Huawei P30 Lite New Edition: A new memory era
Regardless of your stance towards Huawei, the spying accusations and the US sanctions: The Chinese manufacturer is building good and perhaps more importantly, very popular phones. For example, the 2019 Huawei P30 Lite was a big success in the mid-range sector.
Although now, a successor would be the logical next step, the manufacturer has to improvise, since Huawei currently cannot certify new smartphone designs for the Google services. The result is the Huawei P30 Lite New Edition, which features a significant memory upgrade and a slightly improved front camera.
The memory configuration is the real highlight of the smartphone, since it is not easy to find a smartphone for around 350 Euros (~$388) that offers 256 GB storage space and 6 GB of RAM. Moreover, the P30 Lite New Edition integrates fast UFS 2.1 memory, which puts it far ahead of other smartphones.
Fortunately, Huawei has already invested into the P30 Lite's modern design last year and the P30 Lite New Edition's waterdrop style notch, slim bezels and if desired, color gradient on the back are still timely.
The cameras still hold up as well, even though barely anything has changed compared to last year's model: The slightly higher resolution of the front camera is the only change in terms of the optics.
We were less satisfied with the Wi-Fi, since here, the Huawei phone is significantly slower than the competition due to the lack of MIMO antennas. Similarly, there is only Bluetooth 4.2, which while not a tragedy, still translates to less range and slower transfer speeds compared to the more modern Bluetooth 5.0 standrard.
The processor cannot quite keep up with other smartphones anymore and to make matters worse, throttles under load, which is disappointing.
While the P30 Lite New Edition could have benefitted from a more modern SoC, it is still a good mid-range smartphone with great cameras and an almost unmatched memory configuration at an affordable price.
To find out more about the device, read our detailed review of the Huawei P30 Lite New Edition.
