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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zodiacfml - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
On the second thought, it might not be at all as the next exynos and snapdragon will have slightly higher cpu performance but a lot larger gpu performance which will be coming in a few mionths. And on a Samsung, it has more polish and maturity at the same price.s.yu - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link
You're right. S7 is right on the Horizon and it will be massively superior in most aspects to this, though they're not completely comparable as the size difference makes for different battery life and heat dissipation, and maybe even signal strength.grrrgrrr - Friday, January 8, 2016 - link
Mate 8 user here. Under light usage a single charge lasts 3~4 days easy.I really couldn't parse the battery life benchmarks when I have to charge a device rated 70h every day and another rated 100h lasts 4 days.
p51d007 - Friday, January 8, 2016 - link
I've been using a Mate2 since May 2014, the 5.1 update came June 2015. 100% satisfied with it and the performance. I'm not a gamer, but I do a ton of phone, text, web, PHOTOS, etc. Battery life is still outstanding. It's the most stable phone I've owned since my Star-Tac phone. Stays on 24/7, never gets rebooted, no FC, lockups NOTHING. Now, that being said, I wouldn't mind getting the Mate8, but I'm sure not going to shell out the bucks they want for one. The Mate2 was the perfect performance/price point, but it appears that Huawei wants to go all Apple/Samsung pricing. You think consumers, use to the iphone/Galaxy line are going to shell out that kind of money on a virtual unknown? Not going to happen.Personally, all these high end SOC devices are worthless to the bulk of consumers in the first place. Most users, other than the high end benchmark nuts or gamers aren't even going to come CLOSE to utilizing that much horsepower for a phone. Looks like I'll stick with my Mate2 a while longer til it dies. Forking over almost $1,000 for a stupid phone is NUTS, especially when the Mate2 only cost me $300 bucks almost 2 years ago (and now is even less!)
s.yu - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link
Oh please, Mate S and P8 were much much worse phones for a similar, or higher price. They really want to go Apple pricing, I can see they want to so bad from their Mate S pricing, but they're not there yet so they reverted to a sane price level with the Mate 8. Lucky you, for the meantime.milli - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Last page:' I’m now eagerly looking forward to testing the Snapdragon 820’s Kyro and Samsung’s Exynos 8890’s M1 to see ...'
KRYO
Rdmkr - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
The 78% screen to body ratio made me somewhat excited for this device. I think it's the highest found on any phone, shared only by lenovo's vibe Z2 Pro and some Sharp Aquos models. Of course this only expresses the relative bezel size, which is helped by the high overall size of the phone. The Sharp Aquos phones are king in terms of absolute bezel size. The Vibe Z2 Pro gets a special mention for squeezing capacitive buttons on the tiny bottom bezel as well.doyleconan - Monday, February 1, 2016 - link
Is there any updates on the camera focus issue?KCKY - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Any news yet on the Camera update ? :)DaveTheWave - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
How about a refreshed camera test?Haven't there already been updates that improved the camera?