The Huawei P30 Pro survives torture better than the P20 Pro

Pity the poor handsets that end up being shipped to JerryRigEverything. The YouTuber is best known for torturing the latest and greatest smartphones to see how they respond. Not well is generally the answer.

He’s now got his hands on the Huawei P30 Pro, and while watching him take a lighter and pen knife to a £899 piece of hardware makes for hugely uncomfortable viewing, it handles the torture pretty well. Notably, Huawei’s new pride and joy fairs far better than last year’s P20 Pro which memorably and painfully failed the ‘bend test’.

Screen scratching occurs with a Mohs level 6 pick, which isn’t that big a surprise given Huawei doesn’t claim to use Gorilla Glass in its phones. Pleasingly, even with heavy scratching, the fingerprint reader buried underneath the screen seems to behave itself just fine.

Related: Best Android phones

Taking a cigarette lighter to the screen (please don’t try this at home) results in a brief loss of touch functionality (recovered after a reboot) and a permanent white burn. Quite how you’d end up in a situation where this was a practical concern is never really addressed.

But the real triumph is in the bend test where our intrepid host tries to break the handset by bending it with his bear hands. Unlike the P20 Pro which ended up giving way quite easily, the P30 Pro holds firm.

Related: Best smartphones

This might not be as good as it sounds though: JerryRigEverything posits that the reason for this is the new curved edges, which not only make the handset more vulnerable to falls, but also make it a tougher and more expensive repair should it crack. Ask yourself which is more likely: you dropping your phone, or it taking an accidental bend?

Does the Huawei P30 Pro look built to last? Let us know what you think on Twitter: @TrustedReviews.