The Huawei P20 and P20 Pro were announced on 27 March 2018 in a huge global launch event in Grand Palais, Paris.
The Huawei P20 Pro will grab the attention of a lot of people because it has three cameras on the back. Dual camera phones are now fairly common, but Huawei wants to take things further - looking to bring "master level" photography to its new flagship phone.
Huawei P20 Pro camera specs
- 40MP RGB 1/1.7in type sensor, f/1.8
- 20MP monochrome, f/1.6
- 8MP 3x zoom, f/2.4, OIS
- 24MP front camera, f/2.0
- Laser AF and colour temperature sensor
There are three cameras on the rear of the Huawei P20 Pro: two are combined into a raised unit; this is the RGB and monochrome cameras. These operate in the same way as previous dual camera Huawei systems, developed with Leica involvement.
That means that you have one sensor that captures colour information while the second captures monochrome (black and white) information. Together, these should give you a better quality photo, because it can gather and assess more data. But, Huawei was also keen to point out that this sensor is big with a 1/1.7in size, larger than most rivals.
In addition, you have dedicated monochrome shooting that can leverage that 20-megapixel sensor to create a black and white photo, rather than converting one from a colour image - and it's this that you might naturally associate with Leica.
The third camera is the zoom. It has an 8-megapixel sensor, but the lens offers 3x optical zoom. This is designed to get you closer to the subject without losing quality as you would through digital zoom, also offering optical image stabilisation with an aperture of f/2.4.
As well as the 3x optical zoom, the Huawei P20 Pro also offers 5x Hybrid zoom. Hybrid zoom uses sensor cropping on that 40-megapixel sensor to take you closer to the action, aiming to reduce image degradation.
The cameras are supported by laser autofocusing and a colour temperature sensor, aiming to make sure that white balance is accurate. This new colour temperature sensor will assess the white balance across the entire scene, not just in one point.
All three cameras can provide data, so there's more information for creating depth maps when portrait shooting, for more accurate bokeh effects, as well as offering a "variable aperture" mode where you can change the background blurring after you've taken the photo.
What about that 40-megapixel camera?
- Pixel Fusion technology for 2µm pixels
- Default 10MP shooting
That 40-megapixel camera is likely to be the thing that a lot of people notice. Let's just remind everyone that more megapixels does not make a better camera - it's what you do with them. If you're a smartphone fan you'll know that the likes of Apple, Samsung and Google all use a 12-megapixel main camera and generally have the excellent results from that.
So what is Huawei doing with the 40-megapixel camera? Firstly, it's not shooting massive 40-megapixel images. It's combining the pixels using Pixel Fusion, so you're then getting the equivalent of a 2.0µm pixel (the Pixel 2 is 1.4µm for example). 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.
So the default camera mode is 10-megapixels in a 4:3 aspect and if you don't change the settings, that's what you'll be using.
Secondly, the 40MP camera is being used for hybrid zoom. This isn't new to Huawei, it offered Hybrid zoom on previous devices. Now, in addition to the optical 3x zoom offered by the third lens, it can now use information from that zoom lens and the main camera to give you 5x Hybrid zoom.
This uses sensor cropping - and we've noticed that the zoom options aren't available if you tell the camera to shoot at 40-megapixels, because it then can't do the crop to get you closer to the action. There's something clever that works all the details out and we'll be sure to explore this further, as the results hopefully will be much better than standard 5x digital zoom.
Huawei P20 Pro low light shooting
- ISO 102,400 for low light shooting
- Live exposure
- Hand-held long exposures
The Huawei P20 Pro also offers ISO 102,400 for low light shooting to try and ensure you get the shot no matter what - although we're yet to see exactly how these photos come out. Examples we've seen suggest that this camera will take photos that rivals won't be able to take at all.
We've already mentioned the Pixel Fusion technique it will use to give a larger surface area to pixels for light capture, but one of the big headline features is the ability to handhold longer exposures - up to 8 seconds. Huawei says you can ditch the tripod for those night shots thanks to this technology.
We've not tested this extensively, so we don't really know what the final results are like, but we have tried it a couple of times. This involved taking a long exposure in a dark room - and the results looked good on the phone, but we've not seen it on a larger screen.
The exposure on these longer night shots happens gradually, so you can see it developing, the same system that some use for light painting capture where you progressively see the image building up. This uses Huawei's AIS - artificial intelligence stabilisation.
We'll bring you a lot more on the low light performance when we've had the time to fully review the Huawei P20 Pro.
Huawei P20 Pro AI shooting
- 19 modes
- Auto recognition and categorisation
Huawei says that a lot of the camera's skill comes down to AI. AI is a central theme of all smartphone launches and has been used to great effect by the likes of Google.
For Huawei, the AI recognises the scene with a choice of 19 different types - food, portrait, cat, landscape and so on. This isn't that revolutionary (Sony has offered the same thing on its Superior Auto modes on its phones and cameras for years), but it claims to pick out the best type of shot for the subject that's recognised.
Some of this comes back to the reference for the type of photo and Huawei worked with photographers in a range of different disciplines to teach the AI what constituted a photo that looked good. Exactly how that all pans out we don't yet know, but we've seen the Huawei P20 Pro recognising things and switching modes.
One thing that might be controversial is switching to portrait mode when it recognises a face - exactly how that will effect the background we don't yet know, but we have found it's easy to cancel the mode, as well as having the option to turn off AI mode selection entirely.
The categorisation of photos also extends to your galleries, to make it easier to find your best shots.
Huawei P20 Pro 960fps shooting
- 960fps super slow-motion
- 720p resolution
Huawei joins the likes of Samsung and Sony in offering 960fps super slow-motion capture. This is at a 720p resolution, the same as Samsung, not reaching the high levels of 1080p offered by the Sony Xperia XZ2.
We've not had long to play with this function, but we've seen it in action and compared capture to the Samsung Galaxy S9+.
Samsung offers automatic detection of motion, but it's not that effective unless the action is very deliberate. Samsung also suffers in low light: testing the two side-by-side we found that Huawei was able to capture 960fps indoors and give a nice, bright and clear super slow-mo video where Samsung struggled with dark and grainy video.
This was only one test however, and we've not seen the results from Huawei on the big screen yet.
There's loads packed into the new camera on the Huawei P20 Pro and there's a lot more we need to do to assess the quality. Huawei promised a renaissance and there's a lot happening here on the P20 Pro.
Will this approach reward us with results that can beat the likes of the Pixel 2 XL? We'll be sure to share our findings as soon as we can.
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