Huawei Mate 30 Pro: Great cameras but awful speakers?

The Huawei Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro are the black sheep of the smartphone family. While the phones pack incredible hardware, the overall package they offer is marred by the fact that they do not feature Google Services, making them less than ideal outside the Chinese market. 

DxOMark tested the Mate 30 Pro's cameras and it performed incredibly well; in fact, being the number one camera smartphone on the website's leaderboards. The phone's audio capabilities have also now been tested, but the results aren't quite as impressive as its cameras'.

The Mate 30 Pro recorded an overall score of 60. That's currently the lowest on DxOMark's audio chart, which is surprising. The Mate 30 Pro's audio was deemed to be much worse than audio from devices like the Samsung Galaxy S10+ (65), OnePlus 7 Pro (65), Google Pixel 4 (68), Asus ROG Phone 2 (69) and iPhone 11 Pro Max (71).

It's even more interesting when one realizes that the top device on DxOMark's audio chart is a Huawei device, the Mate 20 X. 

The reason for the Mate 30 Pro's lackluster performance is obvious: a dire lack of stereo speakers, instead opting for a single speaker and an acoustic display that isn't used for media playback—effectively making the setup a non-factor in DxOMark's test. Every other device tested by the website so far features a stereo speaker system.

We're interested in DxOMark's evaluation of LG's recent phones, as they feature a similar audio configuration with their Boombox speakers.

Of course, when compared to other mono-speaker phones, we expect the Mate 30 Pro to come out on top more often than not. But that doesn't cut it when pitted against other flagship phones. 

The overall score is divided into Playback and Recording sub-categories, with the Mate 30 Pro scoring 57 and 72 respectively. The phone may offer bad playback but its recording is stellar. A score of 72 makes it the best device for recording audio on DxOMark's leaderboard.