Your eyes are good, but a new phone is better. Find out what makes Huawei’s P30 see in the dark with news direct from Paris and more in minutes, joined by WhistleOut’s Alex Choros, Gizmodo’s Tegan Jones, and Finder’s Alex Kidman.
Transcript
For the last week of March 2019, you’re listening to The Wrap, Australia’s fastest technology roundup, and now an award winning technology roundup. That’s because last week The Wrap picked up a win at Australia’s tech journalism awards, The Lizzies, so congratulations to us.
And thank you for listening, we’re absolutely grateful, and if you have any comments, we’re always listening.
But we’re not the only ones. Phone companies are listening to what you want to make the phones even better.
You want bigger screens? You’re getting them. How about bigger batteries? You’ll get that too.
And if you want bigger and better cameras, that’s great, and we’re in Paris for the launch of one of those.
This week, Huawei announced the P30 and P30 Pro, the latest in its phones built to take photos, and lots of them. Now you can do that on your iPhone and your Samsung… any phone, really — phones take photos — but what you can’t always do is use them to see in the dark.
Not until April, which is when Huawei’s P30 Pro will arrive, a phone that sports four cameras on the back designed to do some very interesting things. There’s an ultra-wide camera, a wide camera, and a close camera, that these all work together to get you both far and wide, with as much as 50 times zoom possible. That means you can get closer than most phones can manage, but there’s also the low light technology.
Simply put, this phone can see in the dark, and more than what your eyes can see, with the P30 Pro capturing an ISO of 409,600, a number that practically means seeing in the darkest of the dark.
We’ve been using it for a few days courtesy of Huawei which flew The Wrap to Paris for the launch, and first impressions are high. Not just us — we like it — but other journos too:
WhistleOut’s Alex Choros told us:
Alex Choros, WhistleOut: My favourite thing about the P30 Pro is definitely the low light photography. It’s incredible just how much that phone can see in the dark. You can get a completely bright, clear, usable shot with almost no light whatsoever, and where other phones pretty much just capture a dark black mess.
Over at Gizmodo, Tegan Jones quickly said:
Tegan Jones, Gizmodo: For the first time ever, I can see myself actually bothering to use zoom and night mode for photos I want to show people. I mean, it’s Huawei, so for me it’s always the photography, and just the fact that somehow they’ve managed to up the ante again is always exciting for me.
And Finder’s Alex Kidman said:
Alex Kidman, Finder: In many ways, it’s exactly what I liked about the P20: it’s the creativity that it offers you, even if you’re not necessarily a pro photographer, to experiment with what you can capture and how you do it.
It’s a phone that’s very exciting, packing so many features. It has 4G, wireless charging, water resistance, and a lot of power, and a price that doesn’t stretch the wallet too much, clocking in at $1599 locally.
We’ll have a full review in the coming weeks, but that wasn’t all that happened this week.
Apple launched a few services, too. It’s showtime, apparently, just not in Australia yet. The Apple TV Plus app will connect TV and movie services together, creating what is essentially an a-la carte service for your TV viewing, while Apple Arcade is a video game service for Apple devices.
There’s also an Apple News Plus service for getting more than just standard news, with a more magazine like delivery to iPad and iPhone, and it tells you that Apple is really getting into the services world. After all, with the success of Spotify and Apple Music for music, as well as movies on Netflix and Stan, services make money.
And Sony and Arlo both have new cameras to talk about. They’re not quite the same see-in-the-dark cameras as Huawei’s P30 and P30 Pro, but they might just change the cameras you do use.
The Arlo Ultra 4K is less a camera you’ll use for pleasure, and more for security, as it’s a 4K Ultra HD security camera. Arlo told us that you’d want at least a 4 megabit upload to make this thing work which basically means the NBN, and it’ll deliver a 4K security camera picture, which could mean the difference between identifying what’s going on versus who exactly is that blob of pixels and why are they in my home.
Meanwhile, Sony has a pint-sized GoPro competitor on the RXO II, getting 15 megapixel images and 4K recording in a waterproof design made for movie making and more.
You’d think we’re all obsessed with cameras, and in a way, we are. Frankly, we’re just excited that cameras are getting better, for all purposes, whether you’re using them for security, a movie making, photos, or just your humble trusty phone.
For now, you’ve been listening to The Wrap, Australia’s fastest technology roundup. The Wrap appears every Friday and will be back next week for more technology in five. Until then have a great week. We’ll see you next time on The Wrap. Take care.
