Huawei have focused plenty of attention on the camera in the creation of the new P8 smartphone. Photo / Supplied
Huawei have focused plenty of attention on the camera in the creation of the new P8 smartphone. Photo / Supplied
It's championed as having the best smartphone camera technology on the market - Dana Johannsen puts Huawei's new P8 through its paces on a trip to London.
These days it seems like you haven't been on holiday unless you have the smug picture postcard snaps to share on social media.
Our pics are getting all the more professional looking too, thanks to improvements in camera technology, particularly on mobile phones, and apps like Instagram, which make cutesy faux-Polaroid filters only a click of a button away.
Given our obsession with snapping and sharing everything these days, it is on the camera that Huawei (pronounced Wah-way) has focused much of its attention in the creation of their slick new P8 smartphone. The P8, which will be released on the New Zealand market later this month, is Huawei's flagship product as the Chinese company looks to take on Apple and Samsung in the smartphone space.
The P8 is being championed as having the best camera technology of all the new whizz-bang smartphones on the market, with the 13MP camera coming with all sorts of added features from the clever to the ridiculous (more on these later).
Huawei claims the P8 has best-in-class OIS (optical image stabilisation) and the world's first four-colour RGBW imaging sensor which, for the benefit of the tech illiterate (me), improves brightness in high contrast conditions, reduces noise in low light and produces pictures with more natural colours. There's also a whole heap of other letters and numbers that, truth be told, I don't really know what they mean.
Fortunately, Huawei also make the bold claim the camera functions on the P8 are "idiot-proof". There's probably no better person to put that theory to the test than a humble sports hack, so I was dispatched around London following the global launch of the new phone to get snapping.
Flowers at Columbia Road Flower Market taken on a Huawei P8. Photo / Dana Johannsen
The difference in the clarity and colour of picture quality was immediately obvious when shooting with the P8. Photos of London all tend to look one colour: grey. On the P8 the images look brighter with more depth of colour, who, but for E.L. James, knew there were so many shades of grey?
Beyond the point and shoot functionality, it gets a little tricky. To get the most out of the added features of the phone it takes a bit more tinkering. There is a "light painting" mode, which is essentially a long exposure, allowing you to create artistic-looking night-time shots, but this was tough to master in one afternoon walkabout with the phone.
In a nod to the pervasive selfie culture, the P8 also claims to have the best "selfie camera" on the market. The 8MP forward-facing camera, means better picture quality, particularly in low light, for those all-important selfies.
Regents Park, taken on a Huawei P8. Photo / Dana Johannsen
Where things get really weird are with the "beauty mode", which allows you to preset your own "beauty enhancement settings". You can make your skin tone more even, your face slimmer, your eyes bigger and brighter. There's even a function where you can programme the phone to recognise your face in photos and it will automatically airbrush you so you look better than all your friends.
It's all a bit disparaging when you think too deeply about it. If it isn't bad enough, models and celebrities are airbrushed to within an inch of their life in advertising campaigns; now it is rolling into our social feeds as well. But if nothing else, it provides hours of entertainment for friends and family as you see how closely you can resemble a wax figure.
Beyond the camera, there are other bonuses to travelling with the P8. Huawei promises less lag time in picking up local networks when you land, connecting three times faster than other phones. There's also room to place two SIM cards in the phone, allowing you to easily switch between SIMs without fumbling around putting one in and taking the other one out.
