This article was published on April 23, 2019

Watch Huawei’s P30 Pro (and its crazy periscope camera) get taken apart

It's not a folding phone, but it does have a folding camera


Watch Huawei’s P30 Pro (and its crazy periscope camera) get taken apart

Huawei’s P30 Pro might have the most impressive hardware on any phone currently available, at least among phones that don’t fold. That said, the P30 Pro does sort of have a folding component: its periscope camera. In order to provide 5x optical zoom, the P30 Pro’s telephoto camera is folded like a periscope. Now we get to see what that mechanism looks like from the inside thanks to perpetual phone torturer Zack Nelson – the guy behind YouTube channel JerryRigEverything.

If you’ve seen a phone’s guts before, you’ll quickly see how the P30 Pro’s periscope module is unusual. It’s far larger than normal to accommodate the folding mechanism, with a rectangular opening. It’s about twice the length as the primary 40-megapixel camera, for instance, despite that camera’s far larger sensor and brighter aperture. Still, Zack notes it’s not hard to imagine how the zoom length could be increased further by making the camera module even longer.

You’ll also get a look at other details, such as the optical fingerprint sensor (basically a specialized camera itself) and the earpiece, the latter which uses ‘electromagnetic sound levitation.’ It’s one of the tidier-looking phones on the inside – here’s hoping Huawei will consider making a transparent model in the future. Check it out for yourself:


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