Huawei Pura 80 Ultra vs Huawei Pura 70 Ultra: Suspended animation

Huawei suffered a critical blow back in 2019 when the company was put on the “Entities” list and subsequently banned from the US. Despite all the troubles that followed suit, the brand has stuck with its smartphone portfolio and has not only survived but also managed to keep innovating and evolving.The latest brainchild of this process is the Huawei Pura 80 Ultra, a camera-centric phone with some clever tech inside. And to see what’s changed and what upgrades Huawei has brought to the table in this model, we’re going to compare it to its predecessor, the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra.

Both phones are heavy on camera specs; they sport 1-inch sensors, but the Pura 80 Ultra has a very interesting dual telephoto camera on board. Without further ado, let’s see how the Pura 80 Ultra stacks up against the previous model, the Pura 70 Ultra.

Huawei Pura 80 Ultra vs  Huawei Pura 70 Ultra differences:

Table of Contents:

These two employ the same design language, namely the quad-curved display and back, with a triangular camera bump on the back. However, there are some differences. The Pura 80 Ultra expanded the camera system quite a bit; the camera rings are much bigger, the XMAGE logo is now inside, and the whole system is substantially thicker.

The old Huawei Pura 70 Ultra manages a thinner camera bump, mainly due to the motorized pop-up main camera. In order to utilize the full surface of the 1-inch sensor, the lens just has to be at a certain distance, so you either go for a thick camera bump or a clever motorized pop-up setup. 

The Pura 80 Ultra gave up this, but that’s a fair trade-off, as there’s another motorized system at play inside. More on this later.

Size-wise, both phones are quite similar, with the Pura 80 Ultra being a tad taller and a millimeter wider, mainly because the curvature of the screen is not as aggressive as the one on the older model.The weights are also quite close; the difference is under 10 grams, which you might think is unperceivable. What’s absolutely clear, though, is that the camera bump of the Pura 80 Ultra adds a lot of weight toward the top of the phone, making it a bit hard to hold firmly. The building blocks are largely the same; we have an aluminum frame and Huawei’s proprietary tempered glass (called Kunlun glass) on the front and back. The Pura 70 Ultra opts for a different back material, it’s a silicone polymer that mimics leather. The button placement is the same, the ports are in the same spots, you get the picture.

Both phones sport IP68 water and dust resistance, a standard among modern flagships. Let’s check out all available colors.

The last year’s model featured some cool colors and materials on the back, the aforementioned faux leather look with a stylish diamond pattern. The color palette is better; there are green and brown variants, not conventional colors for a flagship.

The new Pura 80 Ultra comes in just two colors—Prestige Gold and Golden Black. These are very stylish, we must say. The black variant gives off ceramic vibes, and the golden one comes very close to real gold. They both look stunning in person.

The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra features a 6.8-inch AMOLED panel. The resolution is 1276 x 2848 pixels, resulting in around 459 PPI pixel density, and the display also uses LTPO tech, meaning it can dynamically change its refresh rate up to 120 Hz. Huawei cites 3000 nits of peak brightness, but we’ll check this one out during our display test.There’s not much of a difference compared to the old model; the Pura 70 Ultra features a very similar panel with the same 6.8-inch diagonal, a very similar resolution (1260 x 2844 pixels), and the same 120 Hz refresh rate as the new model. The pixel density is almost identical at 460 PPI, and the slight difference is down to aspect ratio and the softer curvature of the new model. 

In terms of RAM and storage, the situation is almost identical. The Pura 70 Ultra featured one variant with 12GB of RAM, but Huawei has dropped it in the new Pura 80 Ultra. We have 16GB of RAM and two storage variants on the new model—512GB and 1TB.

Time for some benchmarks!

CPU Performance Benchmarks:

GPU Performance

The software situation is very muddy, so to speak. Huawei doesn’t disclose the actual upgrade cycle, but digging around the forums, we found that you’re probably getting one or two major updates, which is not ideal. Both phones run the EMUI operating system, which is Android-based with a HarmonyOS skin on top, but due to restrictions and regulations, it’s kind of a dead-end OS. 

In China Huawei peddles full-blown HarmonyOS that’s integrated with other gadgets in the ecosystem, but we won’t see this globally anytime soon.

The camera department is where innovation lives when it comes to Huawei smartphones. The company has always been strong in the smartphone photography game, ever since the P30, which was one of the best camera phones of its time.The Pura 80 Ultra builds upon what its predecessor managed to achieve. The new model features the same 1-inch sensor as the Pura 70 Ultra and the same ultrawide camera, but it introduces a unique double telephoto system. It uses a motor to move the prism under the periscope lenses, thus providing different focal lengths while using the same image sensor. 

The result is a telephoto camera with two switchable focal lengths—83 mm and 212 mm, or, if we measure the magnification compared to the main camera, 3.7X and 9.4X zoom. Let’s quickly run through the camera specs of both phones.

Main camera

Samples from the main camera look quite similar when it comes to quality and resolved detail, but there are some differences. The color palette and the used presets lean toward a reddish tint in the Pura 80 Ultra, while the Pura 70 Ultra produces yellowish photos (check out the pavement difference in the samples above). That said, these two are very close.

Zoom quality

The zoom samples at 3.5X and 3.7X, respectively, also look similar, but here the difference in tonality is even more clear. The Pura 80 Ultra sample looks brighter, and the colors are more saturated, while the Pura 70 Ultra has this warm and soft quality to the image. As far as quality, detail, dynamic range, and sharpness go, again, both are very close.

The telephoto samples tell a different story. As the Pura 70 Ultra caps at 3.5X optical and doesn’t sport a switchable telephoto, there’s some loss in quality at 10X. The Pura 80 Ultra, on the other hand, manages to preserve more details; the sharpness is quite natural (while the digital zoom on the Pura 70 Ultra makes the photo a tad grainy); and all in all, there is a huge difference in favor of the Pura 80 Ultra (as we already saw in the lab tests).

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide cameras are identical on these two, and so are the samples. There’s a slight variation in the applied color preset; again, the Pura 70 Ultra has a warm, yellow-green quality to the photo, while the Pura 80 Ultra produces a punchier red color tone.

Selfies

Selfies look somewhat better on the older Pura 70 Ultra. The quality and resolved detail are both very similar, but the exposure is handled better on the Pura 70 Ultra. The new model tends to overexpose the background.

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

Sadly, we couldn’t get our battery benchmarks to run on the Pura 70 Ultra, so we can’t directly compare it to its successor. Subjectively though, both phones seem to drain their batteries in a very similar manner. The same goes for the fast charging. Both use the same 100W wired charger, and the wireless speeds cap at 80W if you happen to have the proprietary fast charger. For all intents and purposes, you can take the Pura 80 Ultra result in this benchmark and apply it to both models.

It turns out there’s very little in terms of upgrades when we compare the Pura 70 Ultra and its successor, the Pura 80 Ultra. Hence the title of this comparison. Huawei seems to be in a state of suspended animation, at least when it comes to the global smartphone market.

The Kirin 9020 chipset is just an overclocked version of the Kirin 9010, and the difference in performance is nonexistent in some tests. The battery and charging are the same between these two phones, and the display panels are almost identical too.

The only difference lies in the camera system. The Pura 80 Ultra has a brand-new dual telephoto with switchable focal lengths, but other than that, both the main camera and the ultrawide have been carried over from the previous model.