Hands-on user reviews of the Huawei P20 Pro claim the device's cameras may not be as good as critics say

[Redaktion]

The Huawei P20 Pro rocked the smartphone world when it was launched a month ago. The device's tri-rear cameras and impressive image processing has seen critics hail it as debatably the best camera smartphone on the planet. However, some end users seem to think otherwise, and actually provide evidence pleading their cases.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Hands-on-user-reviews-of-the-Huawei-P20-Pro-claim-the-device-s-cameras-may-not-be-as-good-as-critics-say.300590.0.html

[vrvly]

From what I have seen in reviews, p20 is best only if counting bokeh &zoom-in &10mp mode. Colors are either overblown with AI or plain without, I saw some bad samples where colors were washed out in bright light and no detail in low light. Though hdr should be best, it not fires always it seems, not to forget it uses 10mp, which is less than 12mp. To those using 16mp and more shots also looks more like painting, not having much detail. Yes there is 40mp, with bayer filter like in 10mp with just more pixels per color. If taken as screen resolution(with all colors per one pixel) it would be 2,5mp. Its great for low light, I mean extreme low light shooting. Anywhere else is the result worse. Based on dxo its not better in colors overal, its better for bokeh/zoom. Faux 40mp captures less clean detail without morphing patterns than its 20mp monochrome camera, quite visibly. If you went to that phone for better colors and more detail(proud 40mp) through day to not extreme low light, you may be unpleasantly surprised. As bonus, videos are worse.

[Eddie D.]

I don't understand why this article exists. There is no smartphone camera that satisfies everyone. I have seen complaints about Pixel 2's camera (just google "pixel 2 camera terrible reddit" and you will see some examples) and basically every other phones' camera. You don't write news articles with just one or two posts from Reddit as sources, not even mentioning that your second Reddit source is mostly filled with positive feedback. Questioning if the review units are the same as consumer units is even more ridiculous without ANY real proof. It is unclear that the complaining users' firmware version is up to date. AFAIK, Huawei has different firmwares for different regions, and some regions get updates slower than others. It is definitely possible that those users just happen to be in a region that has not got any update.

Please, Notebookcheck, I come here because the articles here are generally more objective and more professional than average tech news sites. The lack of proofs or objectivity of this article disappoints me.

[Ricci Rox]

I don't understand why this article exists. There is no smartphone camera that satisfies everyone. I have seen complaints about Pixel 2's camera (just google "pixel 2 camera terrible reddit" and you will see some examples) and basically every other phones' camera. You don't write news articles with just one or two posts from Reddit as sources, not even mentioning that your second Reddit source is mostly filled with positive feedback. Questioning if the review units are the same as consumer units is even more ridiculous without ANY real proof. It is unclear that the complaining users' firmware version is up to date. AFAIK, Huawei has different firmwares for different regions, and some regions get updates slower than others. It is definitely possible that those users just happen to be in a region that has not got any update.

Please, Notebookcheck, I come here because the articles here are generally more objective and more professional than average tech news sites. The lack of proofs or objectivity of this article disappoints me.

Hello, Eddy D. Article author here!
I'm a tad disappointed that you seem to think this article was an attempt at casting a slur at Huawei. Far from it.

Finding out happenings and facts, and relaying them to the public...isn't that what journalism is all about at the end of the day? I, for one, think the P20 Pro's cameras are excellent. I'm yet to handle one, though, and our own reviewers are still going through the hoops with ours, so that thought remains just my opinion. There are end users out there, however, who seem to think otherwise, and if they provide decent proof of why they think so...surely prospective buyers deserve to have a look for themselves, no?

[Eddie D.]

I don't understand why this article exists. There is no smartphone camera that satisfies everyone. I have seen complaints about Pixel 2's camera (just google "pixel 2 camera terrible reddit" and you will see some examples) and basically every other phones' camera. You don't write news articles with just one or two posts from Reddit as sources, not even mentioning that your second Reddit source is mostly filled with positive feedback. Questioning if the review units are the same as consumer units is even more ridiculous without ANY real proof. It is unclear that the complaining users' firmware version is up to date. AFAIK, Huawei has different firmwares for different regions, and some regions get updates slower than others. It is definitely possible that those users just happen to be in a region that has not got any update.

Please, Notebookcheck, I come here because the articles here are generally more objective and more professional than average tech news sites. The lack of proofs or objectivity of this article disappoints me.

Hello, Eddy D. Article author here!
I'm a tad disappointed that you seem to think this article was an attempt at casting a slur at Huawei. Far from it.

Finding out happenings and facts, and relaying them to the public...isn't that what journalism is all about at the end of the day? I, for one, think the P20 Pro's cameras are excellent. I'm yet to handle one, though, and our own reviewers are still going through the hoops with ours, so that thought remains just my opinion. There are end users out there, however, who seem to think otherwise, and if they provide decent proof of why they think so...surely prospective buyers deserve to have a look for themselves, no?

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for sounding mean in my original comment. I didn't mean to be so offensive. My apologies.

When I first read the title and the original article, I thought it must be a somewhat widespread issue. Then I clicked into the Reddit links and found that it is only reported by a small number of users, and so far it is unknown what region or firmware version they have. The original article seems to assume that all the users and reviewers have the same firmware, which is not a good assumption for most smartphones. I personally think that a news article like this should gather all the information needed before guessing the reason behind it. That's what I meant by not being "objective" enough.

I saw the update to the article, and it is, in my opinion, more complete and neutral now. Thank you for the update.

[S.Yu]

"Faulty units"? "Outdated firmware"? "different versions of its firmware across various regions"?
Alright, let me address each and every one of these for you: If those are faulty units, then just off the top of my head, Anandtech, Phonearena, GSMArena, the Register, these media outlets all got "faulty units", specifically, Anandtech's was probably handed over by Huawei themselves.
Outdated firmware? DxO's review and score came out before everybody else and they gave "114", whatever weight that may hold.
"Different versions of its firmware across various regions"? Then obviously the NA version and the EU version already tanked, the most detailed comparison with the S9, iPX, and Pixel2XL in China (still lacks full res samples) acknowledges that the phone's processing lacks subtlety.

As for "foul play", they're Huawei, "foul play" is their game.
They took Sony's Omnibalance and released P7, P8 with a "balanced design", they took Samsung's S6E and S7E and whitewashed them into "Porsche Editions" and "Mate Pro", now they just took Samsung's current design and turned it into the "Mate RS".  They claimed UFS storage at launch and on their site while they mixed EMMC into their units, and refused to apologize when exposed. They bashed iPX's notch the day of its release yet months later they come up with their own notch. The list actually goes much longer but I'm gonna stop at their more infamous acts.

Now for the P20Pro: They boast that the P20Pro is a "professional camera" with "a professional photographer all in one tiny chip", is such blatant dishonesty actually allowed in ads outside of China? I know they don't brag so shamelessly in their Chinese TV ads.
"DxO 114"? I actually paid attention to their full sized samples and noticed that they were lying through their teeth, for example the backlit portrait had notably higher quality on the Pixel, hair is hair without smudging and the shadow under the model's chin was also much more properly exposed, color is different but then AWB may be influenced by the uncontrolled background and difference in framing, yet they claim that the Pixel "does not quite match the Huawei". Another example is the texture section, the P20Pro obviously smears horribly in the 5lux sample where Pixel2 preserves detail much better, while noise is totally fine, it also loses in the 100lux sample where it smears detail on the cheeks and below the chin, yet they come up with the term "best detail/noise trade-off", which is hardly convincing, as Huawei just trades detail away then fills them with fake sharpening. Artifacts also run amok on this model with excess CA, fuzziness, and smearing diminishing the 40MP mode's usefulness(see RAW samples from photographyblog and JPGs from Anandtech) and some particular smearing patterns and brush stroke-like fake sharpening which don't appear on any other model are apparent on the 10MP images. Artifacts on the P20Pro are the worst I've seen anywhere except maybe on the XZ2 which is basically on par in quantity but is predominantly sharpening artifacts. Yet, DxO claims "Artifacts are generally pretty well-controlled".
How DxO further discredit themselves is clear as day in the Pureview 808 review, effective daylight resolution is at least 2x that of iP7 and S6E, from their own samples, yet they claim that detail rendition is "on par" and assigns a low score to the 808. They're paid yet well-masked advertisers, and Huawei paid them well.
How the P20Pro smears in night mode is well summarized by Phonearena in their night mode comparison, where they reach a conclusion that 40MP is entirely out of the game in low light(smears to something like 2MP despite the large sensor size) and that 10MP shots sacrifice actual resolution and texture in favor of excess NR and oversharpening so it would look good on phone screens without magnification. How it smears in good light is available on GSMArena's photo comparison tool(Spoiler: notably less detail than S9, Pixel2XL, and U11+).
Either way, it's not worth the hype, not even close. The highlight DR in night shots(at the cost of often dimming lights too much that images look fake, see Phonearena's night samples in their review) and the 3x zoom in daytime will win it some points, but it's notably inferior to the competition in capturing and preserving detail (contrary to what a 40MP sensor would suggest) and is not at all worth the hype.

[S.Yu]

Oh, one thing I forgot, I should remind you that Huawei hired trolls to bash Xiaomi in India just a couple months ago, which this site reported on, and they blocked up Apple stores with their ad vehicles before and after their launch of the P20/P20Pro.

[Ricci Rox]

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for sounding mean in my original comment. I didn't mean to be so offensive. My apologies.

When I first read the title and the original article, I thought it must be a somewhat widespread issue. Then I clicked into the Reddit links and found that it is only reported by a small number of users, and so far it is unknown what region or firmware version they have. The original article seems to assume that all the users and reviewers have the same firmware, which is not a good assumption for most smartphones. I personally think that a news article like this should gather all the information needed before guessing the reason behind it. That's what I meant by not being "objective" enough.

I saw the update to the article, and it is, in my opinion, more complete and neutral now. Thank you for the update.

No problem, mate. Your original comment had solid points that I had to consider in my update.

"Faulty units"? "Outdated firmware"? "different versions of its firmware across various regions"?
Alright, let me address each and every one of these for you: If those are faulty units, then just off the top of my head, Anandtech, Phonearena, GSMArena, the Register, these media outlets all got "faulty units", specifically, Anandtech's was probably handed over by Huawei themselves.
Outdated firmware? DxO's review and score came out before everybody else and they gave "114", whatever weight that may hold.
"Different versions of its firmware across various regions"? Then obviously the NA version and the EU version already tanked, the most detailed comparison with the S9, iPX, and Pixel2XL in China (still lacks full res samples) acknowledges that the phone's processing lacks subtlety.

As for "foul play", they're Huawei, "foul play" is their game.
They took Sony's Omnibalance and released P7, P8 with a "balanced design", they took Samsung's S6E and S7E and whitewashed them into "Porsche Editions" and "Mate Pro", now they just took Samsung's current design and turned it into the "Mate RS".  They claimed UFS storage at launch and on their site while they mixed EMMC into their units, and refused to apologize when exposed. They bashed iPX's notch the day of its release yet months later they come up with their own notch. The list actually goes much longer but I'm gonna stop at their more infamous acts.

Now for the P20Pro: They boast that the P20Pro is a "professional camera" with "a professional photographer all in one tiny chip", is such blatant dishonesty actually allowed in ads outside of China? I know they don't brag so shamelessly in their Chinese TV ads.
"DxO 114"? I actually paid attention to their full sized samples and noticed that they were lying through their teeth, for example the backlit portrait had notably higher quality on the Pixel, hair is hair without smudging and the shadow under the model's chin was also much more properly exposed, color is different but then AWB may be influenced by the uncontrolled background and difference in framing, yet they claim that the Pixel "does not quite match the Huawei". Another example is the texture section, the P20Pro obviously smears horribly in the 5lux sample where Pixel2 preserves detail much better, while noise is totally fine, it also loses in the 100lux sample where it smears detail on the cheeks and below the chin, yet they come up with the term "best detail/noise trade-off", which is hardly convincing, as Huawei just trades detail away then fills them with fake sharpening. Artifacts also run amok on this model with excess CA, fuzziness, and smearing diminishing the 40MP mode's usefulness(see RAW samples from photographyblog and JPGs from Anandtech) and some particular smearing patterns and brush stroke-like fake sharpening which don't appear on any other model are apparent on the 10MP images. Artifacts on the P20Pro are the worst I've seen anywhere except maybe on the XZ2 which is basically on par in quantity but is predominantly sharpening artifacts. Yet, DxO claims "Artifacts are generally pretty well-controlled".
How DxO further discredit themselves is clear as day in the Pureview 808 review, effective daylight resolution is at least 2x that of iP7 and S6E, from their own samples, yet they claim that detail rendition is "on par" and assigns a low score to the 808. They're paid yet well-masked advertisers, and Huawei paid them well.
How the P20Pro smears in night mode is well summarized by Phonearena in their night mode comparison, where they reach a conclusion that 40MP is entirely out of the game in low light(smears to something like 2MP despite the large sensor size) and that 10MP shots sacrifice actual resolution and texture in favor of excess NR and oversharpening so it would look good on phone screens without magnification. How it smears in good light is available on GSMArena's photo comparison tool(Spoiler: notably less detail than S9, Pixel2XL, and U11+).
Either way, it's not worth the hype, not even close. The highlight DR in night shots(at the cost of often dimming lights too much that images look fake, see Phonearena's night samples in their review) and the 3x zoom in daytime will win it some points, but it's notably inferior to the competition in capturing and preserving detail (contrary to what a 40MP sensor would suggest) and is not at all worth the hype.

Hey there, S. YU. Article author here. Honestly, I've seen the P20 Pro do some pretty incredible things in low-light conditions. I'm not about to claim that it's a poor camera device. However, I've also seen some less than praise-worthy images taken by the device.

It's a bit of one, and some more from another, IMO. It's capable of great photos but does flounder in certain departments.

Oh, one thing I forgot, I should remind you that Huawei hired trolls to bash Xiaomi in India just a couple months ago, which this site reported on, and they blocked up Apple stores with their ad vehicles before and after their launch of the P20/P20Pro.

Well, yes, I'd know. I covered the Redmi campaign story. Huawei's past shenanigans—admittedly plenty—doesn't mean you get to call them out without substantial proof, though. That's how you get sued for libel, you see.

[A]

From what I have seen in reviews, p20 is best only if counting bokeh &zoom-in &10mp mode. Colors are either overblown with AI or plain without, I saw some bad samples where colors were washed out in bright light and no detail in low light. Though hdr should be best, it not fires always it seems, not to forget it uses 10mp, which is less than 12mp. To those using 16mp and more shots also looks more like painting, not having much detail. Yes there is 40mp, with bayer filter like in 10mp with just more pixels per color. If taken as screen resolution(with all colors per one pixel) it would be 2,5mp. Its great for low light, I mean extreme low light shooting. Anywhere else is the result worse. Based on dxo its not better in colors overal, its better for bokeh/zoom. Faux 40mp captures less clean detail without morphing patterns than its 20mp monochrome camera, quite visibly. If you went to that phone for better colors and more detail(proud 40mp) through day to not extreme low light, you may be unpleasantly surprised. As bonus, videos are worse.

No details my a**, the latest GSMArena camera comparison between P20P and S9P shows that the former destroys S9P at nighttime photography in literally every single category. At night S9's output clearly suffers from overblown highlights, corner softness and plenty of noise left behind even after NR wiped away a lot of details.. In daylight detail is on par in both phones. In some shots P20P appears to be better, in some cases not. You're right about video performance but its capability as a still camera is definitely not as bad as you wish to be.

[A]

Yeah it's a defective unit. The selfie of a girl just looks atrocious, there's no way it looks so sharpened and messed up. You can't achieve such a horrible result even if you turn up the beauty filter to max, I feel like this guy should get his phone replaced right away.

[S.Yu]

Hey there, S. YU. Article author here. Honestly, I've seen the P20 Pro do some pretty incredible things in low-light conditions. I'm not about to claim that it's a poor camera device. However, I've also seen some less than praise-worthy images taken by the device.

It's a bit of one, and some more from another, IMO. It's capable of great photos but does flounder in certain departments.

Hello Ricci,
It not really the point whether they directly paid DxO for the review or if it's just that DxO routinely flatters the newest model of those who buy their equipment. They may be professional, but they're not credible, it's clear from both the 808 review and the P20Pro review, also from some of their paradoxical results from their lens and camera body reviews, and I believe there certainly will be a lot more if somebody takes the time to actually look at their images.

Let me summarise the P20Pro's performance properly, and with proof I can't provide the proof due to the system blocking my links, I'll try to circumvent it:

1. Due to oversharpening and smearing NR, it falls short consistently (no exceptions compared to S9+ and Pixel2XL, probably even U11+ and Nokia 808, AFAIK) on detail and texture in daylight in both 40MP and 10MP mode as long as zoom is sub-3x.

cdn(dot)gsmarena(dot)com(slash)imgroot/reviews/18/huawei-p20-pro-vs-samsung-galaxy-s9-plus/camera/gsmarena_205.jpg
(same as above)/gsmarena_305.jpg
Note the snail, where the P20Pro loses a large amount of detail and renders the snail almost wax-like. In the distance, S9+ also retains much more detail of the castle.
cdn(dot)gsmarena(dot)com(slash)imgroot/reviews/18/huawei-p20-pro-vs-samsung-galaxy-s9-plus/zoom/gsmarena_166.jpg
(same as above)/gsmarena_366.jpg
Note how the branches are black and yellow and totally devoid of any detail in the P20Pro sample while S9+ at least still renders the branch properly as brown.
Same case in Anandtech's samples and Allaboutsymbian's.

2. Its 3x zoom gains an inconsistent advantage depending on light availability and possibly other factors. I've seen one review where it seems to retain even more detail than what 3x@8MP would suggest(a Chinese review), one review where it performs generally as expected(GSMArena's), and one review where there's hardly any advantage(I can't recall, it was at least 2 weeks ago), but I don't have the time to go back and look of them now. Anyway that's compared to modern flagships, compared to the 808 it seems yet inferior in good light.
allaboutwindowsphone(dot)com(slash)features/item/22915_Zoom_PureView_and_more_Lumia_1.php
www(dot)allaboutsymbian(dot)com(slash)features/item/22923_By_popular_demand_Nokia_808_Pu.php

3. As available light diminishes it gains in auto mode first and foremost DR but then gradually sharpness and noise advantage, it takes really dark scenes for a clear advantage, otherwise it mostly retains highlight DR better but renders a faker and less detailed image.

images(dot)anandtech(dot)com(slash)galleries/6261/p20pro_img_20180327_173028.jpg
(same as above)/s9plus_20180327_171413.jpg
In this dim indoor shot the S9+ retains notably better texture and detail of objects like chairs, the blackboard, the various plants and flowers, with minimal artifacts, while the P20Pro only has more highlight DR, with artifacts like strange black patches on the blackboard.

4. The 40MP mode and arguably the 3x zoom are worthless in low light. Low light mode(multi-frame exposure) should be avoided unless one just can't do a semi-auto image alignment and exposure merge in PS and really needs something in extremely dark conditions, otherwise it smears like there's no tomorrow and tends to overexpose the sky and introduces artifacts.

www(dot)phonearena(dot)com(slash)news/huawei-p20-pro-apple-iphone-x-google-pixel-2-xl-samsung-galaxy-s9-plus-low-light-night-camera-comparison_id104179
The 40MP shot in this article is indeed funny.
images(dot)anandtech(dot)com(slash)galleries/6261/p20pro_img_20180327_173048.jpg
Typical smearing watercolor.
cdn(dot)gsmarena(dot)com(slash)imgroot/reviews/18/huawei-p20-pro-vs-samsung-galaxy-s9-plus/camera/gsmarena_114.jpg
Again severe smearing and also some ghosting on the left of the image.
cdn(dot)mos(dot)cms(dot)futurecdn(dot)net(slash)EorYdWTrqXHZEJFxbM4v75-650-80.jpg
Overcooked HDR and unrealistic sky exposure evident even on such a small sample.
There's one shot in SF on one of the city's famous slopes about the sky exposure issue but I can't quite find it at the moment.

5. The camera generates the most "diverse" set of artifacts anywhere. From sharpening halo, smearing, random dark blotchs, to CA, interpolation artifacts, and possibly astigmatism.
Sharpening halo and smearing are pretty much everywhere, but auto mode smearing and night mode smearing are still on different levels. The dark blotchs appear in the shadows of low light shots. CA is apparent, consistently in 40MP output, just check out the high contrast edges of any 40MP sample. Interpolation artifacts are rampant in 40MP(again shown by GSMArena, their choice of testing ground is very indicative of a variety of performance measures) and 10MP is, surprisingly, not entirely immune. See the snail shot again, the building in the background has holes on outer panels which are not correctly rendered on the far side (near the castle in the image), there's a 40MP photo of the same panels which show much worse artifacts but I can't find it right now. And even more sinister is that sometimes it "invents" detail due to the interpolation without you knowing. An earlier sample also with that snail showed that the pattern of chipped paint taken by the P20Pro was completely wrong, there was a pattern not immediately strange to the eye but when compared to proper bayer results reveals that it's fake and totally made up.
www(dot)gsmarena(dot)com(slash)piccmp.php3?idType=1
This tool suggests that the edges and corners of the P20Pro samples (both 40MP and 10MP, but the lower res sample is more noticeable due to less overall softness) have lower sharpness than the center, also the softness in the corners exhibit a slight "double image" most noticeable on the crosses on the background of the scene. This behavior suggests astigmatism, very rare on tiny phone camera lenses.

6. The "master AI" would be more appropriately named "amateur AI", as no professional would add such cheap amateurish filters to their photos. They claim the pseudo long exposure involves the "AI", but it doesn't, at least it doesn't need to. Auto alignment was already quite mature in PS without need of any machine learning, and many ISPs in compact cameras could also complete multiframe NR in camera, just without the HDR combined into one single process, probably because it's prone to generating intense fakeness without user control, but considering how fake that monument looked in cdn(dot)mos(dot)cms(dot)futurecdn(dot)net(slash)EorYdWTrqXHZEJFxbM4v75-650-80.jpg , Huawei obviously doesn't mind.

[Sam Tanara]

..The demo unit in the Huawei store in my place has no NIGHT mode (NM) /or can not be activated in the  main shooting window.  The store supervisor I talked to tried to activate the NM via the "More/Night Shot" to no avail.  After a while of tinkering w/ the unit she tried to sales talk her way by saying the NM is running behind the scene always whenever the Night Shot is enabled..I don't know if thats true.   Since I want to buy the phone mainly because of its Night Mode I defer buying until such time I can be assured the versions of the units release in the Philippines has the Night mode.