The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is easily the most controversial smartphone in the market right now. The U.S.-China trade war means the phone is not going to ship with Google apps pre-loaded which is a shame. But there’s no denying the fact that the phone is a camera monster and its DxOMark’s ranking proves just that.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro scored 121 points in DxOMark’s camera testing, with a photo score of 131 which is a full five points ahead of the previous leader, the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G.

The phone comes with a quad-camera setup which includes dual-40MP sensors, an 8MP 3x telephoto sensor, and a ToF depth sensor. Both 40MP sensors are massive in size — 1/1.7″ and 1/1.54″ — which gives the Huawei Mate 30 Pro an advantage over other smartphones.

DxOMark notes that the Mate 30 Pro shins in “almost all still image categories, but really shines for texture and noise.”

The Huawei achieves the top scores for both attributes individually, which is unusual, given that a noise-free image typically mean a loss of detail and vice-versa. The Mate 30 Pro camera is capable of balancing the two attributes perfectly, however, recording good texture and detail in almost all conditions while keeping noise levels very low. Noise is truly visible only in very low light.

Huawei seems to have also fixed the issues with color which was a weakness of the P30 Pro. The colors of the Mate 30 Pro are more saturated and the white balance more stable.

One chink in the Mate 30 Pro’s camera is that the field of view of the ultra-wide angle camera is not as wide as the competition. While the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 series ship with a 12mm wide-angle lens, the Mate 30 Pro has an 18mm lens.

Huawei has also fixed the poor video performance that is traditionally associated with its devices on the Mate 30 Pro. The phone records 4K 30fps videos by default and scored 100 points in the Video score, which is just one point below the leader Galaxy Note 10+ 5G. It does show some texture artifacts indoors and in low light scenarios along with slight colors casts. On the plus side, the stabilization is impressive, autofocus is accurate, and the colors are vivid and pleasant.

The front 32MP camera scored 93 in DxOMark’s Selfie score. While not as impressive as the rear camera performance, it was still good enough to put the phone among the top five. The camera setup on the Mate 30 Pro is similar to the P30 Pro from earlier this year but thanks to the improved ISP, the photo score has jumped from 90 to 97 points.

What are your thoughts on the camera performance of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro? Will you buy one just for its camera performance and despite it lacking Google apps?