HUAWEI P60 Pro review: Unconventional in many ways!

When publishing this review, HUAWEI just released its latest flagship smartphone in Europe: the HUAWEI P60 Pro. As one of the first people to test it, I can say that it’s an impressive smartphone in many key areas, from its elegant design to the outstanding camera system. And, if you compare it to other flagship devices from Samsung and Apple, the fast charging of the HUAWEI P60 Pro is also excellent. But… is this enough to make it a great choice for you? Read this review and find out:

HUAWEI P60 Pro: Who is it good for?

This smartphone is an excellent choice if you:

• Want a large, solid, and reliable smartphone
• Are looking for a beautiful premium device
• Want a smartphone with an impressive camera system
• Are invested in HUAWEI’s ecosystem

Pros and cons

Here’s what I like about the HUAWEI P60 Pro:

• Elegant design
• Beautiful, fast, adaptive display
• Excellent build quality
• Superb fast charging
• High-tech camera system with excellent night photography

There are downsides to consider as well:

• No support for 5G mobile networks
• Equipped with last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
• Google Mobile Services and Android Auto are missing
• The ultrawide lens on the back is not as great as the others

Verdict

HUAWEI P60 Pro looks and feels like a flagship device. Its design is elegant, it has a beautiful display, and the quality of its materials is excellent. This smartphone also aims to be a great device for photography and video recording. With a few minor exceptions, it delivers on this promise. While it lacks the latest 5G hardware you find on other flagship smartphones, it offers first-class performance, excellent autonomy, and fast charging. If you’re already invested in HUAWEI’s ecosystem, the P60 Pro is a great companion that integrates beautifully with your other devices. However, if you’re not familiar with HUAWEI devices, you should make sure that you’re ok with this smartphone‘s unique combination of strengths and weaknesses before making your purchase.

Unboxing the HUAWEI P60 Pro

The packaging for HUAWEI P60 Pro is simple and elegant, following the design lines of other premium smartphones from this manufacturer. The box is all white, featuring the phone’s name on the top cover, along with logos discreetly promoting the XMAGE imaging system, the durable Kunlun Glass used on this smartphone, and its AppGallery application store. HUAWEI P60 Pro comes in a white cardboard box On the sides, there’s little printed information, except for a sticker sharing details like the serial number of the device you just bought and a few details about its hardware configuration, including how much RAM and storage you get. When you open the box, you see the smartphone nicely protected by transparent paper foil. Opening the box reveleas the phone you just bought Under the phone, you find the charger, a USB Type-C cable, and another smaller box containing a flexible clear case, a SIM ejection tool, a quick start guide and warranty card. All the items found inside the box Unboxing the HUAWEI P60 Pro is a pleasant experience. Unlike other premium smartphones, you get a fast charger included with your smartphone and a useful protective case, which is great.

Design and build quality

When you first touch and use a HUAWEI P60 Pro, you’re likely to be impressed by three aspects: size, colors, and materials used to build it. First, its size: at 6.67 inches, it’s not a small phone. Its dimensions are 6.3 x 2.9 x 0.3 inches or 161 x 74.5 x 8.3 mm in height x width x depth. Therefore, women and people with smaller hands might find it too big. It also weighs around 7.05 oz or 200 grams, which is typical for a device of such dimensions. The phone’s curved screen is protected by Kunlun Glass, made by HUAWEI as an alternative to Gorilla Glass Victus 2. In some tests online, it looks like Kunlun Glass is more durable, which is great. HUAWEI P60 Pro is protected by Kunlun Glass The other two aspects you will appreciate are the colors and materials used for the back of the HUAWEI P60 Pro, as well as the camera system. The Rococo Pearl color version I received in testing looks amazing, and the back of the phone feels very smooth when you touch it. Also, no matter how often you use the smartphone, it doesn’t catch any fingerprints due to its excellent coating. The main camera looks impressive, highlighting the company’s focus on delivering a great photo and video experience on the HUAWEI P60 Pro. The Rococo Pearl version is stunning HUAWEI P60 Pro comes in four colors: Rococo Pearl, Violet, Black, and Green. You can see them in the picture below. I prefer Rococo Pearl and Black. What about you? The color versions for HUAWEI P60 Pro The frame of the HUAWEI P60 Pro is made of aluminum, and it doesn’t allow the phone to bend or break easily. When holding it, the smartphone feels durable and well-designed. You’ll be happy to know it has received a certification from Switzerland’s SGS, with a 5-star glass drop resistance rating. SGS is a multinational company that provides inspection, verification, testing, and certification services for traded goods. The phone is also IP68-rated for splash, water, and dust resistance, which is great. When inspecting the left side of the HUAWEI P60 Pro, you see only the frame with no buttons on it. I found this design choice elegant and well-suited to the pearl texture of the device I’m testing. The left side doesn't have any buttons All the buttons are on the right, on the phone’s upper side. As you see in the picture below, the Power button is colored in red, a distinctive element for HUAWEI’s recent flagships. The right side of HUAWEI P60 Pro The top edge of the HUAWEI P60 Pro features a speaker, two inserts for the GSM antennas, and two holes for microphones. The top edge of the phone On the bottom edge, you find the second speaker, a USB-Type C 3.1 port, the main microphone, and the SIM tray. The bottom edge of the phone Turning the phone on reveals a tiny cutout for the selfie camera. And while only visible once configured, the fingerprint sensor is on its bottom side, under the screen. Welcome to HUAWEI P60 Pro HUAWEI P60 Pro is a well-designed smartphone made from durable materials, with a distinctive look and a spectacular Rococo Pearl color version. While its size and weight might not be to everyone’s taste, most users will probably appreciate its elegance.

Hardware specifications

HUAWEI continues to be affected by US sanctions, so it doesn’t have access to the latest 5G mobile hardware. Because of that, HUAWEI P60 Pro is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 4G, a processor that equipped last year’s flagship devices. Unfortunately, on the HUAWEI P60 Pro, its 5G capabilities are stripped out. Moreover, another important issue is that this processor is less energy efficient than this year’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2, found on competing flagship smartphones from 2023. The smartphone is available with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage space or 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. If you plan on recording 4K videos with the HUAWEI P60 Pro, purchase the 512 GB version or extend its storage using a nano memory card. The hardware specs The 6.67" always-on display features an LTPO OLED panel with an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120 Hz and a 300 Hz touch sampling rate. Furthermore, the peak brightness is around 1500 nits, the resolution is 2700 x 1220 pixels, the screen’s density is an excellent 444 ppi (pixels per inch), and the screen-to-body ratio is 89.8%. In addition, the display’s color accuracy has received a TÜV Rheinland certification, which is a first in the world of smartphones. Looking at all these specs, it’s clear that the screen of the HUAWEI P60 Pro is one of the technical areas without any shortcomings compared to other similar flagship devices. HUAWEI P60 Pro has a beautiful display However, the true star is HUAWEI’s Ultra Lighting XMAGE Camera system on the back of the phone. It features a 48-megapixel wide lens with an impressive aperture of f/1.4~f/4.0, optical image stabilization, a 48-megapixel telephoto lens with an aperture of f/2.1 and 3.5x optical zoom, and a 13-megapixel ultrawide lens with an aperture of f/2.2. The selfie camera on the front uses a 13-megapixel ultrawide lens with an aperture of f/2.4. HUAWEI’s Ultra Lighting XMAGE Camera system HUAWEI P60 Pro features stereo speakers and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, as you would expect from a flagship device. Unfortunately, the Bluetooth version offered is 5.2 instead of 5.3. Also, a 3.5 mm audio jack is lacking, and you only get a USB Type-C (USB 3.1 Gen1) port for charging or connecting your phone to other devices. You get Bluetooth v5.2 However, you have NFC, GPS, and all the usual sensors: fingerprint sensor (under the screen), gravity sensor, infrared, Hall sensor (for position sensing), gyroscope, compass, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, laser sensor, and color temperature sensor. The battery is non-removable, has a capacity of 4815 mAh, and can be charged with a 88 Watts fast charger that’s bundled with the phone. Wireless charging is also available at 50 Watts, which is great. The 88 Watts fast charger comes with the phone Lastly, HUAWEI P60 Pro is available in single SIM and dual SIM versions, with 4G mobile connectivity, in a dual stand-by implementation. For more technical information and all the official specs of this smartphone, visit this page: HUAWEI P60 Pro Specifications. This smartphone has a unique combination of excellent hardware capabilities and limitations caused by the US ban on HUAWEI. That said, this phone manages to be a flagship device, with mostly excellent specifications, which should deliver a positive user experience. I encourage you to turn the page and read about the smartphone experience, camera quality, performance in benchmarks, and bundled software.

The smartphone experience on the HUAWEI P60 Pro

As always, I started by evaluating the user experience offered by the HUAWEI P60 Pro as a mobile phone. While the absence of 5G connectivity makes it ideal for people who are afraid of 5G networks :), I was happy to see that I could enjoy very good signal reception everywhere I’ve traveled with it. Mostly, it was in densely populated urban areas. My phone calls were of excellent quality, even when answering calls using the speaker. And the noise cancellation worked well, so most outside noises didn’t lower the audio quality during phone calls. Call quality is excellent The smartphone’s Wi-Fi 6 capabilities slightly compensate for the lack of 5G connectivity. I enjoyed the super-fast Wi-Fi on the HUAWEI P60 Pro. Later in this review, I’ll provide details on the actual speeds it reached. Audio quality, in general, was satisfying on this device. The smartphone’s speakers are loud and deliver plenty of bass. Listening to music on it is a pleasant experience, as is watching YouTube videos. The speakers are loud and clear Watching movies is another positive experience thanks to the phone’s high-quality OLED display. The screen looks great, is fast and responsive, and offers excellent visibility, even when using your HUAWEI P60 Pro outdoors. By default, HDR is turned on, and both the resolution and the refresh rate are set to be adaptive. They are changed based on how you use the phone to provide the best balance between excellent visual quality and battery life. The OLED display is great for watching video Gaming works well on the HUAWEI P60 Pro, even though it is not on par with this year’s flagships. The phone can run any game you want, with excellent visual quality and frame rates. However, there are two issues to consider: because of the large camera bump on the back, holding this phone in landscape mode for long periods can become uncomfortable, and the number of games you can access is more limited than on Android smartphones from other brands, because of the US sanctions imposed on HUAWEI. Luckily, the company’s AppGallery is seeing quite a bit of growth, and more titles are becoming available each month. Mobile gaming works well Battery life and fast charging are strengths of the HUAWEI P60 Pro. In normal use, this smartphone can last up to a day and a half on a single charge. You can expect up to two days of autonomy if you’re a light user. Furthermore, you’ll be very happy with how fast this phone charges using its bundled 88 Watts charger. The battery charged from 0% to 45% in ten minutes, and in 31 minutes, it reached 100% - an excellent result. The likes of Samsung and Apple should take note! HUAWEI P60 Pro charges fully in about 30 minutes The overall performance is at the flagship level, even though the phone uses an older chip than its competitors. This smartphone is always fast and snappy, no matter what you want to do on it and which apps or games you’re running. Only processing Night mode pictures takes a bit longer. But more on that in the next section of this review. HUAWEI P60 Pro feels snappy Lastly, unlocking the HUAWEI P60 Pro is fast and accurate, both when using the fingerprint reader and face unlock. The fingerprint reader works well HUAWEI P60 Pro is a great smartphone with an elegant design, excellent build quality, and solid performance. In addition, its display looks great, the autonomy you get is good, and the battery charges very fast.

The camera experience on the HUAWEI P60 Pro

HUAWEI P60 Pro has a 48-megapixel main camera with a variable aperture from f/1.4 to f/4.0. According to the manufacturer, it is the brightest camera ever on a smartphone. The image quality is excellent, both in daylight and during the night. It’s also perfect for professional photographers who want to fiddle with different aperture settings. They can be easily adjusted from the Camera app when using its Pro mode. Speaking of which, the Camera app has been redesigned for single-hand use. For the most part, it is user-friendly, even if you’re not a professional photographer. Setting the variable aperture from f/1.4 to f/4.0 Thanks to the large sensor, the main camera on the HUAWEI P60 Pro can absorb more light than regular smartphones are able to. This translates into beautiful and sharp photographs, with a lot of detail, reduced noise, and excellent dynamic range. The colors are natural and feel accurate both during the day and at night, and the contrast is excellent. When using the Night mode on the HUAWEI P60 Pro, you notice it takes a few seconds to process your pictures. Therefore, you can’t take several pictures immediately one after the other. Instead, you have to wait a bit between them. This aspect may irritate some users. However, the results you get are great. The 3.5x optical zoom is equally impressive, as it lets you get very close to your subject and enjoy excellent image quality. HUAWEI P60 Pro also offers a Super Macro mode, which is useful for people who enjoy macro photography, as I do. 🙂 Super Macro works great Unfortunately, the 13 Megapixel ultrawide lens has not received the same optimization for night photography as the main camera, and it also lacks optical image stabilization. Therefore, the shots you take with it will have less detail. And you can’t record 4K videos at 60 fps, only at 30 fps. I believe these limitations should not have been present on a flagship smartphone like the HUAWEI P60 Pro. On the upside, the selfie camera can adjust the focal length between different levels and record videos at 4K resolution, in 30 or 60 fps. It generally delivers great results, especially during the day. However, during the night, the selfie camera can suffer from poor edge detection. And for the best results, enabling Night mode and using the flash is a good idea. Taking selfies on the HUAWEI P60 Pro is fun If you want a clearer image of the picture quality delivered by HUAWEI P60 Pro, browse the gallery below. I’ve included pictures taken in different lighting conditions and at different zoom levels. You can also record videos on the HUAWEI P60 Pro in 4K resolution at 30 or 60 fps. Again, the quality is excellent, and the optical image stabilization does a great job on the lenses on which it is present. Here’s a sample where I filmed a forest during a hiking trip in 4K at 60 fps. I especially liked how easy it was to zoom in and out and how the transitions were handled. Night videos also look great, including when filming subjects that move. I recorded another sample, again in 4K resolution and at 60 fps: Except for the ultrawide lens on the back, this smartphone delivers excellent picture quality and solid video recording capabilities, with optical image stabilization in 4K resolution and 60 fps. In addition, HUAWEI’s Ultra Lighting XMAGE Camera system on the back delivers excellent night photography and high-quality video. While it may have a few weaknesses, HUAWEI P60 Pro is one of the best smartphones for photography and video recording in 2023.

EMUI 13.1, AppGallery, and bundled apps

In the European markets, HUAWEI P60 Pro comes with EMUI 13.1.0 preinstalled. This is the company’s user interface, which is based on Android 12. It looks similar to other Android smartphones today, so you won’t have to worry about learning a new operating system, navigation, or notification system. However, one key difference is that HUAWEI smartphones and tablets don’t have Google’s Mobile Services preinstalled. EMUI 13.1.0 is similar to other Android implementations EMUI 13.1.0 comes with HUAWEI’s services and apps that try to meet your needs as much as possible. The official app store is AppGallery. It has grown a lot in recent years. It now includes many popular apps like Google Chrome, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook. You also find popular mobile gaming titles like FIFA, PUBG, or Call of Duty. Thanks to this growth and HUAWEI’s focus on extending its apps and games ecosystem, AppGallery has won Best Alternative App Store of the Year at the Mobile Games Awards 2023 gala in London. While the number of available apps and games is surprisingly high, this doesn’t mean that everyone will find everything they need. For example, I could set up my HUAWEI P60 Pro to use all my regular apps, but I couldn’t get it to work with Android Auto. Because of that, I couldn’t enjoy my car’s head unit for GPS navigation, which was an important downside. Another one was that I couldn’t make Clash Royale work. It’s the only mobile game that I play regularly. Other than that, I was happy with the apps and games I had access to, and there was no other task where HUAWEI P60 Pro couldn’t deliver what I needed. Some of the apps preinstalled on the HUAWEI P60 Pro And speaking of apps, when you set up your smartphone, you can end up with a lot of bloatware by accepting all the apps suggested for installation. However, if you uncheck them all, as I did, you get a smartphone with almost no bloatware, which is great. Don't accept all the suggested apps Except for HUAWEI’s apps for things like Maps, Books, Files, or managing NFC payments, you get only these few other apps:

• Bing - Microsoft’s search engine is used by default across HUAWEI’s smartphones.
• Cloud - HUAWEI’s cloud backup system offers 5 GB of storage space for free. You can save documents, sync files, or sync settings across your HUAWEI devices.
• Docs - a simple mobile app that allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, which get stored and synchronized using HUAWEI’s Cloud.
• MeeTime - an app that allows you to make voice and video calls over Wi-Fi or using mobile data.
• Member Center - a portal that gives you access to HUAWEI’s latest news and offers.
• My HUAWEI - get in touch with other users of HUAWEI devices in your region and access support options when needed.
• Office - Microsoft’s famous app is preinstalled on HUAWEI devices, allowing you to open documents that were created using Microsoft Office or similar products.
• Snapchat - the popular multimedia instant messaging app is also preinstalled. You can easily uninstall it if you don’t want to use it.
• Smart Remote - allows you to turn your HUAWEI P60 Pro into a remote control for all kinds of devices, from TVs to air conditioners, projectors, or DVD players.
• Translator - another Microsoft app that is helpful when you need to translate text from one language to another.
• Weather - we all need a good weather forecast, right?

Even though EMUI 13.1.0 is based on an older version of Android than the one available on similar flagships, the operating system is familiar, easy to use, and works well. Also, the AppGallery does a good job of giving you access to the apps and games you need. Users who don’t have specific needs, like connecting their smartphones to their car through Android Auto, should be satisfied with the apps and services available for HUAWEI P60 Pro.

Performance in benchmarks

By now, you know how the HUAWEI P60 Pro looks and what it’s like using it, both from a hardware and software perspective. To get a better idea of its power, I also ran some benchmarks: The first one I ran was Geekbench, a benchmark that measures the processor’s performance both on single-core and multi-core. The HUAWEI P60 Pro performed well, similar to last year’s flagship devices. For example, its Single-Core score was 1456 points, almost identical to that of a Google Pixel 7 Pro. The Multi-Core score was 4354 points, which places it above a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4. HUAWEI P60 Pro - The results you get in Geekbench 6 Next, I installed PCMark for Android, which simulates a wider range of tasks (browsing, text editing, etc.). In the Work 3.0 test, HUAWEI P60 Pro scored 11552 points, 12% lower than what you get from a Samsung Galaxy S23+. However, the score remains high, proving that this smartphone is great for all kinds of mobile productivity tasks. HUAWEI P60 Pro - The results you get in PCMark To evaluate the potential for gaming performance, I ran 3DMark. In the standard Wild Life test, the smartphone maxed out and proved too powerful. However, in the Wild Life Extreme test, it scored 2754 points, which is much better than what you get with the Samsung Galaxy S22 line-up equipped with Exynos processors, which is sold in Europe and other regions. HUAWEI P60 Pro - The results you get in 3DMark The GFXBench scores were very good but lower than what you would get from this year’s flagship smartphones equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processors. Even so, HUAWEI P60 Pro remains a solid choice for mobile gaming. HUAWEI P60 Pro - The results you get in GFXBench I used the Battery Life 3.0 test from the PCMark suite to see how long the battery lasts. It ran for 16 hours and 54 minutes of continuous use. Again, this is a good result, but it doesn’t beat the energy efficiency of similar smartphones with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processors. How long the battery lasts in PCMark Lastly, I ran Ookla’s Speedtest to measure the speeds you get on this smartphone when using a Wi-Fi 6 router and a 1 Gbps internet connection. I was impressed to see a download speed of 904.14 Mbps, the fastest I’ve ever enjoyed on a smartphone. The speed you get on Wi-Fi 6 HUAWEI P60 Pro has solid hardware similar to what you find on flagship smartphones from 2022. Unfortunately, the company doesn’t have access to this year’s latest and greatest hardware because of the US ban on 5G chipsets. This limitation lowers the appeal of this smartphone when compared to other 2023 flagships, even though it performs very well no matter what you want to do on it.

Do you like the HUAWEI P60 Pro?

You have arrived at the end of this lengthy review. Thank you for reading thus far. I hope you liked it and now have a solid perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of the HUAWEI P60 Pro. I’d be happy if my article helps you understand whether this smartphone is a good fit for you. If you have any questions about the phone or any feedback about this review, don’t hesitate to comment using the options available below.