In recent years, major domestic mobile phone manufacturers are making every effort to develop mobile phone images, not only the continuous upgrading and improvement of hardware parameters such as sensors, but also actively cooperating with traditional camera manufacturers for algorithm research and development and picture quality color adjustment. For example, vivo joined hands with Zeiss, OPPO OnePlus and Hasselblad united, Xiaomi and Leica also reached cooperation. Pixel development is also running wildly, 100 million pixels have long been popularized and decentralized to mid-range machines, and many manufacturers have used 200 million pixels. Thanks to the two-way development of hardware and software, the image strength of Android mobile phones has reached a very high level.
Although many mobile phone manufacturers no longer send flagship phones to test DxOMark, institutions still buy current mainstream flagship models for testing through their own channels. Of course, the final result does not necessarily reflect the strength of a product's image strength, but it also plays a certain reference value for consumers. Recently, DxOMark announced the scoring results of the Huawei Mate50 Pro front camera, ranking first with the iPhone 14 Pro with a score of 145 points. At the same time, its rear camera also won the world's first place with a high score of 149, so far Huawei Mate50 Pro won the first place in both front rear cameras.
(Source: DxOMark)
Huawei P series and Mate series have always been regular customers on the DxO list, and it is not surprising that Xiaolei can get such results. However, in the case that other manufacturers are struggling to catch up and co-branding with camera manufacturers, it is more unexpected that Huawei and Leica can still maintain such outstanding performance after breaking up. So, what is the image strength of Huawei Mate50 Pro equipped with XMAGE system?
Why did Huawei win the first place in both video events?
In terms of hardware, Huawei Mate50 Pro is equipped with a 50-megapixel ultra-optical variable camera (RYYB, f/1.4-f/4.0, supports OIS optical image stabilization) on the rear; A 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera (f/2.2, supporting ultra-macro shooting); A 64-megapixel periscope telephoto camera (RYYB, f/3.5, supporting 3.5x optical zoom and OIS optical image stabilization) can achieve 200x zoom. Moreover, the machine also supports 10 adjustable physical apertures, which can adjust the aperture size according to the actual shooting scene to obtain better bokeh or depth of field effects. On the front, Huawei Mate50 Pro is equipped with an intelligent ultra-large wide-angle imaging system, consisting of a 13-megapixel camera and a 3D ToF depth camera, supporting intelligent variable ultra-wide angle 78~100 degrees.
(Source: Huawei official)
From the perspective of hardware parameters, several lenses of Huawei Mate50 Pro may not be the strongest at present, but the overall is definitely the level of the first echelon. After the cooperation between Huawei and Leica, Huawei developed the XMAGE imaging system and made its debut on the Huawei Mate 50 series. In the process of taking photos and videos, you can directly choose the three modes of primary color, vivid and bright, and easily take photos closer to the naked eye or highlight the saturation of the picture, meeting the aesthetic requirements of different photography enthusiasts.
Xiaolei's colleagues commented in the Huawei Mate50 Pro review: "The picture details and contrast grasp have Huawei-style characteristics, and the image system has complete focal length, which has long-term development potential." In the image evaluation of Huawei Mate50 Pro, vivo X80 Pro, Xiaomi 12S Ultra, iPhone 14 Pro, Honor Magic 4 Pro, OPPO Find X5 Pro six flagships, Xiaolei's colleagues once commented on Huawei Mate50 Pro.
Huawei and Honor have the widest viewing angle and accommodate more pictures, but the distortion is not serious and worthy of praise.
The overall performance of Huawei Mate50 Pro is very stable, although it has lost the blessing of Leica, but the image quality performance is still the industry benchmark, and it has a good performance both day and night when it comes to main camera imaging.
Its main shortcoming is still in the telephoto lens, and the instability of the algorithm makes its imaging performance a little erratic, sometimes excellent and sometimes mediocre. These problems can be solved through system upgrades and algorithm optimization.
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It can be seen that even if Huawei and Leica are separated, with their own technology accumulation in the past few years and a new understanding of mobile phone imaging, through a complete set of excellent hardware and self-developed XMAGE imaging system, it can still maintain the industry's first-class ultra-high level. The double first place in the DxOMark score is one of the best proofs. Of course, many people may feel that DxOMark has lost its reference value, but objectively speaking, putting several products under the same standard for testing, and finally getting a high score does show that the product has superior strength to others.
Do we still want to look at the DxO score?
In the past few years, DxOMark's score still has high credibility and reference value in the industry, when it was fashionable and in the climbing period of mobile phone influence, everyone was still in the exploration stage. At this time, there is a more fair test platform, which can indeed help everyone understand the level of photography of a product more clearly and intuitively. However, in recent years, the credibility of DxOMark has been declining, not only a large number of consumers no longer trust its performance results, but also a number of mobile phone manufacturers have directly stated that they will not send DxOMark in the future.
(Source: DxOMark)
The reason why DxOMark cannot be trusted by most people, Xiaolei believes that there are two main reasons. First, the imaging strength of the high-end flagships of major brands is getting stronger and stronger, and gradually forming their own imaging style, everyone is also quite confident in their own strength, and they do not need external institutions to prove or judge. Second, some of DxOMark's tests lack objectivity and impartiality, and may be biased in favor of a brand. Previously, there was news on the Internet that the DxOMark list can be on as long as you recharge, and the more you recharge, the higher the ranking. Of course, these are all unsubstantiated rumors, so let's just take it as a joke.
Frederick Gishhar, CEO of DxOMark, said in an interview that they don't sell points or lists, and that scores are just the tip of the iceberg. However, this response was refuted by Shen Yiren, former vice president of OPPO, who posted on Weibo that "it is indeed not fake, the score and the list are not sold, but selling 'services', according to the feedback debugging score is high, the list is also high." To put it bluntly, mobile phone manufacturers can take money to let DxOMark help you with image adjustment, which makes it easier to run high scores, and it is indeed not directly selling scores and rankings, but is there a difference between the two?
(Source: Weibo)
Of course, if the level of DxOMark adjustment is high, it can really significantly improve the image strength of the mobile phone, even if there are such "unspoken rules", everyone is still willing to accept it. But the reality is that the photo effect of a high-rated mobile phone does not necessarily get consumer recognition, which is just to get a high score. Because of this, mobile phone manufacturers are no longer keen on test scoring, return to the direction of serving consumers, choose to cooperate with traditional camera manufacturers for image adjustment, these manufacturers can stand for tens of hundreds of years, its strength is the most credible.
Today's DxOMark score cannot be said to have no reference value at all, only the value is not as great as before. Its score can still reflect the strength of a product in its setting scene, but taking pictures is a complex and uncontrollable process, and strong strength in some scenes does not mean that it can have the same performance in other scenes. Any running score is actually the same, can only serve as a reference significance, it is not recommended that everyone use this as the basis for purchasing products.
How to judge the good or bad of mobile phone photography?
DxOMark gradually loses credibility, and the score no longer has too high reference value, so how should ordinary consumers buy a mobile phone with good photos? Many netizens will feel that they can't understand the pile of hardware parameters on the mobile phone, they are bought by looking at the high running score, and now the score is not credible, so what should I take as a reference in the future?
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In fact, the good or bad effect of a mobile phone photo is a more subjective view, and it is difficult to frame and judge with some objective constraints. Just like some people like the effect of relatively high saturation, think that bright colors are suitable for sending friends; Some people prefer imaging close to the naked eye, thinking that this is better able to record the real world; There are also some people who like black and white, retro imaging effects, think that such photos are more flavorful and so on. Everyone's aesthetic for photography is different, and there is no way to measure and judge with a set of standards, and there is no need for this.
As for how to choose a mobile phone that you think is good for taking pictures, Xiaolei's suggestion is that you can go to the offline stores of major brands to experience it for yourself, and experience the imaging effect of the machine in different modes and different scenes, so that it is easier to find products that meet your own aesthetics. This year's major brand flagships of the adjustment direction, Apple still continues to restore the real style, OPPO / One Plus / vivo / honor will be biased to improve the saturation of the style, Xiaomi Leica classic mode is biased towards retro, Leica bright mode color will be more pleasing, vivo will have better performance in portraits, etc., you can rely on your own needs to choose.
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Not only taking photos, but also evaluating the appearance design of mobile phones, everyone also has their own views and opinions. Therefore, when choosing a mobile phone, you must go to the offline experience before making a decision, you don't need to care too much about the evaluation and opinions of others, and follow your own heart. Of course, if you don't care about the design and image of the mobile phone, and only pay attention to performance, you can refer to the evaluation results of major media, after all, they will be more professional.
summary
In the early stage of the development of smart phones, consumers do not have a deep understanding of various hardware parameters, and their understanding of mobile phone performance and photo strength is not enough, so they need to rely on running scores to judge high and low, and manufacturers also need to use running scores to publicize. However, the performance of the current mobile phone is seriously overflowing, and the image strength of each family has also reached a very high level, although the running score test is still meaningful, but the reference value is far less than before. In today's smartphones, hardware parameters are no longer the first key factor, but more rely on software-level optimization, algorithm increase and so on. In the next few years, the importance of hardware configuration may continue to weaken, and everything will return to the essence of user experience. So, test scoring really isn't that important anymore.