Huawei P20 camera review, camera samples, and analysis

Can the Huawei P20 take a picture to save his life? If his bigger and harder brother did not exist, would it be a good camera for its price? That's what we are here to know. Let's forget about the King smartphone devices and judge the Huawei P20 on its own merits.

Features of the Huawei P20 camera

Rear cameras:

• 12MP RGB sensor with f / 1.8 aperture, 1.55μm [19659012] 20MP monochrome sensor with f / 1.6 aperture
• LED dual flash [19659012] PDAF + CIF + Laser + depth autofocus
• OIS
• 4K at 30 fps, 1080p at 30 fps (18:90), 1080p at 30 or 60fps, 720p at 30fps
• Shooting modes: Aperture, Night, Portrait, Photo, Video, Pro, Slow-mo, Panorama, Monochrome, Lightweight Paint, HDR, Time-lapse, Filter, 3D Panorama, Watermark, Document Scanning, Animated Image, Bright Colors, Smooth Colors, Zoom 2X
• You can also download other modes

Front camera:

• 24MP sensor with f / 2.0 aperture
• Fixed focus
• 720p at 30fps

The Huawei P20 It's not the average 40MP sensor and the 8MP telephoto Pro version, but it's hardly dull. It has a 12MP RGB sensor with an f / 1.8 aperture and the same 20MP sub monochrome sensor with an f / 1.6 aperture as the Pro

The Huawei P20 camera app

This is probably one of the coolest apps used. For starters, the application uses a smart system called AI Master to recognize the type of image you are shooting and automatically apply the software enhancements that best fit the shot.

The Huawei P20 can recognize from 18 types of images: food, group, cat, natural, close-up, night, text, greenery, portrait, dog, fireworks, blue sky, flowers, scene, document, sunset, snow, waterfall and beach. The application has rarely managed to recognize any of these categories in real life, which left me rather impressed.

If the AI ​​Master feature does not interest you, you can also disable it in the settings. In addition, seasoned photographers will also appreciate the Pro mode of the camera application, which allows manual shooting. You can change the focus settings, ISO, shutter speed, EV and white balance. On the right, you can see a picture that I took in Pro mode, just so you can have a little taste of true photographic freedom.

The rest of the application is pretty simple, but it can be a little crowded. The modes are still visible, then there are additional modes hidden in the "More" section. To add to the craziness, the options on the screen change in all modes. It's a simple application to understand and get used to, but the user interface is not the cleanest.

The settings are quite extensive, so advanced photographers will appreciate the kind of freedom this app offers. After all, it's the same application used for the best smartphone camera in the world. It should be able to do a lot

• Ease of use: 8/10
• Intuitiveness: 6/10
• Features: 10/10
• Advanced settings: 10/10

Score: 8.5 / 10

Daylight

We took the Huawei P20 during a quick trip to Tijuana, where there were plenty of interesting things to grab. On the first image, the camera has managed to recognize the blue sky, giving them a deeper blue hue and saturating the colors in the city sign. This gives a very striking picture, but it also seems a bit over-edited. Because the contrast was increasing, we also saw harder shadows, which resulted in less detail in the darker areas.

On the second, the camera recognized the face in the painted heart and switched to portrait mode. It was an accident, but the picture went well. The colors are always vibrant, the sky is abundantly blue, and this bokeh effect really puts the accent on the subject. There is a hard reflection on the left side of the heart, which means that the Huawei P20 camera was not the best to handle the dynamic range, but in direct light it's hard to blame him

. it's a good color reproduction, a precise white balance and good details. The Huawei P20 did a great job in all three categories, even though it overcame some saturated colors. It is something that many of you like, and we can not deny it for a more dramatic effect.

Score: 8.5 / 10

Color

There is nothing better than traditional alebrijes Mexican toys to represent the color. The craftsmen really have fun with these ornaments, which creates a living decor and good color essays.

Because we were indoors in a soft light, we can see a warmer color palette here, especially in the first frame. The white balance is a little off, but it was in real life too. The yellow, soft and artificial light is accurately represented. As for color, there is a lot of contrast, vibrant hues, and good details.

We must mention the Huawei P20 which can be a little happy bokeh. Although the effect may have a "pro" look, it is not always the right choice. We wish that he capture more details in the toys at the back, in the first picture. You can always get rid of portrait mode, but fighting constantly can be boring. Especially if you are selective about your fuzzy backgrounds.

Be that as it may, the Huawei P20 has created fun photos with lots of texture, vibrant colors and good contrast – the trio for a good color image

: 9/10

Detail

There is a department in which the Huawei P20 permanently loses to P20 Pro, it is this one.

The sensor and the amount of megapixels are usually credited when capturing details. This massive 40MP main shooting game in the Huawei P20 Pro obviously creates a larger image than the main Huawei P20 12MP camera. This means that the more you zoom in on Huawei P20 images, the more the quality deteriorates. In addition, we can see some softening, probably because of the soft lighting. This makes it a less noisy picture, but also less detailed.

There are a lot of details until you start looking at the pixels. The minute details are what separates the winners from the losers in a contest, however, so it is important to talk about it.

Score: 7/10

Landscape

This is the US-Mexico border Most to the west: The famous place where the fence extends into l & # 39; water. It's an iconic place and home to many debates, so we had to capture it.

Because landscape photos are all about the details, we also found some flaws here. The zoom hurt the details, but the photo was also a little too sharp, thanks to the people far away from the first picture. However, it is still a good photo, with beautiful colors, good exposure and a bright blue sky.

In the second image, the AI ​​Master was adamant in not going too far. I imagine it represented the sea made for too much dead space or something. Regardless, I wanted to see how he managed a landscape with the sun in the background, and it was not the best. There could be more details in the shade, a bluer sky, and a more uniformly exposed frame. The sun threw Huawei P20 camera.

Things are much nicer and detailed in other shots, when one is far from the sun. It always helps, and the third shot is pretty good.

Score: 7/10

Portrait mode

The portrait mode is tricky. Most phones tend to have occasional problems in determining what to blur.

Like many others, the Huawei P20 uses several objectives to determine the distance and understand what is in the background and foreground in relation to the subject. He then keeps the subject in focus and blurs the rest. The system does not always do an amazing job, often making pictures look like my first year color books (I was struggling to stay in the lines). This is especially a problem on the edges of the head, where the hair can really take off from the camera.

This effect can be seen in the first image, where the subject's hair appears slightly delimited by a thin line of background. 19659002] Despite this, I must say that the Huawei P20 did a better job in portrait mode than most other phones I've tested. The errors are small and almost imperceptible to the uninformed eye. I'm not a fan of portrait mode, but I found it worked well overall.

Score: 9.5 / 10

HDR

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is used to uniformly expose an image with multiple light levels. Traditionally, this was done by mixing several photos taken at different levels of exposure. The end result was an image with reduced highlights, increased shadows, and equal exposure.

Different phones treat HDR in different ways – some are better than others. Huawei P20's whole point is to leave a lot of decisions to the camera application, so we just had to let the camera know when it was time to activate HDR. It seems that the phone has missed the opportunity HDR in the second image, where the shadows are harder and show little detail. The pizza still gets enough detail thanks to the filtering sunlight, but that's all.

In the first picture we can see more signs of HDR manipulation. The heart displays a lot of colors and details, even though it seemed almost black against sunlight in real life. We have certainly seen phones doing a better job on HDR photos, though. This is probably not the strength of the Huawei P20, but it's going pretty well – assuming it actually activates the HDR whenever you want it.

The P20 did a pretty good job with the last two pictures. The contrast in the lighting of the punched photo was pretty hard in real life, so we have to give it to the Huawei sensor to be able to shoot it.

Score: 8/10

Food

The Huawei P20 goes into Food Mode whenever he sees something delicious in his viewfinder, and boy are we satisfied results. The already colorful Mexican food is brought to another level thanks to the added contrast and saturated hues. The food looks delicious, even if it is a little too soft, which eliminates some details closely. Whatever it is, it seems that Huawei has found the right balance with the food mode.

Although some of the details are lost in softening, there are still many things you can see in vegetables and fried dough. Not to mention the carpet, which has many details to appreciate. The photo is also well exposed and the white balance is accurate to the setting, making this superb Instagram material.

10/10

Lowlight

The Huawei P20 takes beautiful night shots. However, this is not thanks to the hardware. Zooming on the people in the first image reveals an amount of over-softening that makes them look like a Monet product. They became spots of color.

At least, the picture looks great from a distance. The colors are beautiful, there is no sign of digital noise, and the picture is perfectly exposed. The other pictures show the same effects, but at least they are well exposed and look great.

Score: 9/10

Selfie

In selfies, we see the same advantages and disadvantages as the rest of the scenarios. The pictures are great at first, but start digging in things will stay. The Huawei P20 does a great job in exposing these photos, getting the right white balance, and capturing the color, but the treatment can be a bit too much sometimes.

In these selfies, we can see an excessive softening. This makes the skin smoother, an effect that some people really appreciate, but you can certainly say that it is not real. The pretty pictures are pretty pictures, though!

Score: 7.5 / 10

Monochrome

The Huawei P20 shares a peculiarity with its big brother – it has a dedicated monochrome sensor. This sensor basically determines where the objects are in portrait mode, but it also takes great black and white photos.

The camera's sensors capture light with a range of photosites. In a color sensor, these photosites only allow the entry of one of the three main colors (red, green and blue). Alternatively, monochrome photosites allow any light to enter a shade of gray or black. This gives a sharper picture with much more detail than if you simply convert a color picture to black and white.

This is something we can certainly see in monochrome mode. Take a closer look and you'll be better able to appreciate the textures and the little details. Because the phone does not try to change the image with color enhancements, the images also look more natural.

9/10

Video

Optical image stabilization has not helped much here. Of course, it is difficult to stabilize a video while walking, but then things were still quite shaky when I stopped. What we can say about this clip is that the saturated colors and the deep blue sky translate the images into video.

The phone is also struggling to adapt to changing exposure, which should be the case. Overall, the camera worked very well. The Huawei P20 camera can take a very nice video, but it over-deals and requires a rather stable grip.

Score: 7.5 / 10

Conclusion

] Overall Score: 8.4 / 10

For 680 euros (~ $ 793), you get a phone with high-end features and a camera that competes aggressively against its direct competitors. The highest-end phones – including the P20 Pro – are certainly a step up, however. His older brother had a lot of hype for his amazing combination of hardware and software, but the Huawei P20 clearly gets more help from the software.

The Huawei P20 undoubtedly takes great pictures that, at first glance, can compete with best of the best. However, he can not grasp the details as well as the leader of the industry. Pixel-peepers will probably opt for the Huawei P20 Pro if they want to buy the best smartphone camera. Those who want to save money will be very happy with the photos of the Huawei P20, provided not to zoom.