Honor Launches The View20: A 48MP Camera Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 28, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Kirin 980
- Honor View20
Camera - Low Light Evaluation
Low-light testing on the View20 is interesting. Here on one hand we should see the advantages of the big sensor in its pixel-binning mode, but on the other hand this might be a regression compared to the bigger 1µm 40MP sensors of the Huawei counterparts. Much like the P20 Pro and Mate 20 Pro, the View20 lacks an OIS mechanism that not only represents a disadvantage in terms of video recording, but also low-light capture. Let’s see how the new Honor device ends up in terms of low-light capture.
[ Honor View20 ] - [ Mate 20 Pro ]
[ Mate 20 ] - [ Galaxy Note9 ] - [ Galaxy S9+ ] - [ LG V40 ]
[ OnePlus 6T ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
The first shot unfortunately does confirms some of my fears about the new sensor: Although at first glance the result is very similar to the Mate 20 Pro, under closer inspection the View20 does have overall worse details and less sharp edges than what the flagship counterpart can achieve. Unfortunately this is a simple matter of light capture ability on the part of the sensor, and here the View20 only achieves 64% of the per-pixel area compared to the Mate 20 Pro.
The View20’s strength remains its processing ability, which still allows it to achieve quite good results compared to the competition.
The 48MP clear mode in effect is again no better than the 12MP mode, both in detail and exposure. We’ll see this behaviour to be true of all the low-light shots, and in effect I would have wished Honor’s software would have just reverted to a 12MP shot instead of needlessly generating a 48MP file.
[ Honor View20 ] - [ Mate 20 Pro ]
[ Mate 20 ] - [ Galaxy Note9 ] - [ Galaxy S9+ ] - [ LG V40 ]
[ OnePlus 6T ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
The next shot the View20 also ends up strikingly similar to the Mate 20 Pro. The phone’s advantages over the classical competition here isn’t solely due to the sensor, but as demonstrated by the regular Mate 20, can be largely attributed by the image processing and ISP of the new Kirin SoC.
[ Honor View20 ] - [ Mate 20 Pro ]
[ Mate 20 ] - [ Galaxy Note9 ] - [ Galaxy S9+ ] - [ LG V40 ]
[ OnePlus 6T ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
In extreme low-light, the View20 seemed to have issues focusing correctly as all my 12MP shots ended up being blurry. The 48MP clear mode shots here better demonstrated the raw capture ability of the sensor, and it ends up with quite a good representation of the scene.
Switching over to the night mode, we get a significantly better result of the moonlit scene. In terms of pure light capture ability, the phone still lags behind Google’s Night Sight mode on the Pixel 3, even although this latter result is fantastically over-the-top in terms of how bright it managed to make this dark scene.
Overall, good low-light capture
Overall the View20’s low light capture ability is very similar to the Mate 20 Pro and more recent Huawei devices. This means that they’re quite top performers exceeding the ability of classical smartphone cameras which don’t employ new computational photography modes.
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MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
While on a technical level the camera isn't that bad, the lack of consistency is a major detractor for me. Having to flip between all the different shooting modes and hoping one of them takes a good picture is not something I want to be dealing with on a day-to-day basis when I'm trying to pull of a quick photo.That said, to me the biggest revelation in the camera roundup is how badly tuned the Night Mode is on the OP6T. (I have a OP6 and have only played with the new mode a couple times and never really shot anything with it). Sure, it is *brighter* but the output just looks silly -- especially in the 1st and 2nd night shots. In the 3rd night shot, it just looks like someone dialed the noise reduction up and then nudged the brightness up a tad.
GreenMeters - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
I wish Anandtech wouldn't support a criminal organization like Huawei with reviews of their products.jabber - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
I'm still waiting for definitive proof on all these technical hi-jinks Huawei are supposedly into.Evidence of chips/firmware/code/telemetry etc.
At the end of the day the West doesnt like them getting so big. If they can't keep up...too bad.
GreenMeters - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
That's an either stupid or disingenuous take. Lenovo is the global #1 PC manufacturer; "The West" doesn't care about them getting so big. Tencent is a huge technology company; "The West" doesn't care about them getting so big. What "The West" (and "The East" outside of China) doesn't like is a known front for state-sponsored espionage deploying spyware in critical infrastructure and stealing property. Some "hi-jinks" huh?jabber - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Sources with definite details?GreenMeters - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link
So as you're just trolling at this point, I was going to point out that since the only thing you'll accept as "definitive proof" is written material from Huawei bigwigs saying "MUWAHAHA LET'S BE EVIL" so of course you in bad faith will never be satisfied. Except holy shit, from the indictment there ARE written material from Huaweu bigwigs saying "MUWAHAHA LET'S BE EVIL AND STEAL ALL THIS STUFF" so mea culpa.jabber - Sunday, February 3, 2019 - link
So once again...no real evidence.shompa - Friday, February 1, 2019 - link
according to who? Are you one of those that believes evil Russian hackers won the election to Trump with 100K dollar facebook ads (while Hillary spent 2 billion on ads)? And if you read all the evidence that USA has put forward: It all comes down to a DNS address that points to a Russian casino. The point is: where is the real evidence against Huawei and please be more critical to the stories that your government tells you. It's not real.tuxRoller - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link
https://www.politico.eu/article/report-dutch-agenc...https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-04/russia-trie...
D1G1TE - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
Honor View 20 beats Pixel 3 in resolved detail while using 48MP or 48MP Clear in some cases. Pixel 3 looks like water painting, with very artificial/unnatural HDR look full of edge halos when one compares photos from both phones at same zoom level. Pixel 3 and Mate 20 PRO still have slight edge at night with Mate 20 PRO heaving cleanest photos compared to resolved detail. Amazing work from Honor with new Sony sensor. Resolves even more detail than Mate 20 PRO sensor during day.