back to article Your duckface better be flawless: Huawei's Nova 6 mobe has a needlessly powerful selfie camera

The middle ground of the smartphone market is a bit of a battleground. Manufacturers of all stripes – except Apple – keep flinging devices at punters with fairly high-end specs, but price tags under the £500 mark. The latest salvo comes from embattled Chinese comms giant Huawei, which today announced the launch of its Nova 6 …

  1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
  2. disgruntled yank

    the poser in your life?

    The poseurs being all devoted to their iThings?

    (Don't shoot! I do carry an iPhone.)

  3. veti Silver badge

    How suspicious is it

    Anyone noticed that manufacturers from China, the world leader in personal surveillance, keep offering phones with these ridiculous hi-res, wide-angle "selfie cameras"?

    How much do they really record, I wonder?

  4. Chris G

    If you are buying direct from China, I would give Bangood a miss, use Gearbest or AliExpress, or even DHGate.

    The guarantees and customer protections are better.

    @veti, What makes you think the personal surveillance you are under right now isn't as good as China's?

    1. veti Silver badge

      We do these things differently in the west. Google knows pretty much everything I do online, and they also have a pretty good idea of everywhere I go. Mastercard and my bank know where I spend money. Microsoft and Valve know what games I play. The gov't knows where I drive or fly, and I assume they also have access (whether on demand, or through a more drawn out process) to all of the abovementioned companies' data as well.

      But nobody cares enough about me to keep a lot of video footage, that's a very inefficient way to gather the sort of information that interests them.

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge

        > Mastercard and my bank know where I spend money

        Pffh. I wish. My bank has no fucking clue, and still questions when I buy motorcycle apparel and equipment, despite the fact I've done so for the past 35 years.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        We do these things differently in the west. Google knows pretty much everything I do online, and they also have a pretty good idea of everywhere I go. Mastercard and my bank know where I spend money. Microsoft and Valve know what games I play.

        Here's an idea. Go out with few friends, enjoy a nice BBQ and play a few co-op games.

        -You won't need the gps for that day. Only your friends know where you are for that day.

        -Your bank doesn't know what that grocery transaction means. Only your friends know what insanity you had at the BBQ that day.

        -Microsoft and Valve only know the gaming time, but they won't know which of your friends beats the most bosses in the co-op game.

        In the west, it is still a choice you can make.

        1. Phil W

          "Microsoft and Valve only know the gaming time, but they won't know which of your friends beats the most bosses in the co-op game"

          Yes they do, that's what achievements/awards/medals etc in games are for.

  5. Martin
    WTF?

    Duckface?

    A shade off-topic, but am I the only person in the world that thinks this duckface pose just makes good looking women look stupid and unattractive?

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      No, you're not

      I find the whole selfie thing revolting.

      Pictures are to record the special things you've seen, to remember them later. If you're in the middle, you're taking up space uselessly. Of course you were there, you took the pic. You don't need to be in it to remember.

      But you do need to be in it to show off. I hate that.

    2. Matt_payne666

      Re: Duckface?

      I totally agree! nothing beats a girl with a natural smile...

      as you say, the pouts are just unattractive!

  6. 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

    Wide angle lenses lead to rhinoplasty

  7. KBeee
    Facepalm

    For a second I saw ¥4,199 as Japanese Yen and thought "Ooooh.. about 40 quid! A bargain!"

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Needlessly powerful

    Is that passive aggressive because it's Huawei? Or just something to critise?

    I'll take better over average any day, thanks very much.

    1. defiler

      Re: Needlessly powerful

      Well, these high-powered sensors are generally hamstrung by small lenses. It's always been the way with compact cameras. The smaller the lens, the harder it is to avoid things like purple fringes at the boundary between dark and bright objects. So the fancy high-res jobs are really just capturing the lens flaws in more detail.

      It gets a bit pointless.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Needlessly powerful

        You are aware that, these days, powerful software processing is used to mitigate lens and sensor defects?

        Google camera (gcam) processing of low light (night mode) for instance, takes up to a second on todays 855 snapdragon based phones, considerably longer on older ones.

        Claiming the processor is "too powerful" comes from the same line of thinking as "who needs more than 640K of RAM".

        1. defiler

          Re: Needlessly powerful

          Not saying the processor is too powerful. I'm saying that the camera sensor is unreasonably powerful.

          Sure you can do all of the post-processing to pick out details in dark images, and to stabilise the image etc, but when it comes to chromatic aberration you're going to hit a wall. There's some work you can do, and that can be tuned reasonably well to the individual lens, but in the end you're throwing away detail.

          On the whole, for high-resolution work you're just better off with a bigger lens. For compact devices, don't over-egg the resolution. Saves power on the sensor too (although I believe they're not as bad as CCDs).

          In the end, if you want a hugely powerful sensor it's not my place to stop you. I'm just pointing out that you end up with diminishing returns quite quickly when you're doing it on a small device.

    2. W.S.Gosset

      Re: Needlessly powerful

      > Or just something to critise?

      Yaw typage is whoreful.

  9. Bibbit

    Over powered selfie camera

    Handy for compulsory facial recognition, no?

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