Last year, Huawei unveiled its Mate 10 series which was big on artificial intelligence (AI).
Its new flagship, the P20 Series, will be no different. This time round, it’s banking on Master AI to “redefine intelligent photography”.
The Series, which consist of the P20 and P20 Pro, is aimed at photography enthusiasts. And they come with an integrated Leica camera that was co-engineered with the camera company.
World’s First Leica Triple Camera
The P20 Pro in particular, features the world’s first Leica triple camera, trouncing other existing smartphones at a highest-ever DxOMark of 106.
In testament to this, DxOMark has raved about the P20 Pro’s camera capabilities, and said that its triple camera setup is the “biggest innovation … in mobile imaging” and that it is a “real game changer”.
The main camera features a 40MP, 1/1.73″ RGB sensor behind a 27mm f/1.8 lens, while the secondary camera has a 20MP, 1/2.78″ monochrome sensor behind a 27mm f/1.6 lens.
Lastly, the telephoto camera has a 8MP, 1/4.4″ RGB sensor behind an 80mm f/2.4 lens with optical image stabilisation.
This is the sensor that will please all Bokeh fans, as the longer focal length lets you capture perfect portrait shots (all three lenses work together to achieve better portrait mode blur).
This camera also produces up to 5x hybrid zoom, which according to Huawei, allows the phone to “see brighter, further, faster, and with richer colour.”
The cameras are also supported by laser autofocusing and a colour temperature sensor, which helps ensure that white balance is accurate – it assesses the white balance across the entire scene, and not just in one point.
Improved Low Light Performance
With a broad aperture range from f/2.4, all the way down to f/1.6, it theoretically should help stop a lot of the visible noise and loss of detail in low light conditions.
But Huawei has gone a step further and integrated a Light Fusion system, which fuses four pixels into a single larger pixel, bumping the 1μm pixel size on the RGB sensor up to 2μm.
The idea is that the larger the pixel area, the more light it can receive, and the better it will work in low light conditions.
In other words, the P20 Pro’s bespoke night mode can capture an insane amount of light, even in near-complete darkness.
In low light, the P20 Pro can shoot sharp pictures with a sensitivity of up to ISO 102,400, which is the highest maximum ISO of any smartphone. To shed some perspective, Apple and Samsung’s most recent flagships offer a top ISO of only 6,400.
It also uses a Master AI system that provides AI-driven photo features, including AI Stabilisation (AIS) and AI-Assisted Composition (suggestions for framing group and landscape photos).
AIS captures multiple scenes at once to remove noise and blur from the final shot, and helps to solve the problem of shaky hands in long-exposure night shots (up to four seconds).
Huawei even boldly claims that you can ditch the tripod for such night shots thanks to this innovative technology.
The AIS is complemented by a 4D predictive focus that actively tracks and predicts object motion. It is a clear improvement over what rival phones offer, and is able to use object motion prediction to track and anticipate and where moving objects – like swaying flowers – might drift and keep them locked in focus, resulting in blur-free images.
Scene Recognition Across 19 Categories
Shooting with the P20 Series is fuss-free.
It’s like shooting with a smart auto camera mode – except that it automatically detects the scene for you.
The P20 and P20 Pro can apparently differentiate between group shots and close-ups; text or other documents; greenery, flowers or fireworks; sunsets and waterfalls; snow and beaches; as well as cats and dogs.
The scene recognition identifies over 500 scenarios across 19 different categories, and will adjust its settings accordingly to help you capture an optimal shot.
Never Miss A Moment
To help you capture fleeting moments without delay, the phone has an Ultra Snapshot feature.
Even when the screen is off, you can easily capture a shot in 0.3 seconds when you double-click the volume down button, which is more than twice as fast as it was before.
There’s also super-slow motion HD video at up to 960 frames per second, recording 0.2 seconds of footage and playing back a second at normal speed before and after the four-second slow-mo clip.
Available On S’pore Shelves On April 7
The Huawei P20 will be available in three colours – Black, Midnight Blue, and Pink Gold. With a memory of 128GB ROM + 4GB RAM, it will be sold at S$898.
The Huawei P20 Pro comes in a slightly bigger capacity of 128GB + 6GB RAM, and is available in a different set of three colours. Instead of the Pink Gold, the P20 Pro comes in a coveted Twilight colour, which has a gradient finish of blue and purple hues.
All three colours are priced at S$1,148.
In line with this launch, Huawei has also launched three new accessories that are compatible with the P20 Series.
The Huawei FreeBuds are wireless stereo earbuds; the Active Noise Cancelling Earphones 3 support hi-res audio and noise-cancellation; and the Huawei DAC Headphone Amplifier has an “audiophile-grade” DAC chip that can decode 384kHz, 32-bit audio, as well as power those power-hungry, high-end headphones.
Online pre-orders for the Huawei P20 Series (except P20 Pro’s Twilight) are already open, and you can register your interest via the three telco’s website (M1, Singtel and StarHub); online marketplace Lazada; as well as all major consumer electronic stores such as Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, and Harvey Norman.
The phones will only be made available in Singapore on April 7.
The more exclusive Twilight colour however, will only be available in end-April. It’s a bit of a painful news, but hey, good things are worth the wait right?
Featured Image Credit: Mobile Syrup