HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro Review – Powerful camera flagship phone tested

A blend of the base Pura 70 and the top of the line Pura 70 Ultra, the Pura 70 Pro is very much a flagship phone in its own right with the same Kirin 9010 processor as its siblings, the curved OLED display of the Ultra model and a blend of features from the base model.

We managed to get a sample for field testing ahead of its official launch – here’s our HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review where we share if their latest flagship phone has the chops to take on the competition as a flagship camera phone.

HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro Review – Build and Design

The successor to last year’s P60 series, the rebranded HUAWEI Pura 70 series features a bold new redesign with a redesigned signature triangular camera housing across the entire series with enhanced specifications and durability with the notable addition of Huawei’s very own Kirin 9010 processor powering the phone.

Much like its siblings the Pura 70 and Pura 70 Ultra, our Pura 70 Pro review sample has the signature triangular camera housing on the rear backplate and has a design that’s closer to the pricier Pura 70 Ultra though it lacks its faux leather backplate and swaps it for a more conventional metallic finish.

The rear of our HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review sample hosts the aforementioned XMAGE triple camera array built around a primary 50MP Ultra Lighting camera with a selectable physical aperture between F/1.4 – F/4.0 complemented by OIS steadier shots.

The main camera is accompanied by a 48MP Ultra Lighting Macro Telephoto camera with a periscope style lens array with 3.5x optical zoom and the ability to take super macro  as well as a 12.5MP ultrawide angle camera. Camera specifications aside, our Huawei Pura 70 Pro  comes in a shade of black that has a speckled, semi-matte finish that repels fingerprints while looking suitably premium. You can also acquire it in a shade of white.

The right side hosts a volume rocker and a power button while the left side of the Pura 70 Pro is otherwise unremarkable. Up top, you get an IR blaster which allows the Pura 70 Pro to act as a remote control for other appliances too which is a pleasant bonus.  The base of the phone comes with a USB-C port for wired and reverse wired charging,  a dual nano SIM card tray and a grille for one of the two speakers that form a stereo pair. 

Up front, our HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review unit features a curved 6.8-inch LTPO OLED display with 2,844 x 1,260 pixels resolution, a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate as well as 2,500 nits peak brightness. The sides and even the top and bottom curve gentle into the frame, lending it an elegant look. If this doesn’t quite float your boat, you’ll have to opt for the base Pura 70 model which has a smaller but completely flat 6.6-inch LTPO OLED display.

The display also benefits from an improved version of their Kunlun Glass seen in the Mate40 Pro dubbed as Super Durable Kunlun Glass which offers improved scratch and 100% better drop resistance over its predecessor. Oddly enough, they’ve also pre-applied a free screen protector on top of the display which is somewhat at odds with its rated durability. Up top, you get a single 13MP selfie camera with autofocus.

Overall build quality is excellent and befitting its status as Huawei’s flagship design, the HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro has exquisite tactility and build quality with its smooth sides and even heft making it comfortable to wield one-handed. Befitting its pedigree, the phone also has IP68 dust and water resistance too which allows it to survive in up to 1.5 meters of fresh water for up to 30 minutes.

Also bundled with our Huawei Pura 70 Pro review sample is a 100W  fast charger, a USB-C cable, the usual SIM eject pin as well as a snap-on protective casing which does add substantial value to the phone itself.

HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro Review – Performance and Specifications

Arguably the most interesting aspect of the Pura 70 Pro is what it has running under the hood. Powering the Pura 70 Pro and Pura 70 Ultra phones is Huawei’s own Kirin 9010 processor. The base Pura 70 runs on the Kirin 9000s chipset.

On closer inspection, the Kirin 9010 itself is made completely in China by SMIC and is built on a 7nm process with a single ultra-high performance core with up to a 2.3GHz clock speed, a trio of high-performance 2.18GHz cores and four low-power 1.55GHz cores.

It also sports their own Maleoon 910 GPU. One thing to note though is that the phone, like its siblings lacks 5G connectivity on account of the ongoing US sanctions though it does have all the usuals like fast WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

Paired with the Kirin 9010 processor is fast 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage with Huawei’s own EMUI running under the hood with apps sourced off their own AppGallery. Much like prior versions of EMUI, the phone lacks virtual RAM though 12GB is still plenty for a smartphone.  Here’s how our Huawei Pura 70 Pro unit stacks up on paper:

 

Price	RM4,899
Display	6.8-inch LTPO OLED X-True display, 2,844 x 1,260 pixels, 1-120Hz dynamic refresh rate, 1,440Hz PWM dimming, 300Hz touch sampling rate
Processor	Kirin 9010
OS	EMUI 14.2.0
Memory	12GB LPDDR5X RAM / 512GB UFS 4.0 storage
Camera	50MP F/1.4 – 4.0 w/ OIS + 48MP F/2.1 w/ 3.5x optical zoom and OIS + 12.5MP F/2.2 ultra wide angle [rear] / 13MP F/2.4 w/ autofocus [front]
Battery	5,050mAh w/ 100W wired, 80W wireless, 20W reverse wireless, 18W reverse wired
Size/Weight	162.6 x 75.1 x 8.4mm / 220g

When subjected to synthetic benchmarks, our HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review sample managed to score the following:

3D Mark Wild Life Extreme	1,393
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited	1,353
Geekbench 6 Single core	1,341
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	4,391
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	3,087
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	3,229
PCMark Work 3.0 Performance	10,480
PCMark Battery Life	17 hours 51 min

Oddly enough, the Kirin 9010 was unable to run 3D Mark’s Solar Bay, their latest raytraced cross-platform graphics benchmark though it was able to run the other benchmarks in a reliably smooth fashion. In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the Kirin 9010 us outpaced by recent generation processors like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 it offers smooth performance across the usual gamut of tasks expected of a smartphone.

Our HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review sample performed smoothly across an array of day to day tasks and the heavy optimisations that HUAWEI has implemented in EMUI ensures that navigating the menus, running apps and multitasking ran without issue. 

At launch, it also offers a bunch of shortcut links for optional downloadable business, entertainment, social and lifestyle apps though these are a mixed bag. Fortunately, they’re optional and you can delete these shortcuts afterwards for a more clutter free menu.

@hitechcentury We answer the burning question – does the new Huawei Pura 70 series have Google Apps?#huaweiappgallery #googleplay #xmage #pura70 #learnontiktok #huaweipura70ultra #samasamabelajar #edutok #edutoktech #techtok #galvanisedsteel #galvanizedsteel @HUAWEI Malaysia ♬ original sound – Hitech Century

It ran most of the usual apps and has support for Google apps that can be searched and downloaded from the App Gallery with the ability to run the usual like YouTube, Google Docs, Google Sheets and the like. This is achieved via the use of the Gbox app which the phone installs automatically if you’re looking for a Google native app and which then enables access to the Google Play store including apps that typically aren’t available on the AppGallery like Netflix.

On the gaming front, it tackled Call of Duty Mobile and Genshin Impact without issue though it wasn’t able to run Call of Duty Warzone which, to be fair, still isn’t optimised just yet for most phones.

The 6.8-inch LTPO OLED display is almost akin to that used on the Pura 70 Ultra including the use of second generation Super Durable Kunlun Glass to offer enhanced drop resistance though the Ultra also has an additional enhanced coating dubbed as Crystal Armour Kunlun Glass that offers even better durability and scratch resistance. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to test this with our Huawei Pura 70 Pro review unit as it is a loaner but it does add extra peace of mind. 

Durability aside, the LTPO OLED display is among the best on test with superb brightness, crisp detail and excellent colour rendition with the smooth dynamic 1-120hz refresh rate allowing for enhanced battery life as the screen doesn’t need to refresh as many times when looking at static content like text and images. Movies and games were a treat with the provided stereo speakers offering a decent amount of detail and were able to be cranked up to maximum without distortion, offering enough volume to fill a room with sound.

Where our HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review sample truly impressed is its endurance. Their heavy optimisation with EMUI, the generally power efficient chipset and LTPO OLED display combined to offer a whopping 17 hours and 51 minutes of battery life in our test and with normal use including modest usage of TikTok and eschewing heavy camera usage, it was comfortably able to last a day and a half. Using their proprietary 100W FlashCharge charger, it was easily able to get to full charge in about 50 minutes which is impressive.

Objectively speaking, the Pura 70 Pro acquits itself well on the performance front with solid performance and an accessible app ecosystem with access to both the AppGallery and Google Apps.

HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review – Cameras

The HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro has a camera array that has many of the features of the higher end Pura 70 Ultra. You get a primary 50MP camera with a selectable F/1.4 – F/4.0 aperture stabilised with optical image stabilisation (OIS) though it lacks the more sophisticated sensor-shift OIS and retractable lens array of the Ultra. 

Paired with the main camera array is a 48MP F/2.1 Ultra Lighting Macro Telephoto camera with OIS and which has a periscope-style array that offers 3.5x optical zoom and insanely close macro camera capabilities with the ability to zoom as close as 5cm to a target. Wrapping things up is a 12.5MP F/2.2 ultra wide angle camera that is somewhat akin to the one used in the base Pura 70. 

Combined, this allows the HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro’s rear camera array to capture stills at up to 3.5x lossless zoom and up to 100x digital zoom stabilised by AI as well as up to 4K@60fps video at up to 10x zoom. Up front, our Huawei Pura 70 Pro has a 13MP F/2.4 selfie camera with autofocus, a feature it shares with the Ultra model with the ability to capture up to mugshots and up to 4K@60fps video.

In terms of imaging performance, the rear cameras on our HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review are among the best on test, delivering excellent shots with crisp detail and lifelike colour rendition. Even at 100x zoom, the camera was able to capture legible details on the distant KL tower after standing at the Bukit Bintang crossroads. Videos on the rear main camera array are delightful affairs with good detail and colours; content creators will likely have a ball with this.

The ability to take super zoomed in macro shots is an interesting novelty, allowing for very creative shots though this isn’t likely something you’d use regularly on a daily basis as it has rather focused applications. Still, it’s ability to capture impressive macro shots puts it leagues ahead of the competition as there simply aren’t any phones with cameras this specialised for macro photography thus far.

In dimly lit scenarios, the phone served up superb imagery, offering excellent dynamic range and salvaging details and hues from shadows that are ogle worthy indeed though at times it gets overly aggressive with vibrancy especially in scenarios like this, rendering images with brighter than expected colours though this does look nice on social media.

The front selfie camera and its addition of autofocus offers excellent skin tones, even in dimly lit scenarios though it still can’t quite outgun more specialised selfie-centric models with larger sized sensors.

Should you buy the HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro?

On its own merits, the HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro is an otherwise solid flagship smartphone with excellent camera performance and a brilliant looking display along with superb battery life.

If you can live without the inclusion of 5G connectivity, the official lack of Google Mobile services and are looking for a sub-RM5,000 flagship outside of the usual brands, this makes for a delightful choice. 

 

Those seeking best-in-class imaging quality will appreciate what the HUAWEI Pura 70 Ultra has to offer with its more sophisticated camera array though it comes at a significantly higher price tag.

HUAWEI Pura 70 Pro review unit courtesy of Huawei Malaysia. To purchase, please visit https://consumer.huawei.com/my/phones/pura70-pro/