The Huawei P20 & P20 Pro Review: Great Battery Life & Even Better Night Vision
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 15, 2018 11:00 AM ESTCamera Video Recording
Video recording hasn’t been a forte of Huawei devices for several years now, so having a look at the quality of the resulting videos of the P20 Pro and P20 is of particular interest.
The two new Huawei devices also for the first time introduce the option to record video in HEVC/H265 format alongside the “compatibility option” of standard AVC/H264.
The P20s have the same limitations as past devices where higher framerate and higher resolution recording above 1080p30 aren’t able to use features such as EIS (electronic stabilisation). For the P20’s, this is of particular concern as the camera don’t have any OIS.
P20
P20 Pro
As expected, the resulting video is very disappointing. In 1080p30 mode, the phone is very much still seemingly using a 1080p stream from the camera sensor and then using a cut-out from that frame with margins for the EIS mechanism that is then resized back up to 1080p. The resulting picture quality is one of less than 1080p with reduced field-of-view.
When disabling the stabiliser or when going over 1080p60 in framerate or resolution, the video becomes the usual shaky mess that isn’t that useable. I was particularly disappointed in the quality of the 60fps footage as it has a very notable loss in quality and detail compared to the 1080p30 footage. Focusing response is also outright terrible- while focusing in on a near object seems to be quite fast, both phones had major trouble focusing out again in a responsive manner.
Overall, in terms of video recording the P20’s aren’t competitive at all for a 2018 flagship device and Huawei still hasn’t managed to provide good quality video recording to date.
I was curious to see how the P20 Pro handled video recording when transitioning between the main camera and the 3x optical zoom camera and unfortunately the result isn’t that great compared to other dual camera implementations – there’s a notable delay between zooming in and the actual camera switch. Sometimes you’ll also catch the telephoto lens still focusing onto the subject after it already made the switch. On the plus side, switching over to the telephoto lens also means that the video is OIS stabilised and again this is a great improvement to the quality.
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Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, June 17, 2018 - link
I meant to say that I emphasised it in the S9 piece by bringing it up, praising Samsung for keeping it. I'll reword it here.djayjp - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
I personally found the noise vs noise reduction smear balance of the s9 much more appealing in the night shotss.yu - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link
Me too. Huawei NR smears the most out of all the flagships (HTC's seems to smear the least, surprisingly) and the only thing in auto propping up that low light performance is that second 20MP monochrome, because the 1/1.7" 40MP main on its own is horrible, its low light performance alone is completely out of proportion with its sensor size (easily hands the win to S9 and Pixel2), even if you manually bin the 40MP's output down to 10MP its low light performance is good as useless, Phonearena already did such a comparison size-matching the output of the P20Pro 40MP and a regular Pixel2XL low light shot.djayjp - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link
Agreed! I think the author is out to lunch on this claim of his about the Huawei's supposed dominance in night shots. It clearly looks worse.nrecob - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
New Cameraphone: Huawei P20 Pro. Old phone" iPhone X.Enjoying my P20 Pro immensely! My regrets: not buying the "Twilight" version & buying an iPhone X in the first place.
banvetor - Sunday, June 17, 2018 - link
Why no comments or comparisons to the Google Pixel 2 in the camera pages? For me they still look the best in many cases (no pro photographer here though)Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, June 17, 2018 - link
I didn't want to comment on every single phone and kept the phones to a minimum - personally I did not like the Pixel 2's shots - too much tendency towards unnatural HDR processing in daylight and too much noise and fuzziness in the night shots. Colour accuracy is the Pixel's forte I must admit though.banvetor - Sunday, June 17, 2018 - link
They look good to me exactly because of their HDR! And their colour of course. Anyway, appreciate the reply! CheersQuantumz0d - Sunday, June 17, 2018 - link
No excuse for Huawei on their glaring 3 major flaws.1- Design copy of EMUI as iOS
2 - Extended too deep as they just want to make the phone damn like an iPhone X with this Notch, camera module, the phone aesthetics, the plasticky frame look of that metal with polish like Apple again.
3 - No Headphone jack, another inspiration from Apple.
They want to be in serious front lines and all about their own AI powered notification system was a damn mess, I don't think it's going to be fixed anytime, Their lack of updates and price it to the north with tons of SKUs. After seeing the GSMA samples of Lumia 1020 Pureview, No camera comes close to that phone, they had Xenon flash, bigger massive sensor true lossless zoom and perfect natural colors unlike Huawei's AI crap or Samsung's oversaturated processing.
Their recent fiasco of no bootloader unlock is another middle finger. Removing the jack driling holes like Apple. sheesh this phone doesn't even deserve any praise on the design front, and should be called out for it's cheap design, Only Huawei phone which is a true flagship was Mate 10 standard edition, no rounded drama, no notch, has a headphone jack, front scanner, 16:9 panel, SD slot. This phone doesn't have any of those or any phone from Huawei.
Chinese phones nowadays have flooded the market with this obnoxious chin + notch BS and all phones are looking the damn same. A shame to the whole industry which Apple brought with their always fancy style over substance.
No wonder no ones cares about audio anymore, soon LG will stop bleeding and ditch that ESS (half baked anyways needs mods to enable the HIM - High Impedance Mode as they crippled it unlike the older days SGS - Wolfson Linux driver compatible DACs) as they did with V20's removable battery and made an abomination G7 ruining the perfect balanced design, 19:9 is so impractical and useless, adding the chin (yeah I've said it by 3 times) it's just insane and stupid.
Andrei shouldn't excuse them for adding a battery, Samsung's Note 8 has more tech inside it (ofc they played a stupid safe game of absurdly small battery) the stylus tech, Iris scanner, better construction and quality yet has a 3.5mm jack, S9+ improves on it, Note 9 rumored to have 3800+ mah (maybe it will help that failed Exynos 9810's custom kernel optimization) and have a 3.5mm jack again with SD Slot and all bells and whistles.
Upcoming Pixel 3 XL having a notch, just ruins the Android now. Every OEM on the planet want to be like Apple. Sigh, Sorry for the long rant.
GREAT Expectations - Monday, June 18, 2018 - link
Wow... It's just a phone. You sure do have strong opinions about this. Maybe use more full stops next time? Also IMHO, go get a life :)