Huawei Pura 80 Ultra review

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Today we have a new cutting-edge camera phone from Huawei, the Pura 80 Ultra. So, how special are these cameras and is this phone worth getting? I'm Will for GSM Arena, and let's find out in our Huawei Pura 80 Ultra review.

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The Pura 80 Ultra continues in the tradition of Huawei's P series camera phones, and they're again pushing the envelope when it comes to smartphone camera tech. First off, the Pura 80 Ultra has a main cam with a variable aperture lens and a large 1-inch type sensor. This is a next-gen triple gain sensor, which takes three different exposures with every shot, allowing it to get a super wide dynamic range of up to 16 stops, even in video. And not only that, this is the first phone we've seen with a telephoto zoom camera that switches lenses. There's a closer 3.7x zoom lens and a longer 9.4x one. You can see the mechanism move as the switch happens and even hear the sound of the hardware relocating inside. Not only that, this camera has one of the largest sensors in a telephoto yet. Plus, it has sensor-shift stabilization.

Besides the cameras, there are other nice features here, too, including a high-res OLED screen, a large battery, and fast charging. The design of the Pura Ultra does stand out thanks to its mirror-like finish, and the large triangular camera bump, the "forward symbol," as they call it. The back is made of glossy, slightly curved glass, and you have an aluminum frame. The phone is a bit hefty at over 230g. Huawei has improved the ingress protection this time around. It has an IP68 rating against dust and water submersion and also an IP69 rating against heated water jets.

The display of the phone is a 6.8-inch LTPO OLED with a high resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It's protected by second-gen Crystal Armor Kounoon glass. This screen looks great. It's quite sharp with very thin bezels. There's support for 10-bit color here. And for HDR video playback, the standard supported here is called HDR Vivid, which is native to China. The display's LTPO tech means the refresh rate should be extra adaptive to save energy and able to dial down as low as 1Hz while idling. We weren't able to capture this with the built-in refresh rate counter, though.

As far as brightness goes, the Pura Ultra falls behind many current phones. We measured a maximum of about 600 nits with the manual slider, and this boosted to a bit over 1,000 nits in auto mode. It still seems to be enough on sunny days, but the competition can pump out a lot more.

The Pura 80 Ultra has a pair of stereo speakers. The top speaker has a grill on the top of the phone as well as on the front. The speakers are loud, earning a score of "very good" on our tests, and the sound quality is excellent here with rich and deep sound. You can check it out for yourself with our comparison tool linked below.

While the previous model had an under-display fingerprint reader, for some reason this time Huawei has gone with a side-mounted one built into the power button. It works well, though. You can also assign shortcuts to this key. And then with a double tap, you can launch an app or a function like the flashlight. And the phone has an IR blaster on board so you can use it to control appliances with.

The global version of the Pura Ultra comes with 512GB of storage on board. This isn't expandable through a memory card. The user interface here is Huawei's latest EMUI 15, which is actually built upon Android 12. It hasn't changed much in recent years, so it's pretty familiar. One signature feature here is Cards. Tapping and holding on certain apps will open a set of options without needing to open the app first.

As you probably are aware, Huawei devices don't have support for Google apps or services. So instead, you can use Huawei services and apps. This includes their proprietary AppGallery app store. It works fine. But if you're looking for a specific app, you might not find it within Huawei's catalog. There are other ways to get apps outside of the store, though. With the integrated Petal Search, you can find apps on the internet on developers' websites and other repositories and install them from there. And there are also a few workarounds for accessing Google's apps. We like to use GBox, but there's also MicroG and Aurora Store. These create a sort of virtual layer through which they pose as a regular Android phone with proper access to the Google Play Store. So apps that normally wouldn't run can operate this way. However, that doesn't mean all apps off the Play Store are guaranteed to work properly.

This phone doesn't have a whole lot in terms of AI-based software features, but at least you do get some AI photo editing tools within the gallery.

While the Pura Ultra pushes the limits when it comes to the cameras, chipset-wise, it's nothing too special. The phone runs on the self-developed Kirin 9020. It's the best the company has at the moment, but it performs at about the level of competitors' mid-range level chips. In benchmarks, the phone sits way behind other current camera phones, which are typically flagships with the most powerful chipsets around. And even though the chipset is rather modest here, the Pura 80 Ultra's thermal management leaves a lot more to be desired. During our prolonged stress tests, the CPU performance throttled surprisingly low with potentially lag-inducing dips and spikes.

The Pura 80 Ultra has a large battery. The global model's is 5,170 mAh. In our battery life tests, we weren't too impressed, though. The phone earned an active use score of 11 hours and 51 minutes, which is fine, but we expected more considering the battery capacity. Like the previous model, there's support for 100W charging, and the charger comes in the box. With this adapter, we were able to charge the phone from 0 to 80% in half an hour, and a full charge took 42 minutes. There's also support for fast wireless charging and reverse wireless charging.

We've made it now to the cameras, which include a main cam with a large sensor, a telephoto camera, which switches between two optical zoom levels, and an ultrawide cam, which has autofocus. The main camera has an adjustable aperture, too. In Pro mode, there are nine fixed steps you can choose between f1.6 and f4.0. It's useful if you want to manipulate the depth of field. Shooting at the widest f1.6 aperture will get you a shallow depth of field with a blurred background, while at f4.0, you get more of the scene in focus with a deeper depth of field.

The main camera captures very nice photos during the day. Detail is pretty good, if not the most natural-looking up close. Colors are generally likable and dynamic range is indeed excellent. Portrait shots come out great, too. Facial details are rendered nicely. Skin tones look good. Dynamic range is excellent, and there's a bit of natural background separation.

While the Pura Ultra does have a dedicated night mode, in the vast majority of situations, you get the same results by default. These nighttime photos are very good with nicely rendered detail and excellent dynamic range. Colors are generally very pleasing. The white balance can sometimes be a bit off, though.

Moving on to the telephoto camera, which is able to switch between 3.7x zoom and 9.4x zoom, or rather 10x because that's the preset we get here. At the shorter zoom level, the photos come out with good detail levels, though the detail can have a bit of an overprocessed look. Dynamic range is very good, and colors are typically accurate, too. 3.7x photos of people are great. The perspective is just right, detail is excellent, and there's a good level of subject separation. When it's at the short end of its zoom range, this telephoto cam can focus as close as 12cm, which means you can use it to take close-up macro-style photos. These come out pretty great. In low light, this camera can capture top-class 3.7x shots. Detail is excellent and dynamic range is too, with the only flaw being a tendency for the white balance to be off with certain types of lighting.

For some reason, while Huawei was fine to use a decimal for the shorter zoom, the longer zoom toggle is rounded to 10x instead of 9.4x. This means that if you select the toggle on the viewfinder, there's a bit of digital zoom unless you pinch to go back down to exactly 9.4x. Anyway, the default 10x photos are decent but hardly remarkable. They have a certain painting-like quality to detail, and there's probably some level of AI enhancement involved here. 10x low-light shots aren't really packed with intricate detail, but they're still usable.

Moving on to the ultrawide camera. These daylight photos have very good detail and excellent dynamic range. Colors are well-tuned in terms of saturation, too. And in low light, the ultrawide camera is solid. Dynamic range is nicely wide, and while colors are a tiny bit over the top, they're still likable. Detail is generally good, but not class-leading.

The Pura Ultra has a capable selfie camera. It's 13 megapixels with autofocus, and it has quite a wide field of view at 21mm, but it also has a couple of crop modes. Selfies have nice colors, lifelike skin tones, and great dynamic range. The detail is excellent, too.

The Pura 80 Ultra records videos in up to 4K at 60fps with all of its cameras, including the front-facing one. The 4K videos from the main cam are actually just okay for the class. The detail level is average. Otherwise, the dynamic range and contrast are good, and colors are accurate, if not too lively. The telephoto camera is in pretty much the same boat. 4K clips aren't particularly sharp, but they're still solid overall. And here's a look at 10x zoom video. It's worth noting that these clips aren't shot through the longer lens; they're done by adding digital zoom to the 3.7x ones. And the ultrawide camera does a solid job for video, but again, nothing class-leading. Electronic stabilization is always on and it does just an okay job. There's still some shakiness left over when walking.

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In the dark, the main camera is able to produce great detail for these conditions, and you get a bright exposure and well-developed shadows and highlights. At 3.7x zoom, the telephoto camera is also quite good at night. And while the ultrawide's low-light recordings are quite soft in the shadows, they're still usable.

So, that's the Huawei Pura 80 Ultra. It's a flagship with a flashy design, top-tier ingress protection, fast charging, great speakers, and innovative cameras that capture great photos and great nighttime video. The phone also runs very smoothly in day-to-day use. However, it's also not without drawbacks. The chipset lacks 5G and posts only mid-range performance scores. Battery life is just average, and using Google apps and services requires jumping through hoops. And even then, there's no workaround for some features like Google Wallet, Android Auto, screencasting, or Quick Share.

On the other hand, for someone who's not constantly trying different apps or doesn't care for 5G, but can appreciate the novel camera system here, the Pura 80 Ultra is a camera phone that's well worth considering. Thanks for watching, guys. If you're looking for alternatives, you might consider the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Let us know what you think, and I'll see you on the next one.