An UNPOPULAR Opinion - Huawei P30 Pro Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,270 words · ~11 min read
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Three years ago, I would probably have laughed at you if you told me that HiSilicon was going to be shipping mobile processors
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that were competitive with the best CPUs from Qualcomm, Apple, and Samsung.
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And yet, here we are.
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Now to be clear, the Kirin 980, and by extension, the Huawei P30 Pro, is not industry-leading across the board,
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falling well behind, well, everyone, when it comes to gaming, thanks to its Mali-G76 MP10 GPU.
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But, the thing is, it's also not an also-ran, which means that I can no longer safely ignore Huawei's flagship phones as overpriced and underpowered.
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So, the P30 Pro has spent the last three weeks in my pocket, and I definitely have some thoughts to share about it.
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If I had to describe its look, I'd say the P30 Pro is slick.
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Both in terms of its clean, curvy industrial design, and its finish, which is one of the most slippery that I have ever held.
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I've actually only encountered a handful of phones that I'm afraid to hold against my ear with my shoulder for fear that they will slip out.
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But...
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This is definitely one of them.
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I actually even ended up switching to on-screen buttons rather than gesture control, so that I could hold it just a little bit higher and hold on to it better.
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So, a grippy case or a textured dbrand skin is strongly recommended for this one.
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Other than that, though, my main complaints are really audio-related.
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The P30 Pro lacks a 3.5mm caveman jack, which I am still not over.
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And, probably more importantly for most people, it's got a pretty crummy speaker setup.
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Now, the earpiece speaker is handled similarly to LG's G8, with the top portion of the screen actually vibrating against your ear in order to produce sound.
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Now, this has the benefit of making it easier to hear your phone in a crowd, and it takes some of the guesswork out of where you need to position it against your ear.
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The issue is that it also comes with some drawbacks.
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Now, LG decided to enable their screen speaker as a second speaker to boost output and create a stereo...
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...listening effect, but we actually complained that it made the phone noticeably vibrate.
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So, I'm pleased to say that Huawei left that feature out.
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But, that means that the P30 Pro relies solely on its bottom-firing speaker for Netflix binging and other content consumption.
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And, frankly, it's just not very good.
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It's loud enough, but I found it harsh sounding and just not competitive with other flagships.
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Back to positives, though.
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The lock button is pretty good.
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It is positioned such that I could reach both it and the in-screen fingerprint sensor comfortably without shifting my hand.
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That was one of my major annoyances with the Galaxy S10+.
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The volume rocker has no opposing buttons to accidentally mash.
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The SIM tray can accept both a second SIM or Huawei's nano-memory card, and...
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Is that an IR blaster?
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It is!
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AV and home automation fans rejoice!
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Honestly, as positive as all that is, though, it wasn't until I started goofing around with the...
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...camera that I really considered switching to the P30 Pro as my daily driver.
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Now, there are gonna be other people that are gonna cover its merit as an artsy photography phone.
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But, there are some killer features for normies like me as well, with the headline one being, of course, the hybrid...
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...50x zoom that uses a combination of the 40 megapixel main shooter and the 8 megapixel 5x optical zoom lens...
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...that uses a novel...
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...periscope technique to bounce incoming light off of an angled mirror and then reflect it at the sensor that's 90 degrees offset.
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Now, obviously, 50x zoom is hand-wavy, enhance nonsense.
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I mean, you can't just enhance past the data that you've collected, but their software hybrid zoom technique...
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...assisted by the optical image stabilization on both of those sensors actually worked far better than I expected.
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Yielding usable images at anywhere from 25x to 35x zoom, as long as you've got a steady hand or something to rest the phone against, because that is truly a lot of zoom.
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It's darn impressive, though.
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The other big star of the show is the new RYYB yellow sub-pixel configuration of the main sensor that allows it to collect an advertised 40% more light,
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helping the P30 capture some truly game-changing images under...
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...very dark conditions.
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So that's really, really cool stuff.
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It's just that, unfortunately, it didn't work out quite as well for me as I hoped.
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For one thing, you need to understand that phone camera lenses are not the same as real camera lenses.
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You're not just changing out the glass on a modular mount like on a DSLR.
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So, on the P30 Pro, each of those three lenses is actually a completely separate camera.
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So, if you...
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...like me, were imagining, then, that you could get amazing, stable video of your kid's poorly-lit performance from the back of the gymnasium,
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think again.
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The telephoto lens, aside from capturing at a lower 8-megapixel resolution,
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has a conventional sensor behind it with a completely different image processing pipeline.
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And that's never more clear than when you switch cameras in the middle of a recording and watch the colors go all wonky for a second.
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With that said, that is a pretty cool thing.
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That's a pretty cool feature, being able to switch like that.
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On that note, though, that's about the only cool thing that I could find about video recording on the P30 Pro.
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It's pretty disappointing overall, with very poor processing of its rolling shutter effect.
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Watch the way my head stretches here.
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And occasionally, really low audio levels that annoyed pretty much everyone who's viewed my YouTube stories over the last few weeks.
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So, in summary, the camera's fine.
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It's more than fine.
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It's the best that I've ever used from a Chinese cell phone company.
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And this comparison, in particular, makes the Note 9 look decidedly last-gen.
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But, let's be realistic.
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It's not godly.
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And when you're running around snapping pics of your daily life,
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even its fancy yellow pixels and multiple exposures are not going to be able to combat squirmy children,
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and its occasional complete ball drop, like the yellow cast on this shot and this spectacular autofocus fail,
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are going to come up now and again.
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Fortunately, the P30 Pro, which is the most powerful camera in the world, is capable of doing that.
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The P30 Pro is not a one-trick pony.
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It's got a lot more going for it than just the cameras.
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Now, two of my biggest complaints about the S10 Plus were its exit-wound-style display notch
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and its slower, less-accurate, ultrasonic fingerprint scanner.
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And Huawei, while falling well short of Samsung's outstanding brightness and color reproduction,
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not to mention higher resolution, has done a better job, IMO, of the display's layout,
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thanks to their minimalistic, symmetrical notch, and, of course, the high-resolution display.
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Thanks to their minimalistic, symmetrical notch, and, of course, the high-resolution display.
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Thanks to their minimalistic, symmetrical notch, and, of course, the high-resolution display.
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Thanks to their minimalistic, symmetrical notch, and, of course, the high-resolution display.
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And slightly wider side bezels that reduce accidental activations.
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Now, I was also initially very pleased to see that they opted for an optical in-screen fingerprint sensor.
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It's fast, and I had no issues with it during my time with the device.
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But Samsung also issued a patch for their ultrasonic sensor,
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I think about a week ago, as of filming this right now,
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and it's way better behaved now, much faster, even when my fingers are really dry.
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What Samsung still hasn't managed to address for me, though,
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What Samsung still hasn't managed to address for me, though,
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What Samsung still hasn't managed to address for me, though,
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is their signature random battery drain.
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And that is where Huawei blows away anything in their lineup.
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The last time I had a phone that lasted me two full days this consistently,
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I'm not even sure if it had a color screen.
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Even with the fairly basic always-on-display enabled,
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you could have convinced me that this phone had maybe a 6,000
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rather than 4,200 milliamp-hour battery.
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It's that impressive.
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But this positive note also happens to be a perfect segue
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into some of the negative things about the P30 Pro's software.
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One of the ways that Huawei manages such excellent battery life
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is EMUI's hyper-aggressive background app suppression.
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And while I definitely appreciate the benefits,
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I do find their approach a little bit over the top,
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and I want more control.
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So first things first,
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there's this ridiculous card notification
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that I can't swipe away.
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Why is that there?
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Then there's the constant,
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constant reminders that like,
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oh, I don't know, Sonos is running in the background.
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That's fine, Huawei.
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I use my speakers.
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It's okay.
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And then there's the fact
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that it puts instant messaging apps,
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instant, that's the key,
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like Google Hangouts to sleep without my permission.
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And before you ask,
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yes, per Huawei's instructions,
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I disabled that behavior,
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but it kept doing it anyway.
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So occasionally, I just won't get my notifications
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until I open the app,
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and that's just not acceptable.
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And while we're at it,
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neither are non-removable bloatware apps in the year 2019.
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Also, since I'm on a roll here,
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please let me pull down the notification shade
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while the phone is locked
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and add a double-press gesture
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that works system-wide to quick launch the camera.
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While the phone's off,
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I can double-press volume down to launch it,
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but while it's not,
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that just goes down two volume clicks.
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Like, okay.
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To be clear,
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the software is mostly fine.
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At least putting my carrier SIM in didn't wipe the phone
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like Samsung's craptastic implementation.
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This SMS app has a cool copy text feature for 2FA.
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That's nice.
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It's just that,
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overall, I found myself more annoyed by it than not,
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which just isn't good enough
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now that iOS, Samsung One,
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and Google's stock experience are just so polished
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and do such a great job of staying out of the way.
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And making matters much worse on the software side,
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actually, XDA has gone as far
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as to include a disclaimer about this
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in every article that mentions Huawei or Honor.
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And so, I feel like I should probably raise my pitchfork
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alongside them.
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Due to a recent policy change,
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it is no longer possible to unlock the bootloader
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on Huawei devices,
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which means, for better or for worse,
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you are stuck with EMUI and the feature and security updates
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that Huawei decides to provide.
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There will be no extending the life of your phone
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with lineage OS or something similar down the line,
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and that's a real bummer,
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and it's something that I'd like to see them fix.
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It's already lame enough that Android fans have to accept
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the, at best, two to three years of support
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compared to Apple's four to five.
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If you take away rooting,
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you're basically saying,
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yep, this thing's going in the landfill.
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Deal with it.
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And that's just not cool.
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So, summary then.
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I'm really impressed with this thing.
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I'm gonna be continuing my policy
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of not ignoring Huawei devices anymore,
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but I'm also pretty jazzed to go back to my Note 9
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because, quite frankly, display notches
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and long live the headphone jack.
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