Huawei unveils P50 series smartphones with neat photo features, including 50MP and 65MP cameras
posted Friday, July 30, 2021 at 4:00 PM EDT
Huawei has announced a pair of new flagship smartphones, the Huawei P50 and Huawei P50 Pro. Both phones include a Leica-branded 50-megapixel main camera.
Let's look at the P50 Pro first, since it has the more interesting features. The P50 Pro utilizes a dual-matrix camera design, True-Chroma Shot, a 200x zoom range and AIS Pro True-Steady Shot. The camera has Huawei XD Optics and an upgraded Huawei XD Fusion Pro image engine. The True-Chroma Image Engine includes an upgraded ambient light sensing system and captures images in P3 wide color gamut.
The P50 Pro has a 65-megapixel telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom and a 40-megapixel monochrome camera. The regular P50, on the other hand, has a 12-megapixel camera with 5x optical zoom. Both the P50 Pro and P50 smartphones include 50-megapixel main cameras and 13-megapixel ultra-wide cameras. You can shoot as close as 2.5cm with the P50 phones, offering reasonable macro capabilities.
The P50 series smartphones record 4K video across each focal length in terms of video. Further, the devices include AIS Pro image stabilization, promising improved handheld video quality.
The P50 Pro has a 6.6" 120Hz 1228p OLED display. The P50's display is very similar, coming in at 6.5" with a 90Hz refresh rate and a 1224p resolution OLED panel. The P50 Pro has a slightly larger battery and can be charged wirelessly.
Another feature that sets the P50 series apart from its predecessors is the use of in-house HarmonyOS software, rather than the Android OS that has been used for other Huawei P-series phones.
There's some debate about whether HarmonyOS is substantially different from Android. Huawei is still reeling from US sanctions. These sanctions have heavily limited Huawei's ability to buy chips, including 5G chips, which are absent in the P50 series. Further, some P50 series phones use in-house Kirin chips, while others use Qualcomm chips, which Huawei needed permission to purchase.
The Huawei P50 and P50 Pro are set to go on sale in China in August at starting prices around $695 and $927, respectively. There's no word on when or if Huawei's P50 and P50 Pro smartphones will be available in other markets.
(Via PetaPixel)