Huawei joins Android elite with pricey, nocturnal 40MP flagship Over the years, very few phone makers other than Samsung have produced a phone that might tempt an iPhone stalwart to switch to Android, but Huawei may have just joined the elite. Huawei’s new flagship threatens to match or best any rival with its photography - particularly in low light. The Chinese giant took the wraps off …
I have got some really nice photos from phones that none of my DSLRs could get, mainly because I always carry the phone and the DSLRs were at home at the time I saw the shot.
Yes you can get better cameras than a phone one, but most of them will be more bulky than a phone and usually not around at the time and likely draw more attention than a phone when you take photos.
+1000, back in 2005 I "invested" in one of the first ever megapixel ( well 1.3 ) camera phones a sanyo m570. the reason, was we'd just had our daughter and whilst I had a great camera I knew I'd always have my phone and I have hundreds of OK, not great quality pictures but i HAVE pictures that I wouldn't have if I'd set myself only to use my camera.
"Can someone tell me how much a standalone compact camera, of similar size and with similar image quality, would cost?"
Well my SLR cost about the same, but that only gets taken out on special occasions or for deliberate photography sessions... The rest of the time it's my phone that's the main camera for photos of kids and random things when out and about.
Like it or hate it, having a decent camera on your phone is extremely convenient and it's how most images are taken these days... People who rate that as an important feature are more likely to pay the extra... I'm not really one of those people anymore, most smartphone cameras are "good enough" to me now.
A lot less cash
.. Because physics
Yes super sensitive and high density sensors can do amazing stuff with a small amount of light
But a "proper camera" has a massive lens in comparison to a phone, so even with more "low tech" sensors and image processing the huge (in comparison) amount of light more than compensates - so as long as fairly recent tech in a new compact camera then it will be better, but beware compacts using old tech.
But the image processing tech improvements do make a difference, especially when you compare old tech to new: I have a (very in tech change terms) old Nikon DSLR body and some very nice quality zoom lenses (that were back i the day used on a "film" SLR body).
Over a year ago the camera was being put through its paces with a few days of wildlife photography (often the "targets" quite distant, moving at speed).
I got some nice pics, but (at the time quite new) bridge camera was used by one of my friends (bridge has inbuilt (non changeable) lens, significantly smaller than smallest of my lenses, but as "new" (at the time) far better electronic "wizardry"): The resolution of comparable images was far better with his camera, as was focus / image stabilization on (hand shot - non tripod mounted) small targets at speed, showing that although light gathering is key (all things being equal) that the tech makes a difference and new tech can outperform low tech even when that low tech has better optics *.
It is very impressive seeing the improvements in image processing tech in digital kit over the years
* improvement more visible on JPEG images, as bridge had far beter conversion algorithm / tech, but bridge advantage still visible on RAW so not just an artifact of image format.
It's like a rundown of everythingI don't care about in a phone.
Even-more-stupendously-ridiculous camera features that I'll never use, and more cameras to use them on.
Stupid display ratio and "follow the crowd" design nonsense.
Slow-mo video, so people can piss about doing things that are totally useless for even more time.
No removable storage or battery.
No headphone jack.
LUDICROUS price.
"You would think they are deliberately copying Apple and their stupidly expensive iphone X with this. Hang on ........"
The P20 Pro will be on sale on the High St, SIM-free and unlocked, for £799, which is £200 cheaper than the X. So not quite so stupidly expensive, and it's hardly the only option out there. The P20 Pro is Huawei saying "look what we can do", and I for one see far more potential here than in animated turds or personalised emoji (*). This tech has useful real-world ramifications which will filter into mainstream devices in a couple of years.
(*) Google's AR Stickers excepted, 'cos photographing your 6 year-old nephew next to an Imperial Stormtrooper makes you the best uncle evar! :-)
The P20 Pro will be on sale on the High St, SIM-free and unlocked, for £799, which is £200 cheaper than the X.
£799. I can (and have) bought a decent secondhand car and a decent brand new phone for less than that. Being £200 cheaper than something that's already ludicrously overpriced is a fairly lukewarm achievement.
@ian Michael Gumby:"... you're getting in to the true cost of the phone itself."
Not even close. An iPhone X 64Gb that retails for $999 costs $370* to make. That's some SERIOUS markup but reports suggest that the X's sales are disappointing with Apple slashing production.
The problem for Huawei is that if people can't be persuaded to spend a grand on a phone from a 'premium' brand like Apple, they're sure not gonna throw down 800 or 900 on a Huawei.
*http://news.ihsmarkit.com/press-release/technology/iphone-x-costs-apple-370-materials-ihs-markit-teardown-reveals
>The gobsmacking photos it can take in low light are partly down to the hardware, and partly down to “AI image stabilisation”, with the phone taking an eight-second exposure then weeding out artefacts and blur. I’m not sure why it’s called AI when really it’s interpolation, but that’s modern tech marketing for you.
The reason is that before you interpolate you really should align the separate pictures, otherwise your interpolation becomes just another blur. You need to identify and then align common points or landmarks. This process is called stacking and has been used in astro-photography for years and year. The aligning is hard, otherwise all phone cameras would have had this the last 15 years. And this is where an AI might do the job.
If it has two sim slots, seems fairly common for phones in Asia to offer two SIM slots with the 2nd slot doubling as SD card slot if you don't want to use a 2nd SIM.
I could understand more dropping SD card if they lacked the 2nd SIM slot entirely. 128GB of storage may be passable for not having SD card.
My ~4 year old Note 3s which are my daily drivers have 128GB and 256GB SD cards. Storing thousands of pictures on those SD cards is slow but for tons of HD video it works well in combination with MHL for HDMI TVs when traveling(I have a Note 4 that I bring along on travel as well with another 256GB SD card). To think the phone I had before the Note 3 with (at the time) 96GB total flash(32GB base + 64GB SD), was a HP Pre3 with 8GB total flash(no SD card).
My SD cards, like my removable batteries aren't things that are swapped often, I change batteries probably once per year(to new battery), and SD card at this rate every 2 years(to larger size).
"...very few phone makers other than Samsung have produced a phone that might tempt an iPhone stalwart to switch to Android..."
Apple themselves did.
Their iPhone 7 caused me to replace the iPhone 4S with a lovely Asus Zenfone 3.
I wouldn't have even looked at the Android ecosystem if the iPhone 7 hadn't omitted the headphone socket.
Thank you Apple. I had no idea that the transition was so painless and the grass so green.
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KM complained, "...no headphone jack yet there's room for FOUR CAMERAS."
The iPhone 7 actually does have room for a headphone socket, as so convincingly demonstrated by the wonderful 'Strange Parts' gentleman on YouTube who, as an individual geek, retrofitted a headphone socket into the iPhone in a perfectly professional manner.
Point being, if he can do it, then Apple could have done it.
The *only* reason left standing is that Apple would prefer to have the several billions of dollars in wireless earbuds sales revenue to stash in the Cayman Islands.
It's quite probable that this *is* part of a strategy to move the brand upmarket. Even if it doesn't itself sell in silly quantities, it might have a "halo" effect on their other, lower-end models and in turn let them get away with charging more for them.
Unfortunately, that bloody notch- which was stupid on the iPhone X in the first place- just makes it look like a wannabe.
Nope. Been stung once and not again by Huawei. Too few rom updates (I have a media pad tablet that has had none - not one since purchase) and terrible after sales support. Compare this to OnePlus who are still putting out updates for the OP3 on a very regular basis months after they stopped selling them.
They've improved. My Honor 8 is up to the Feb. security patch and I can see that the March patch is in testing. We're supposed to get Oreo by May, which while it is slow isn't much slower than any other non-Google vendor for a phone that's over a year old.
I can always wish for more and faster updates, but by the (poor) standards of the general Android marketplace, they're not bad. Not great either, mind.
Someone needs to do a shootout between a real camera and a "hyper megapixel" phone camera.
One thing I have noticed with most phone cameras is that they do extreme jpeg compression, thus rendering those megapixels almost useless. My photos from ca 2003 taken with an EOS 300D still look better than mobile phone images.
A lot of trickery is used, such as stacking to increase signal-to-noise, but that only works for certain types of subjects. Like HDR which sometimes works, sometimes not, depending on what moves between images.
It's hard to beat a large APS-C sensor.
@Timmy B:"Agreed totally. When I bought my camera I was told that only a small part is the sensor/body and it's the glass that really matters. Spent far more on lenses than body and still get great pictures from my 5 year old EOS 1000D."
And what's the call quality like on your camera Timmy?
"One thing I have noticed with most phone cameras is that they do extreme jpeg compression, thus rendering those megapixels almost useless. My photos from ca 2003 taken with an EOS 300D still look better than mobile phone images."
Apple iPhones and most Android flagship phones now offer the ability to shoot in RAW.
Between the sensor size and the quality of the lens, DSLR will always have the edge over a phone camera, but even so, the gap is narrowing. E.g. https://www.phonearena.com/news/Galaxy-S8-vs-2000-mirrorless-camera-and-DSLR-Ultimate-camera-face-off_id94035
Generally, we're at the point where mobile phone photos are generally Good Enough, especially a) the truism about "the best camera is the one you have with you" is definitely true and b) these days most photos are uploaded to a social media platform where they'll be downsampled to 2MP and then squinted at on a mobile phone's screen.
I have a P10 plus and don't see any problems with some of the features complained about. The EMUI is no better or worse than other Android skins or native Android. I don't have any problems using it or things that annoy me about it.
I don't have a problem with the fingerprint sensor where it is either. Never had a problem unlocking or dropping the phone while trying to unlock. Having one round the back seems odd as you would have to pick up the phone to use it.
Mine does have an SD card slot, but with 128Gb onboard, I still have 90Gb free after a year of use and plenty of photos, videos and music stored. I am not seeing the loss of that slot as such an issue as it was when phones only had 8Gb storage.
As with computers, internal storage (and RAM, to a similar degree) is increasingly pretty much the only thing which can be trimmed by OEMs looking to cut costs. Still, the march of progress has meant that even budget Android phones have a relatively decent amount of built in storage.
Over in Apple land though, it's still overly expensive to upgrade iPhone storage. Looking at mymemory.co.uk, branded 64GB cards cost around £17 while branded 128GB cards cost around £25.
Meanwhile, it currently costs £150 to upgrade from 64GB to 256GB - or roughly three to four times as much as the same amount of storage on SDXC cards.
Admittedly, it's not an exact comparison - interestingly, it looks like most of the major Android OEMs have stopped offering multiple storage-size options, at least on the CW website. But I doubt that there's any technical reasons which justify such a high markup!
1) A night-photo setting where you have to keep the camera (and the subject(s)!) stationary for 8 seconds.
2) 960fps slo-mo filming at 720p.
Are those really useful features, or just gimmicks that'll be used once or twice and then forgotten about?
Equally: a 3x optical zoom feature on a dedicated 8MP lens. Is this really needed? You'd be able to get nearly the same level of "optical" zoom by cropping the 40MP image, as Nokia did with the Lumia 1020[*]
It does feel like phone "innovations" are increasingly shallow, and driven by marketing rather than actual technological developments.
That said, I did just pick up an LG V30, precisely because it has an 120-degree ultra-wide lens. And this weekend, I was in London indulging in two of my preferred vices - drinking beer in obscure pubs and hunting down interesting street art.
So, lots of photos. And while I haven't done a scientific comparison, a rough breakdown would be:
* 60% with the 16mp main camera on the V30
* 30% with the 13mp 120mm lens on the V30
* 5% with the Nikon at 1x zoom - it has a slightly wider FoV than the 16mp main camera on the V30
* 5% with the Nikon at a higher zoom level
So yeah, in an urban/social-drinking setting, the wide angle lens was definitely more useful than optical zoom. In fact, I'm mildly surprised that other phone companies haven't gone down the ultra-wide route, especially for the "selfie" front camera!
[*] a quick beer-mat calculation indicates you're going from ~8000x6000 to 3200x2400, so it'd be the equivalent of ~2.5x zoom. And yes, I know the two lenses have differing f-stops, and there's other factors such as bokeh, etc. But it still feels like an overly expensive solution looking for a problem...
To the commentards here who are like, "who the hell are Huawei" or "Huawei have no brand recognition" or "Huawei have no tech expertise" or "Huawei/Android never get any updates"
Third largest smartphone manufacturer after Apple and Samsung.
All Android phones released now come with Oreo = project treble = more timely updates and more of them and the possibility to install LineageOS
These are the specs for the P20 pro, I'll leave it up to you to figure out if they're worth €900. (I think they are.)
https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p20_pro-9106.php
Huawei are one of the few that design their own SoC I believe, here's how it stacks up against the competition:
https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/huawei-kirin-970-soc-launched-heres-how-it-compares-with-qualcomm-snapdragon-835-apple-a10x-fusion-and-others-4005973.html
disclaimer: have a Huawei Mate 9, just got Oreo, it rocks, do not see what the fuss over EMUI is at all
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