There are a lot of devices hitting the market this year, but according to Huawei, the Mate 10 is no doubt the device worth waiting for. And the company is betting on this AI powered smartphone to make a giant leap in smartphone technology.
The Huawei Mate 10 is said to sport new, amazing features, as well as a never-seen-before intelligent camera. Huawei’s history with smartphone photography goes a long way; it stems from the company’s commitment to drive innovation and bring unparalleled photography experience to users who are on the lookout for devices that match their modern and busy lifestyles.
With the rise of social media, digital photography is taking the world by storm as millions of people are taking photos every day and experimenting with their images in highly creative ways. To anticipate consumers’ needs and help them be digitally connected, Huawei invested in its research and specialized teams to bring innovation to its smartphone cameras. In 2011, the company started doing research on smartphone dual cameras technology, and in 2013, it developed a dual camera smartphone ISP technology. Huawei worked with a professional camera customization team to build the dual cameras into 5mm lens module, while ensuring high pixels large aperture, quick focus and image stabilization, eliminating ghosting and flare in the photos, and error in fabrication.
The company also worked with a top-notch dual camera algorithm team under the guidance of professional photographers to address a large amount of algorithms, including precise superposition of two photos from the lenses, smooth bokeh and transition, and color comparable to cover photos. An ISP (image signal processor) team was involved too to ensure that the moment the shutter is pressed, the dual camera data can be collected, measured, merged, and saved all at once. Huawei has a team of over 100 developers on the algorithm research of dual camera. Plus the customization team and ISP design team, the investment of Huawei in human resources is much greater than the entire R&D team of most phone makers. In 2014, Huawei successfully launched Huawei’s first rear dual cameras smartphone, Honor 6 Plus.
And to push the boundaries further, Huawei partnered with premium camera manufacturer Leica, the leader in the world of imaging for more than 100 years, and pioneered the development dual-lens technology that set a new standard in smartphone photography. Previously, innovations were focused on clarity and speed of the pictures. With Leica dual camera, the Huawei smartphones had redefined smartphone photography. Besides clarity and speed, the Huawei smartphones are also capable of creating a bokeh effect and amazing colors comparable to a SLR camera.
The Huawei smartphones feature 12MP RGB and 20MP monochrome rear cameras. When taking photos, the two cameras will work simultaneously, and mimic the rods and cones of human eyes–one camera captures the color, the other captures light in low-light conditions. The light sensor of the camera can only sense the light intensity, which means that cameras are all ‘color blind’, just like rods of human eyes. The filter on top of the light sensor filters and records the R/G/B colors, like cones capturing colors. In other words, the color camera absorbs nearly two thirds of the visible light. That’s why the color is never comparable to the monochrome camera in terms of light sensitivity. Between the two cameras of Huawei smartphones, the color camera captures colors of the images, while the other one, the monochrome camera, senses the light intensity at each point.
When pairing the two, there will be precise colors, as well as better light sensitivity than a single-color camera, and better effect in low light conditions. And, with range-finding capability, the dual camera will record the range between the camera and every point in the picture, which makes it possible to take the photo and change the focus later, and create wide aperture effect.
Since the launch of the first dual camera system co-developed with Leica in April 2016, Huawei has upgraded the dual lens technology every 6 months to deliver image quality that is consistently in line with the high standards of professional photography.
The Leica standard puts extremely high requirements on mobile phone components, ISP algorithms and post-processing, to which Huawei R&D have responded with round-the-clock testing, continuous re-engineering and tangible quality improvements.
Today, Huawei has the biggest lineup of smartphone models with dual lens technology – at least 10 models with a dual camera system – which is featured in the company’s flagship smartphones. By partnering with Leica, Huawei made a real breakthrough in smartphone photography and helped transform mobile phone photography from a mundane everyday activity into an authentic art form, infusing with emotion the mere act of capturing an image.
As a testament to its innovation in smartphone photography, Huawei recently won the 2017 European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) Awards for “EISA Smartphone Camera 2017-2018’, which celebrates the outstanding user experience of the Leica dual camera.
As it sets to launch its biggest flagship this fall, Huawei will allow users to experience smartphone cameras in a whole new way thanks to an intelligent camera that has been developed to recognize face features, objects and scenes, and to detect motion using artificial intelligence. And compared with other competitors that will recently launch their newest products, Huawei will take a big step forward in the realm of smartphone photography. What will this new intelligent camera bring? The Chinese manufacturer promises that the wait is worth it.
