[REVIEW] Huawei Pura 70 Pro, flagship with excellent camera performance

People choose the smartphones they use for various reasons, from brand loyalty, to aesthetics and features. For me it has always been the camera.

Reviewing and playing with the Huawei Pura 70 Pro was a breeze.

Aesthetically, the Pura 70 Pro falls somewhere between the standard Pura 70 and the Ultra. It has a glass rear like the 70 but it inherits the smooth curves of the Ultra. I did find the camera bump a bit too big and when the phone is in your pocket, it does feel bulky.

While I found the Pura Pro just perfect during the tech review, my brother whom I showed it to, said it felt a tad heavy. Perhaps, its because he is using an old Huawei P smart.

Features

But, don’t let that deter you, because the Pura 70 Pro has an amazing screen, a 6.8-inch OLED display, offering 3 200 x 1 440 resolution and supports adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz, which is great during gaming.  

The Huawei Pura 70 Pro with its aesthetic appeal begs for a case, which is available in the box.

If you tend to drop things, don’t stress, the edge-to-edge screen, protected by Kunlun Glass, which was first introduced on the Huawei Mate 50 Series back in 2022, has got your back.

The Pura 70 Pro is the same size as the pricier model, which means that it’s slightly larger and heavier than the standard Pura 70.

The lack of a mechanical pop-out lens shaves off a few grams, though, but I would’ve loved a pop up camera on this model, which would’ve given the innovative edge.

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Cameras

The camera array of the Pura 70 Pro features much of the same DNA that helped the 70 Ultra achieve the top score globally from DXOMARK in terms of camera performance.

This is something last year’s P60 Pro also perfected, so it is clear Huawei’s XMAGE division is making innovative strides in camera tech.

I loved the cameras on the phone, these include a 50MP Ultra Lighting, 12.5MP Ultra wide-angle and 48MP Ultra Lighting macro telephoto lens.

The 70 Pro boasts up to 35 times macro zoom from a distance as close as 5 centimetres. Sport, motoring, and wildlife photographers will also be happy to hear that Huawei has added a new Ultra Speed Snapshot feature that is capable of clearly capturing objects that move as fast as 300km/h.

The phone feels comfortable in the hand, with just the right amount of curviness to ensure you’re not poked in the palm. Like the Ultra, the display is mostly flat, but curved edges on all sides make for very comfortable gesture control, without causing too many distracting reflections.

Beyond the smooth exterior, the Huawei Pura 70 Pro is lined with a metal frame around the device, which is typical of modern smartphones.

Hurdles

A bigger hurdle to overcome is the lack of Google services. Again, this is something that Huawei is stuck with, and it’s sure to turn away many would-be buyers.

As for the internal elements for this flagship phone, powering the Pura 70 Pro is a mammoth 5 050mAh battery.

The Pura 70 Pro also supports up to 100W wired fast charging. Being a part of a flagship line-up, Huawei has not forgotten about memory or storage either, with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage onboard to support the octa-core Kirin 9010 processor present.

While there are plenty of workarounds to get Google’s apps installed and it may be a breeze for me, it’s a hassle, and it rarely works as seamlessly as it would on phones with native support.

Pricing

The Huawei Pura 70 Pro which retails for R27 000 is an excellent phone with lots of great features. Unfortunately, the lack of Google services means that it’s not going to be considered by most people.

The real pull of the Pura 70 series is the camera performance and with the Ultra offering better specifications, I can’t help but feel people will be drawn to that instead.

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