A Day with the Huawei Mate 30 Pro: Kirin 990 and 7680 FPS Slow Motion Tests
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 23, 2019 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Kirin 990
- Mate 30 Pro
- 7680fps
Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro: Testing 7680 fps Slow Motion
One of the headline features of the Mate 30 Pro is its super slow motion capabilities. Most smartphones available on the market today, if they offer slow motion, do it at either 120 fps, 240 fps, or up to 960 fps. This typically comes in the form of a sensor and system that can take 120 frames per second video and do clever interpolation to appear as if it is a higher frame rate. We’ve seen some good and bad solutions here.
The way that traditional slow motion cameras work is on a sliding scale – the trade-off between frame rate is resolution. If you reduce the area of the sensor that needs to take the image by one quarter, then technically the fast memory storing the video data can store 4x as much – as long as you can poll data from the sensor at 4x the speed, it should be good to go.
It seems that Huawei is doing a mix of things here to get 7680 fps. The camera offers several settings, which comes with a slider from 2x to 256x. Any setting 32x or lower gives a 1080p video, while 64x and higher gives a 720p video:
- 1080p at 120 fps = 4x speedup
- 1080p at 240 fps = 8x speedup
- 1080p at 960 fps = 32x speedup
- 720p at 1920 fps = 64x speedup
- 720p at 7680 fps = 256x speedup
There are no graduations in between. At 4x and 8x, users can take as much video as they want, and extend it all into slo-mo, but for the 32x speedup and beyond, the system will record a certain amount of video and slow it down. At 32x speedup, the video is 16 seconds, essentially recording 0.5 seconds of video. At 64x, the video is 32 seconds, recording 0.5 seconds of video. At 256x however, the video is also 32 seconds, meaning that the sensor can only record 0.125 seconds of video. It is worth taking that into account.
The other thing with slow motion video on this scale is light. The thing being filmed has to be illuminated sufficiently in order to get full detail. For anyone going around with 7680 fps photography on the brain, carrying a strong LED light for those dark areas of existence is probably worth the effort.
So here I’m going to show three videos taken with the Mate 30 Pro. This first video is the camera in 1080p mode, recording at 960 fps. This is what most high-end smartphone cameras can do.
Here we have a steady set of bubbles being created from the stream of water.
Now we can slow that down to 7680 fps.
Those first drops of water can accurately display the ripples from the spoon. One thing to note here is that with a smartphone camera, getting the thing to focus correctly while also holding a light is a right pain. That’s partly why the water stream is a bit out of focus in our close up shot. In the continuous stream section, we have some super slow motion water.
This third video was taken outside, and the simple act of dropping a leaf on a windy day.
If anything, 7680 fps here is too slow. Again, the focus plays a role here, and without a manual lens it is quite difficult to get it right for the shot as a whole. We can see the cyclist in the background slowly peddling through the shot, but we have lost detail on the leaf itself.
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Ian Cutress - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
Did you fail to read the very last line of this hands on?s.yu - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
If you're suggesting that the full review will be Andrei's, that's not my point, my point is that whoever, at Anandtech, tested the device in this limited scope, should have done better. The title is called "Kirin 990 and 7680 FPS Slow Motion Tests" after all, there's no point in releasing these non-indicative results if Andrei's going to do it all over again, properly.philehidiot - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
You're picking and choosing what to criticise, aren't you? The title starts with "A day with".A DAY.
If you're going to quickly go over most aspects of a device in a day, you have to use what's around. If you can fully set up tests and review a slow motion camera in a day, along with all the other stuff here, set up your own site and compete. You're being unrealistic and hypercritical whilst also being wilfully dishonest to achieve your ends.
When you're done being all upset that you're getting this kind of response from people, do consider if this keeps happening the problem isn't everyone else.
s.yu - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
lol, Here's a fool looking for humiliation.You're talking about taking "a day" literally? As in he's had this device for exactly 24hrs? Then obviously you need to take the rest of the title literally don't you, "Kirin 990 and 7680 FPS Slow Motion Tests"
And what do we have regarding the conclusion of an article under this title? "The big question on everyone’s lips is whether Huawei can survive without the Play Store, and then in turn, without Google’s main apps like Gmail, YouTube, or Maps." In fact half of the whole conclusion is regarding "whether Huawei can survive without the Play Store" blah blah blah. What's that got to do with "Kirin 990 and 7680 FPS Slow Motion Tests"? Nothing! It means that the title cannot be taken literally! Your sophistry hinges on the assumption that the first half of the title means what it says, yet the conclusion already proves the second part false, it means you need a half-true-half-false title in which the true part is what you want it to be, I think that's called "being unrealistic and hypercritical whilst also being wilfully dishonest to achieve your ends", lol.
s.yu - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
Also, my fundamental point stands that he's condoning Huawei's lies by calling it clever, which is an extension from his last article in which he took on the tone of Huawei's mouthpiece, and it also stands, no matter how much time he actually had or could have had with the device, that the results are non-indicative aside from proving Huawei's 1-to-4 frame interpolation, in addition to the fact that Andrei's doing the full review sometime later, that, according to you, must include a proper, indicative test of the slo-mo anyway since he's not on a deadline or on a very loose one per usual Anandtech, it's a futile exercise, and so, what should I call this article then...yes, Huawei clickbait.philehidiot - Saturday, September 28, 2019 - link
"Fool"? I call myself an idiot in my name. Don't you DARE try to imply I'm anything less than an idiot. Prat. Also, if you're going to insult someone's intelligence, please consider capitalisation, etc. Glass house, stones, etc. Get your own act together before insulting.So half the conclusion is on the most important question surrounding this phone and you're criticising this? And you're insisting on bitching about the title not being completely literal as your main point? So, using a load of electronic trickery to produce massive frame rates is not clever? Okay, YOU do it. If it's not clever, it's clearly within the reach of the average which should be well within your grasp as you're calling other people fools. So you must think you're clever.
I'm sensing some Dunning-Kruger going on here.
So, if the whole thing is a futile exercise, please do tell.... why are you bothering reading it all and excreting your opinion all over the rest of us? Do tell. I'm sure your time is far better spent doing all these amazing things you should be doing rather than attempting to shit all over everyone else's work.
Huawei clickbait? I'd say Anandtech would be more predisposed towards Qualcomm clickbait given they take money and so on from them.
And yes, the results prove that the interpolation works.... as well as a couple of ways it's difficult to use and some settings it works well in and some it doesn't. Y'know... the overview implied by the bloody title. Why do reviews sites look at motherboards and bench them when the results are usually within a few percent of a competing board? Or why do they test two SSDs of two differing brands which use identical controllers and NAND? Because companies lie, cheat and steal and checking the stuff does what it claims to do is the first step towards informing the consumer.
Now, please do consider your arrogance and attitude is not helping your case. You could make a good one people will read. But... you chose to go down the "insult everyone else until they agree with me" route. No one will EVER agree with you or take you seriously if you feel you have to insult them to get your point across.
Twat. ;)
s.yu - Sunday, September 29, 2019 - link
I commend you for your self-awareness of your idiocy.There's not much worth arguing about considering hardly anything stands in your idiotic rant.
"on the most important question surrounding this phone"
Says you, many on the site agree that it's political BS. Go back to the Richard interview and count how many people agree with me.
"And you're insisting on bitching about the title not being completely literal as your main point? "
Rather that's your main point, how "A DAY", in all caps, excuses the sloppy job. I won't waste my time reiliterating my main point what I've stressed in abundance.
"a load of electronic trickery to produce massive frame rates"
No, it's deceitful. 1920fps readout interpolated x4 != 7680fps readout, far from equal. I don't even dare do 4x interpolations on Twixtor because of how poorly the results turn out, and this is at an even lower processing precision on a low power platform real-time. I don't do it because I have a bottom line, not Huawei. As far as I‘m aware all slo-mo have been advertised as their actual readout speed until Huawei came along and turned a native 480fps device into "960fps" through a firmware update just because Sony could do real 960fps. You're free to prove me wrong with an earlier example though.
"I'm sensing some Dunning-Kruger going on here."
Sense harder, and you'll sense where it actually happens.
"if the whole thing is a futile exercise"
This whole article is a futile exercise, given that there will be a more comprehensive one by Andrei which, again, according to you does not make the sloppy mistakes in this one because of a loose timeline. However there's no way for me to know until I've read it through, is there. You really are such an idiot that you ask 7N oxygen-free idiotic questions.
"Anandtech would be more predisposed towards Qualcomm clickbait "
Sorry but the Qualcomm articles adhere to Anandtech's quality standard and are strongly critical in many instances, OTOH Ian in this article (and the Richard one) takes on an inappropriately welcoming tone towards blatant dishonesty and corporate jargon. And FYI he got free trips to China from Huawei, possibly other freebies.
"as well as a couple of ways it's difficult to use and some settings it works well in and some it doesn't"
Not nearly as clear as it should be, Youtubers could do better than this.
"Why do reviews sites look at motherboards and bench them when the results are usually within a few percent of a competing board..."
You're inadvertantly agreeing with me, idiot.
"Now, please do consider your arrogance and attitude is not helping your case."
Though you did a good job about your idiocy back there, there's still call for some self-refection.
"No one will EVER agree with you or take you seriously if you feel you have to insult them to get your point across."
Look again where the insult started, and with some Dunning-Kruger, ironically.
"Twat. ;)"
I'll take that as your motto.
pinchies - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
Dear Ian,Those sample videos clearly show that they are using optical flow image processing to interpolate frames. Even though this is a quick look article, I think that extended slow-mo section should be edited to add a clarification that this is not native 7680fps, which is simply clickbait being peddled by Huawei. There are apps on the mobile stores that can do this kind of interpolation, we only care about the hardware refresh rate.
s.yu - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
Spot on.Haldi - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
QFT!