Huawei P20 and P20 Pro unveiled - 40MP 1/1.8" main camera w/ 20MP monochrome and tele-lens on the Plus, 4000mAh/3400mAh battery on +/standard, 960FPS

[D13H4RD]

Well, here comes another pair of phones.

 

Meet the Huawei P20, a pair of flagship smartphones from Huawei. The headlining feature? 3 cameras on the Pro. Note that the standard one makes do with a 12MP main sensor and a 20MP monochrome one.

 

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Huawei is putting a lot of its eggs into the camera-shaped basket with the P20 Pro. The Leica partnership is continuing, so the setup here is built in collaboration with that company, and it's the first time we’ve seen three cameras on the rear of a phone.

 

Why would you need three cameras you may well ask? The thinking is similar to that behind the P10 and other phones before it, but now Huawei has added a telephoto lens as well.

Huawei has built numerous cameras with both a color and black and white sensor working in tandem to get photos with improved depth and definition, and now that telephoto lens will also let you zoom with no loss of image quality.

The RGB (that’s color) lens is a whopping 40MP this time around, and that works alongside a 20MP monochrome sensor. For your normal, average automatic mode picture it’ll combine the images from the two lenses.

 

Above the RGB lens, which sits in the middle of the array, you’ll find an 8MP telephoto sensor. This allows for up to 5x lossless zoom, and while we’ve seen similar lenses on previous handsets from different companies, in our limited testing the P20 Pro's take seemed impressive.

 

We played around with the zoom feature, which is easy to access within the camera app, and we were unable to see a quality difference in zoomed shots compared to wide-angle ones on the phone screen.

We’ll dig into the other camera improvements during our full review, but if you want the top-end camera from Huawei you’ll have to opt for the P20 Pro rather than the P20.

There’s a huge 24MP selfie shooter on the front of the phone, but we’ve not had much opportunity to play around with it yet to discover how it compares to other front-facing cameras.

Source: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/huawei-p20-pro

 

And yes, it has a notch.....because who doesn't make a phone with a notch these days?

 

You can "hide" it though, which is nice.

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If you're going to do a notched display - which I am fine with! - having a chin on the bottom of the phone just feels silly. You get all of the awkward interface interruption without the striking borderless effect that actually makes the notch acceptable. The reason some notched OLED phones have chins has to do with the way the OLED panel's controller must be "rolled" under the chin of the phone to achieve the bezelless look. It's complicated, and thus probably expensive. Huawei apparently decided not to do that, and so: chin.

Source: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/03/27/huawei-p20-p20-pro-hands-can-huawei-finally-challenge-apple-samsung/

 

The other specs are familiar. The phones run on a Kirin 970 SoC with 4GB of RAM on the standard model and 6GB on the Pro. Both come with 128GB of UFS storage and there is an optional microSD slot there is no SD card slot. The Pro has a large 4000mAh battery with the standard one being smaller at "just" 3400mAh. The Pro is rated for IP67 while the standard one is rated at IP53. And no, they don't have a headphone jack, making the Galaxy S9 currently the only big flagship phone to still include one.

 

I'm personally skeptical on why a phone has to have a 40MP main camera, but what do you think?

[Eduard the weeb]

It looks so much like the Iphone 10 with the back cameras and notches but I like the inclusion of a  home button, but 3 cameras seems like a bit much, like most people don't even use the second so whats the point of a third

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, Eduard the weeb said:

It looks so much like the 10 with the back cameras and notches but I like the home button, but 3 cameras seems like a bit much, like most people don't even use the second so whats the point of a third

Basically a "telephoto".

 

Yeah.....I'm a little let down. Because I very rarely use the "telephoto" camera on my Note8.

 

And yes, I'm quoting it because as a photography hobbyist, I get so triggered every time a manufacturer calls a sub-50mm equivalent lens a telephoto. Huawei's one is much closer to an actual telephoto though, at an 80mm equivalent.

[Deli]

Does more MP still sell?

[Bouzoo]

4 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

like most people don't even use the second so whats the point of a third

Bragging rights. 

 

What I'm worried about is that notch. If you decide to hide it, will the video/pictures auto adjust or will part of them just be chopped off?

[D13H4RD]

Just now, Deli said:

Does more MP still sell?

Yeah. It's one reason why Oppo's "selfie expert" sells tons due to its outrageously high resolution front camera.

 

So high in fact that its practicality is often questioned.

[Levent]

only if it wasn't a huawei

[D13H4RD]

Just now, Bouzoo said:

Bragging rights. 

 

What I'm worried about is that notch. If you decide to hide it, will the video/pictures auto adjust or will part of them just be chopped off. 

It should auto adjust. If it doesn't, then it's really poorly implemented.

 

 

[Deli]

What is RGB lens?

[Eduard the weeb]

Just now, Deli said:

Does more MP still sell?

no even on pro-somer camera more people care about stuff like Full frame or Mirrorless etc like even the A7S considered the best camera stills and video camera out rn by some is only 24 Mega Pixels

[Blackie Sheen]

Just now, Deli said:

What is RGB lens?

Its the lens that captures colors only. No black and white. The monochrome one does that job

[D13H4RD]

Just now, Eduard the weeb said:

no even on pro-somer camera more people care about stuff like Full frame or Mirrorless etc like even the A7S considered the best camera stills and video camera out rn by some is only 24 Mega Pixels

They still sell on phones.

 

For cameras, not so much, especially since those who understand photography understand that more MP =/= better

 

And the A7S shoots at 12MP. Which is considered to be more than fine by many.

[Deli]

1 minute ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Yeah. It's one reason why Oppo's "selfie expert" sells tons due to its outrageously high resolution front camera.

 

So high in fact that its practicality is often questioned.

Consider Sony's flagship A9 full frame camera has only 24MP with a price tag of $4500. This one has even more MP.......

[ScratchCat]

Would a 'telephoto' lens and hence a smaller aperture for the same sensor as well as a 40MP sensor with tiny pixels even work well under anything but broad daylight?

1 minute ago, Deli said:

What is RGB lens?

Sensors have filters on top of each subpixel to separate the light into RGB, without a filter you get monochrome images which are slightly brighter as there isn't a light absorbing filter in the way.

[Bouzoo]

Just saw the resolution, 1080 x 2244 pixels. I for one think that's too small for a 6.1 inch phone. 

[D13H4RD]

2 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

Would a 'telephoto' lens and hence a smaller aperture for the same sensor as well as a 40MP sensor with tiny pixels even work well under anything but broad daylight?

They're doing something similar to PureView, in that it reduces the resolution to around 10MP while utilizing multiple pixels to capture more light as a group.

 

They claim like this, the pixel size is equivalent to 2 microns, but I have to wait and see.

 

You can use the full resolution if you want to

[Castdeath97]

Ohh god! it uses a Mali GPU that already lags behind Samsung's stuff from last year which lagged behind Qualcomm's stuff from last year:

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12195/hisilicon-kirin-970-power-performance-overview/4

 

Getting sick of everyone lagging behind Qualcomm in graphics (at least in the Android space), I hope the price better is right.

 

Edit:

Also look at the ludicrous efficiency advantage other solutions have: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12420/snapdragon-845-performance-preview/4

PLEASE Huawei catch up!

[ScratchCat]

5 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

no even on pro-somer camera more people care about stuff like Full frame or Mirrorless etc like even the A7S considered the best camera stills and video camera out rn by some is only 24 Mega Pixels

DARPA thinks otherwise... but then again it is DARPA:

https://newatlas.com/argus-is-darpa-gigapixel-camers/26078/

[GoodBytes]

6 minutes ago, Deli said:

Does more MP still sell?

When Nokia made its Lumia 1020, with its 41 MP back in 2013, they used the feature to allow digital zooming without seeing large pixels everywhere.

So basically, you took the picture, and you can zoom in to various levels and save, and it looked like a native 0x zoom picture (unless you really zoom in). I forgot the actual resolution it saved the picture in the end.

 

So maybe they are plan on doing this.

We need more info.

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

When Nokia made its Lumia 1020, with its 41 MP back in 2013, they used the feature to allow digital zooming without seeing large pixels everywhere.

So basically, you took the picture, and you can zoom in to various levels and save, and it looked like a native 0x zoom picture (unless you really zoom in). I forgot the actual resolution it saved the picture in the end.

 

So maybe they are plan on doing this.

We need more info.

That would kinda be counter-intuitive since they added an 80mm-equivalent "zoom" camera on the Pro.

 

Just weird why they'd go for a high-resolution camera only to reduce its resolution for "more light".

[GoodBytes]

Personally, I think 20MP'ish is the sweet spot phone camera. But manufactures really need to put larger sensors with improved aperture. I also, would like to see RGB Flash from the Lumia 950 phones. This allows to output a nice true white, so that people don't look drunk (too warm flash) or sick (too cold white flash). In addition, it can allow color adjustment of the flash by controlling the intensive of each LED color.

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

Personally, I think 20MP'ish is the sweet spot phone camera. But manufactures really need to put larger sensors with improved aperture.

 

20MP is just right for this sensor size at 1/1.8".

 

For 1/2.6", I think 12MP is ample.

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Personally, I think 20MP'ish is the sweet spot phone camera. But manufactures really need to put larger sensors with improved aperture.

 

Reminds me of Nokia phones from 2013 

[Deli]

Just now, GoodBytes said:

Personally, I think 20MP'ish is the sweet spot phone camera. But manufactures really need to put larger sensors with improved aperture.

 

Yeah, but larger sensor also means the lens has to produce larger image circle. Together with bigger aperture mean bigger/thicker lens......Seems they goes against each other. I'm already surprised someone can fit a F1.6 at the back of a phone.

[Blackie Sheen]

7 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Just saw the resolution, 1080 x 2244 pixels. I for one think that's too small for a 6.1 inch phone. 

Your are still at at a ppi of 408. I dont know whats bad with that. the apple 10 has a ppi of 458 while last year's apple 8 has 401 ppi. Its still keeping up. Not only that, I think 400ppi+ is already quite a bit