Huawei Mate 10 has a 13 MP RGB sensor paired with a 20 MP monochrome sensor on the back. Both of which have Leica’s Summilux-H lenses with f/1.6 which is an important upgrade over previous cameras.
Where as the monochrome sensor is already good at producing nice image detail with reduced noise, the RGB sensor in Mate 10 has an OIS (optical image stabilizer) which really should perform better in low-light situations.
The main camera unit in Huawei Mate 10 does a great job. Mate 10’s camera features a dual-ISP (image signal processor) to perform better in low-light conditions and handling noise reduction in a better way. It has four-way hybrid autofocus combined with phase detection, laser, depth and contrast which helps the system to focus in almost all lighting conditions.
NPU specially comes into action with the camera that makes the automatic settings most intelligent. The system currently can recognize 14 scenes and objects and automatically adjusts settings for optimal image output. Still you have the Pro Camera mode right there if you don’t like the auto adjustments. In fact, the Pro Camera can be reached more easily in EMUI 8 than before.
NPU also supports the camera to reduce motion blur with AI based motion detection. Its hybrid digital zoom also gets support from the NPU to work fast and efficiently.
The camera interface mainly consists of three views, like previous iterations. It starts with the “viewfinder” in front, the right-swipe brings up the “camera modes” while the left-swipe brings on the “Settings” for the currently selected camera mode. Mate 10’s camera only supports hybrid digital zoom that works only when the resolution is set to 12MP. That actually allows the system to perform intelligent operations on data obtained from the multiple high-res images and provide a closer but detailed cropped image. Huawei calls it the hybrid digital zoom up to 2x. Going further up to 10x will be traditional digital zoom which will destroy the image detail.
EMUI 8 has also improved the native camera user interface and the first noticeable element was that the Pro Camera mode was now linked to the normal interface. You don’t need to open the camera switches pane for Pro Photo and Pro Video modes as they are now combined with the normal Photo and Video modes. On the viewfinder, right above the capture key there’s a node that you swipe up to turn on the Pro mode with manual camera options. Same can be done in video mode.
Huawei Mate 10 produces pretty impressive images out of its camera. The main 12MP RGB camera captures great shots with impressive detail at brick level and the foliage is rendered amazingly on trees with less noise. Dynamic range on the other hand is also superb but you would feel to have little less poppy colors in the photos because they are more closer to the real life scene as I noticed. To help you with that Huawei has brought the Leica’s “Vivid” switch right on top of the viewfinder for quick access. Whenever you feel the image you want should have more colors popped out, you can switch to two Leica switches vivid or smooth from the standard one. Or you can always have it set to vivid if you like, the camera will maintain your selection on the next visit.
The only bad thing about the camera is that it’s little aggressive on sharpening. The images are over-sharpened which can mostly hurt at edges of the object in the image as well as the smaller distant objects or the text. This shouldn’t be taken as a bad thing however because it can be fixed via software update.
As mentioned about the superb dynamic range, Huawei’s AI is most probably working in this case too. Most of the time I had to stay from using the HDR mode by myself because mostly they were good at the dynamic range.
When launched, the Mate 10 was expected to give really good shots with f/1.6 lenses on the main cameras. After having it tried, I can tell that it actually makes some significant improvement in low light. In addition the OIS is also working good to manage the hand-shake with longer shutter speeds up to 1/5th of the second.
Also the 2x zoom referred as hybrid zoom makes the shots out to have impressive detail for a digital zoom shot. It’s, as told above, a result of multiple frames or shots the camera takes during the capture moment. Combined those frames, the final image comes with impressive detail. Mate 10’s camera take shots at 27mm (35mm equivalent) focal length while the 2x zoom shot was recorded at 54mm.
The bokeh effect has been in the smartphone camera game since the launch of dual-camera configuration. Huawei has been offering the feature since Huawei P9. The feature offers to focus on an object and set the aperture value from f/0.95 to f/16. The feature has been improved and works in both color and monochrome modes.
Portrait mode on the other hand has the similar effect and focuses on detected faces while blurring out the background. However it doesn’t allow to change the aperture value and you have to stick to what the system automatically adjusts.
If you want to see the real detail with absolutely no noise, then check these monochrome shots. This is the detail which helps color images to have low-noise.
Here are some selfie shots with and without portrait mode
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