Huawei Pura 80 Ultra Review

Introduction

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra was one of my favourite phones of 2024. The camera was easily among the best on the market, and its design was unlike anything else, boasting stunning looks and a mechanical retracting lens on the main camera.

Now, the Pura 80 Ultra has arrived, and it’s another boundary-pushing hyper-flagship. This time, you get a bold triangular camera array with a first-of-its-kind telephoto setup, which uses a single sensor that mechanically shifts between two different focal lengths.

Of course, this is a Huawei phone, and unless you live in China, that comes with some significant baggage. There are no Google services unless you use workarounds, and no 5G, either. With a premium price tag, is this phone still worth considering? I spent the past week with it in an effort to find out.

Design 

• 163 x 76.1 x 8.3 mm, 233g
• Aluminium frame, glass back
• IP68/IP69 rated

The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra makes an immediate impression. With a supersized triangular camera array on the rear, it stands out from everything else on the market. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is entirely up to you; it’s certainly different, and personally, I quite like it.

It’s by no means a svelte device. And that chunky camera bump more than doubles the thickness of the phone. Despite that, though, the phone feels very comfortable in the hand.

This is partially due to the smooth curves on all sides, but the unusual triangular camera housing helps too. It gives you a nice, long shelf to rest your forefinger on, and that really helps you keep a firm grip on the phone.

It’s available in two colours, Prestige Gold and Golden Black (which essentially means either gold or black), and I have the black one in for testing. Both are extremely high-gloss, and that’s particularly notable on the black version, which features a mirror-like finish on the rear panel.

I absolutely hate fingerprint smudges, and this phone is probably the most fingerprint-prone that I’ve ever tested. It looks lovely, until you touch it, and then it doesn’t.

Thankfully, a very premium case comes included in the box, and with that attached, I could forget about all those smudges.

The case has a vegan leather finish with debossed Pura logos in a repeating pattern. It’s very Louis Vuitton-esque, and I think it looks great.

When it comes to durability, the phone scores top marks with its IP68/69 dust and water resistance. The screen is protected by 2nd-Gen Crystal Armour Kunlun glass, which is very scratch-resistant, in my experience. There’s also the cursory aluminium frame and glass rear that we’ve come to expect from flagship handsets.

Screen 

• 6.8-inch 120Hz 1276×2848 OLED
• 2nd-Gen Crystal Armor Kunlun Glass
• 3000 nits peak brightness

While many flagships this year are shifting towards flat displays, the Huawei Pura 80 Ultra is sticking to its quad micro curve design. I’m in two minds about it overall. 

On one hand, it looks nice, serves to make the phone feel less bulky and makes gestures feel super smooth. But on the other hand, it’s much more exposed than a flat display, as you can’t use a case with raised lips around the edge, and that makes it more prone to damage. Thankfully, Huawei’s glass is super strong, as I mentioned in the last section.

The display itself is a 6.8-inch LTPO OLED panel, with a peak brightness of up to 3000 nits. Simply put, it looks fantastic, with rich, accurate colours and exceptional contrast levels. It’s super bright, and I never had trouble seeing it in direct sunlight.

The screen also benefits from high-frequency PWM dimming of up to 1440Hz. It’s not the highest that we’ve seen, but if you’re sensitive to flicker, this panel will suit you better than most.

Oddly, Huawei has ditched the in-display fingerprint sensor on this model, and there’s no 3D face unlock, either. Instead, the fingerprint sensor is on the power button. It works great, so it’s no issue, but it’s an odd decision. This and the Sony Xperia 1 VII are the only flagship bar phones using side-mounted fingerprint sensors in 2025.

Cameras 

• 50MP 23mm main camera (1-inch sensor)
• 40MP 13mm ultrawide
• 50MP 83mm telephoto (1/1.28-inch sensor)
• 12.5MP 212mm sensor-shift telephoto
• 13MP selfie camera

As usual, the star of the show is the camera system. The Pura 80 Ultra features a massive 1-inch 50MP main sensor with a mechanical aperture that can adjust from f/1.6 to f/4.0. It has a more typical 23mm equivalent focal length compared to the Pura 70 Ultra’s tighter 27mm.

There’s also a 40MP ultrawide with macro focusing capabilities and a 13MP selfie camera with autofocus. However, the most interesting camera of the bunch is the telephoto, which is essentially two cameras in one.

The telephoto uses a huge 1/1.28-sensor – as large as the main sensor on phones like the Vivo X200 Ultra and Honor Magic 7 Pro. It’s not just a big sensor, though; it mechanically moves between two separate lenses (and makes a satisfying noise when doing so).

It starts at 3.7x zoom, or around 83mm equivalent, and can shift to 10x, or around 212mm. It’s a different approach to other brands, which typically feature either dual telephotos (like the Oppo Find X8 Ultra) or a single large-sensor telephoto (like the Honor Magic 7 Pro).

At 3.7x, the telephoto has pretty incredible macro capabilities, but it can’t focus quite as close as last year’s Pura 70 Ultra, which was almost like a microscope. Still, it rivals the best from Oppo and Vivo, in terms of macro shooting. The sensor-shift 10x zoom doesn’t work for close-ups, and the lens will only shift when your subject is far away, but the clarity difference is wild.

This phone is easily up there with the best on the market for long-range zooms. You can push it all the way to 100x, which of course doesn’t look great, but you can see things that are impossible to notice with the naked eye, and that’s really impressive. Keeping the zoom at a more reasonable level, below 50x or so, yields fantastic results.

I often have this experience with smartphones, wherein the photos look great on the phone screen, but less impressive when I view them on my computer, but with this phone, photos look even better when you blow them up. I had the same experience with the Pura 70 Ultra, there’s just so much detail captured that you really need to see them on a big screen to appreciate the intricacies.

One of my least favourite things about the previous model was that the colours would randomly shift to a warm, green-ish hue, and thankfully, that seems to have been resolved. This phone is much more reliable with its colour accuracy, and I was less inclined to tweak the colour balance after shooting.

As you might expect, with such large sensor sizes, the low-light performance is top-notch. You can capture sharp, detailed images in even the most challenging lighting conditions, and there’s barely any noise to speak of.

It’s only the ultrawide and selfie cameras that struggle a little in the dark, but that can be remedied by activating the dedicated night mode. In fairness, even without doing so, the lenses fare better than most rivals.

For video shooting, you can capture at up to 4K 60fps on every camera; however, the 10x telephoto doesn’t seem to activate in video mode, relying instead on the 3.7x. That said, the zoom doesn’t seem to suffer; you can still zoom a very long way before the image degrades too much.

The stabilisation in video is excellent, lens switching is very smooth, and the microphones handle wind noise better than most, too. The only downsides are the lack of a LOG profile and the fact that there’s no 4K 120fps recording mode.

Performance 

• Kirin 9020
• 16GB RAM, 512GB storage
• Dual stereo speakers

As most readers likely know, US sanctions on Huawei mean that it can’t access the Qualcomm and MediaTek chips used by rival brands. Instead, it uses its own SMIC-produced Kirin chips, and finding information about them isn’t the easiest task.

For instance, the official product page on Huawei’s global site neglects to mention the SoC entirely, but other sources claim it’s the Kirin 9020, the same chip used in the Huawei Mate X6 foldable.

In benchmarks, it’s clear that the Pura 80 Ultra lags behind mainstream flagships equipped with the latest Snapdragon or Dimensity chips. In fairness, it’s quicker than last year’s Pura 70 Ultra, but it’s not a huge performance bump.

In day-to-day use, though, you might be surprised by how well this chip performs. Navigating through the OS always feels smooth and snappy, and editing photos or streaming media is quick as can be, too.

It’s only when trying to play demanding games that you’ll really feel the difference. It can still play heavy titles like Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, but you’ll have the best experience on the medium graphics preset.

Running the Zenless Zone Zero at 60fps with graphics maxed out, the phone became very hot, very quickly, and stuttered during action-packed scenes. However, at more modest settings, it was perfectly playable, if a little less visually attractive.

The global version of this phone comes with an ample 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. This means it can multitask like the best of them, and there’s plenty of storage for all your apps and media.

It’s also worth mentioning that Huawei phones launched outside of China have no 5G connectivity. In use, though, this proved to be less of an issue than I expected. The 4G speeds are still very good, and Huawei’s excellent modem gets reception in areas where my other phones tend to struggle.

The speakers on this phone are mighty impressive, too. Huawei hasn’t specified exactly what’s going on inside, but the speakers remind me of the Honor Magic 7 Pro, with its dedicated subwoofer. There’s a lot more weight to the low end than your typical smartphone, and you can even feel the rear of the phone rumbling when played at higher volumes.

Software 

• EMUI 15, based on Android
• No Google services
• Basic AI features

In China, Huawei has moved away from the Android platform, relying on its homegrown Harmony OS Next instead. In the international market, though, we get EMUI 15, which is a very heavily customised version of Android 12. I imagine we’ll see Harmony OS Next on global devices at some point, but for now, EMUI is chugging along.

I feel like this bifurcation of Huawei software has resulted in fewer features being developed for EMUI, and despite being called EMUI 15, it feels almost identical to EMUI 14.

There is one change that I noticed compared to the last couple of Huawei phones I reviewed, and that’s the return of the app drawer. It’s still disabled by default, but you can now toggle it back on in the settings menu. I have no idea why Huawei removed it in the first place, but I’m very happy that it’s back.

Of course, the biggest pain point of EMUI is its lack of Google apps and services, but you probably already knew that. I used the MicroG method to get all my usual apps working, and while it’s a bit of a pain and takes some technical know-how, most things worked as they should once it was set up.

The exceptions are Google Wallet and pairing a Wear OS smartwatch; as far as I’m aware, there’s no way to get these working. Of course, you can’t set Gemini as your assistant, either, but you can access it through the Gemini app.

Another slight annoyance is the fact that the YouTube app only allows you to select up to 1080p resolutions, and HDR doesn’t work either. The same is true of Netflix, but that’s a more common issue. If you switch to your browser, you can stream YouTube at 4K, but it’s a bit more of a hassle.

There’s a significant amount of bloatware when you set up this phone, as well as recommendation folders encouraging you to download more junk. This irked me with the Pura 70 Ultra, and it’s the exact same thing here. When you’re spending this much on a phone, you shouldn’t have to deal with all these superfluous apps.

Battery life 

• 5170 mAh battery
• 100W charging
• 80W wireless charging

The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra has a 5170 mAh battery, which is, oddly, a slight reduction compared to the Pura 70 Ultra’s 5200 mAh pack. Meanwhile, it charges at the same blazing fast speeds, up to 100W with a wire and 80W wirelessly. You still get the ultra-fast charger included in the box, which I always appreciate.

While the Pura 80 Ultra’s battery capacity might be underwhelming, especially compared to other Chinese flagships like the Oppo Find X8 Ultra and Vivo X200 Ultra, it was actually very easy to live with.

The phone would easily last me all day when I was out and about. It might not be a two-dayer, but going to bed with 30% or more left in the tank was fairly common.

With a charger this fast, battery capacity isn’t a huge concern, anyway. Just 40 minutes on the charge will take you from flat to full. Plus, if you have a suitably powerful wireless charger, you’ll find that it’s not that much slower.

Should you buy it?

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