The Huawei Mate 8 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 5, 2016 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Cortex A72
- Kirin 950
- Mate 8
- CES 2016
Camera Still Picture Performance
The Mate 8 is equipped with a new camera module sporting a new sensor from Sony. The IMX298 is a 1/2.8” sensor with a 1.12µm pixel pitch offering resolutions of up to 16MP in 4:3 format. This marks a departure from the RGBW design that Huawei had adopted last year with the IMX258 in the P8 and Mate S. While the RGBW sensor definitely was able to demonstrate advantages in low-light photography it lacked detail compared to traditional Bayer RGBG sensors in well-lit scenarios.
| Camera Setup | ||
| Main (Rear) | Front | |
| Sensor | Sony IMX 298 1/2.8" 1.12µm pixel pitch |
Sony IMX179 1/3.2" 1.4µm pixel pitch |
| Resolution | 4608 × 3456 16MP 4:3 |
3264 × 2448 8MP 4:3 |
| Optics | F/2.0 aperture 27mm eq. focal length |
F/2.4 aperture 26mm eq. focal length |
| Stabilization | 3-axis 1.5° OIS | - |
For the first time we see Huawei push the sensor’s resolution up to 16MP which should theoretically allow the new module to resolve more detail compared to last year’s models as well as the Mate 7. Huawei continues to maintain a F/2.0 lens aperture with a 35mm equivalent focal length of up to 27mm, enabling a wide field-of-view.
Early software issues: A case of severe near-sightedness
When I received my Mate 8 review unit I was curious to test out Huawei’s promised improvements in camera quality, but I what I was met with were some very concerning samples that were worse than what a cheap budget smartphone could produce.
Mate S - Mate 8 B116 - Galaxy S6
The phone consistently was producing extremely blurred pictures that were far inferior to any other smartphone. At first I didn’t know what was causing this as the Mate 8 introduces both a new sensor, module as well as ISP in the Kirin 950.
Mate 8 vs Mate S
After further testing and investigation it seems that the focus mechanism of the camera is malfunctioning. A good way to demonstrate this is to launch the camera in the phone’s “Professional” manual mode and to open up the manual focus slider UI. While focusing on objects via manual selection on the screen, one can see the focus slider adjust between its minimal and maximal focal length.
The issue seems to be that the Mate 8 in its early software isn’t able to focus correctly on objects further away than ~75cm-1m away and tries to focus to infinity in basically any shot that is not a close-up frame of an object.
Reaching out to Huawei they confirmed that this is currently a software issue and that we’ll be seeing an update pushed out in the “near future”. Unfortunately this means that I wasn’t able to complete a proper camera evaluation of the Mate 8 as basically all pictures suffer from severe blurriness and chromatic aberrations due to the out-of-focus lens.
We’ll be updating the article with a revisited camera evaluation and comparison tests against competing devices once Huawei pushes out the firmware update to resolve the focus issue.
Day-Time Photography
As such, the following samples aren’t representative of the end product but at least we’ll be able to get an idea of Huawei’s processing and exposure handling in the Mate 8.
Ignoring the lack of detailed due to the focus issue, the Mate 8’s daylight camera samples seemed to lack vibrancy, colour saturation and contrast. This was mostly caused by the HDR mode that tended to cause shots to become washed out as the SDR shots were better in terms of colour reproduction in bright light. The issue with the SDR shots however were that they consistently weren’t exposed enough.
Night-Time Photography
In night-time shots the Mate 8 fared much better and seems to offer good exposure and colour reproduction with low noise levels. Unfortunately again because of the focus issue it’s hard to give a more detailed evaluation as we continue to see blurred out photography.
Overall it’s just impossible to rate the Mate 8’s camera so we’ll have to delay the full verdict to more in-depth follow-up once Huawei updates the device’s firmware.
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Ethos Evoss - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Test result battery stay last a quarter of day.. on s plus slightly more..s.yu - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link
Not enough people realize you're a stupid Huawei fanboy so they still bother trying to speak sense into you, what a waste of time.Ethos Evoss - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link
Jesus Christ you again ???I don't even own huawei phone there is no any waste time ..why u wasting time here replying u mental.. :DEthos Evoss - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
@Andrei FrumusanuI must say that THIS TIME Andrej u made an WONDERFUL, TRUTHFUL , NOT biased review for Huawei product ! WELL DONE !
I am starting like anandtech slowly ..
But one thing I need con.. ; Why such MEGA TERA in depth ? Isn't it too much ? silly ;)
Do we really need those cpu's or gpus instructions and those not really friendly graphs just to make call or browse net , play vid ? This review was very very in -depth than previous any smartphone review.. But still great .. I admire those ,who is truthful and real and this time you were..
But overall huawei disappointed me in more aspects..
Disappointments ;
* Yes agree very thick black borders around the screen .. it is just horrible huawei NEVER been like this .. Only solution is going for black screen..
* The display is really bad I can't believe , I had P8 which has the SAME mauf. same technology so how can be mate 8 screen so bad ? P8 is JDI IPS NEO too ...should be the same.. weird
* The battery is Ok thought will be better than Mate7 a lot more.. Can't understand how Mate 2 has the BEST battery life from all smartphones in the world.. But cannot believe that there was better battery life with iphone 6.. I DON'T believe that .. That's on paper DEFO not real world ! So may iphone 6 ppl wouldn't complain !
* The pictures are bad .. disappointment !
* The video recording is just horrible blurred not sharp .. Only one thing slightly saved it that 1080p 60 real motion .. that was cool I would record ONLY with 60fps.
*NO USB C and no fast charge very bad !
And Huawei phones prices increased dramatically so it is NOT Huawei as I knew this back in day !!!
I just purchased S6 Edge just for £280 from aliexpress and advantage is that it has nice brightest screen from all smartphones .. and very good whites .. (in the pas it was disaster with their whites.. looks like samsung learned )
boostern - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Yes we need more reviews like this one. If you want want to read reviews like "camera OK, display mmm, CPU Antutu over 9000!" there are plenty out here. I literally cum when I read a review such deep like this one.Ethos Evoss - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
''cum'' u DAFT ..s.yu - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link
This is Anandtech, you read the most detailed review anywhere. The second most detailed is Notebookcheck, they release more reviews but they're not as detailed. As for the "impression"s and "hands-on"s they're everywhere.ManuLM - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Strange: on display page, the luminance - Power curve shows 821mW for 200CD/m2 but in the table just below you rate it as ~419 mW. Typo, or I did not understand the table "Screen Luminance Power Efficiency 100% APL / White" ?Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
The power curve is power of the whole device, to just look at luminance efficiency I use the projected baseline at 0 nits to get a value for the backlight power only.zodiacfml - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
One trick pony with a high price.