I don't like to sound hyperbolic, but the Amber Sunrise variant of the Huawei P30 series is one of the best-looking phones I've ever used. Just look at it.
The P30 and P30 Pro are, on their own, pretty nice-looking devices. I'm partial to the Breathing Crystal color, though the name is laughably bad, and the Aurora blue, which glints approvingly in the light, but the Amber Sunrise variant is something else entirely. Maybe because it's a color you don't often see in a phone — though red isn't entirely alien to the smartphone market.
Or perhaps it's the shift between red and orange that happens when you move from indoors out. It could be complementary colored sides which, because they're anodized, have a more muted, darker complexion.
Part of it is that Huawei clearly understands where the P series fits in the market, and is going to extra mile to build hardware that feels universally approachable without alienating the power user. Yes, it's a hunk of metal and glass similar to most phones on the market today, and it's slippery as hell because of it, but I've been using the phone non-stop for the past couple of days, and there's just something about the hardware that speaks to me.
What I don't like is how difficult the Amber Sunrise version is going to be to find at first. In my home country of Canada, carriers are only selling the black and Breathing Crystal versions, whereas in the UK the red model is only sold in the much more expensive 512GB variant. Sure, Huawei is doing its best to make this a status symbol like the ceramic versions of the Galaxy S10+, but I'm all for giving as many people as possible access to the nicest things.
I've also been thinking about whether a phone's color really matters, since most people just cover theirs with black cases that thicken and mar the overall aesthetic in the name of security. And who am I to judge someone who wants to protect a slippery-as-hell phone from dropping, especially when it's big and going to be used primarily as a camera? (And to that end, where is the dedicated shutter button, Huawei? If Sony can do it on its still-thin phones, so can you.)
But this is the kind of phone, and the phone color in particular, that deserves to be shown off. Does that mean getting a clear case so you can at least see the color through the looking glass, or trying to use it in two hands so as not to drop it? Or maybe just sticking to the regular P30, which is considerably smaller but comes in the same beautiful Amber Sunrise hue?
Either way, if you can check it out, do it. Because once you see it, there's no turning away.
The next great photography phone
There's lots to like about the Huawei P30 Pro, but it's the camera loadout that makes us most excited for it. With its 5X lossless zoom and 10x near-lossless hybrid zoom, there isn't a better camera phone on the market.
