It was surprising to see that Samsung didn’t offer a dedicated Night Mode like how the Huawei did, it instead let the Scene Optimizer kick in (if activated) and activate “Bright Sight” which lets you capture pictures with longer exposures (at least that’s what it was intended to do). That’s more or less what Huawei’s Night mode does as well along with giving you the option to tweak the shutter speed plus the ISO level which goes a very long way. Huawei has very accurately taken care of dedicating some tech into making sure that low light conditions work well.
The P30Pro captures a decent amount of light in the picture 
S10+ makes the picture a bit more warmer 
The dynamic range is top notch on the P30Pro 
Crispy details from the S10+ 
Props to Leica Cam making P30Pro look like a hero 
Lot of crispiness in this from the S10+
Talking about the scene optimizer on the S10+, that’s a bit of a hit and miss; it doesn’t work when you want it to, especially when clicking pictures in low light conditions. The scene optimizer takes forever to detect the subject in low light conditions which in turn never kicks in the “Bright Sight” mode. It works rather seamlessly when the object or scene is well lit and detects exactly what the subject might be. Huawei having the dedicated Night mode is definitely a win, it’s a bit of task to use though.
The 5-second exposure captures a lot of details on the P30Pro 
A decently apt photo from the S10+ 
The Silky Waters mode spits out good stuff on the P30 Pro 
A bit lossy but good enough capture from the S10+ 
P30 Pro captures as much detail as it can, even for macro shots 
The S10+ falls a bit short on getting the right dynamic range
Once in Night mode, the camera takes 5 long exposure shot in 5 seconds and then stitches all of them together to make a decent picture; definitely missed this on the S10+. This does not mean that the low light photos were amazing, they were alright and sometimes gave out brilliant shots and on the flipside, it also spat out some very lossy and blurry pictures. Surprisingly, Samsungs image processing works slightly better than Huawei’s in low light even without a dedicated Night mode. Both the phones have the trend-setting 3 and 4 camera setup: an ultra wide angle, a wide angle, a telephoto lens and Huawei taking it up a notch with the ToF camera. I have to admit that the P30Pro felt a bit easier to just grab and snap, it made framing my photos very easy whereas with the S10+ I had to manually adjust the lens zoom to get the right frame.
The P30Pro has a 0.6x, 1x, 5x and 10x zoom as it’s main zoom setting while the S10+ has a 0.5x, 1x, and 2x zoom as it’s main zoom points. While the S10+ maxes out at 10x, the P30Pro goes all the way up to the infamous 50x with its revolutionary periscope lens. Since we bought up the periscope lens, I’m going to take this opportunity and geek out a bit. The S10+ houses a 12MP 22mm wide lens, another 12MP 52mm telephoto lens and a 16MP 12mm lens for the ultra wide setting. The front facing camera eyes house a 10MP 26mm wide lens along with another 8MP 22mm wide lens for the depth sensor. The main camera module of the S10+ can shoot video in 2160p@60fps, 1080p@240fps, 720p@960fps with the addition of HDR mode and with a neat stability feature called super steady. The front module shoots 2160p@30fps and 1080p@30fps with Auto-HDR. The camera gives decent video footage but takes a beating in night mode, hopefully, the new upcoming update to bring a dedicated Night mode will solve this.
The quad camera setup on the P30Pro does a fantastic job; I took a detailed camera of this nearby construction site from ultra-wide to ultimate zoom!
Jumping onto the P30Pro, which boasts the Leica Quadcamera setup; it has a 40MP 27mm wide lens, a 20MP 16mm ultrawide lens, a 8MP 125mm telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom and OIS enabled and finally the ToF camera. It can shoot 2160p@30fps, 1080@60fp, 1080@30fps with gyro enabled EIS and 720p@960fps. Upfront, it hosts the 32MP wide angle setup and can shoot video in 1090p@30fps.
Now that the numbers are out of the way, let’s talk about the thing you’d probably use the most – the selfie cameras. I’m not a selfie person at all but these bad boys will make you wanna take selfies every day. The S10+ keeping in line with its minimalistic approach hosts a simple 2 mode setup, normal Photo mode and Live Focus mode, for the front-facing camera with a wide and slightly super-wide lens whereas the P30Pro takes a different route. You get the infamous beauty filter which will keep you looking smooth as ever, along with the dedicated portrait mode – yes, portrait mode even for selfies! Since we’re on the topic of cool things, Huawei has a few neat features under the hood – something called Audio Control which lets you enabled the shutter when you speak loudly into the camera or even saying “Cheese” to take those sleek selfies along with the ability to click pictures when it detects a smile.
A sneak peak of what the P30Pro has to offer from its feature packed camera
The S10+ also holds some of these with voice control on a few pre-programmed words, a floating shutter button and palm detection capture for those selfies. It also has something called Shot suggestions which suggests a frame that it thinks is the best possible shot but boy is that wrong, in the time that I used it I never got it right. Both of them feature their own set of AR lens which makes you some sort of cartoon character that matches your facial features, which is cool and funny at the same time. They also have their respective environment lens that scans locations nearby, QR codes, translates text and object recognition; a definite competitor to Google Lens. HiVision is what the P30Pro has and the infamous Bixby Vision is what the S10+ rocks.
Snippets of different options that the camera of the S10+ has to offer
Both the smartphones are definitely top of their class, I mean they have to be given their price range and hype, and they do a pretty damn good job in the camera department. They sport top-notch specs, heavy duty sensors, crispy and clear images with enough in-built features to make you forget about your DSLR. If you’re looking for a simple and clean viewfinder with a camera you can rely on, look no further than the S10+. If you see yourself exploring with different modes, light painting and want to shoot subjects from miles away the P30Pro is what you need to buy right away. These cameras might still not be perfect with their own set of flaws but whatever your type may be, there’s nothing else in the market that can be compared with these and picking up either one is definitely not going to disappoint you!
