Huawei talked to us about how it made the Mate 40 Pro’s camera system – and what it tells us about the future of mobile photography.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra may have blasted through the saloon doors with its dual telephoto cameras blazing last week, but it wasn’t the first phone to combine 3x and 10x optical zoom in one flagship – that was the Huawei Mate 40 Pro Plus. Sadly, that phone still has limited availability, but with our Huawei Mate 40 Pro review branding that phone “one of the best camera phones out there”, we were keen to tease out some secrets from this pioneer in mobile photography. What trends drove the creation of the Mate 40 Pro’s camera tech, how does Huawei decide on the ‘look’ of its photos, and what’s the future of camera phones? Luckily, Huawei answered some of those questions (and more) during our in-depth chat with Pan Chaoyue, the company’s Camera Solutions Expert. Naturally, the specifics of future phones were off limits, but we did learn how people are using the cameras on phones like the Mate 40 Pro – and why zoom is, as we argued last week, going to be the next big battleground in mobile photography. Smartphones are increasingly relying on multiple cameras to overcome their physical limitations – and after the recent boom in dedicated ultra-wide lenses, we’re now seeing the rise of dual telephoto cameras. The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra and Vivo X50 Pro Plus both have two telephoto cameras, but the Huawei Mate 40 Pro Plus (and now Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra) have taken this a step further. Both phones have a mid-range telephoto with 3x optical zoom, along with a ‘Super Periscope Telephoto’, as Huawei calls it, that delivers an impressive 10x optical zoom. The reason for this, Pan Chaoyue told us, is because phone users are increasingly relying on zoom to take snaps. “I can share with you one trend that we can internally see – after we introduced the zoom, the usages of zooming is getting higher and higher,” Pan Chaoyue told us. “This is a very happy thing for me, because we are trying to extend the scenarios and possibilities for our consumers.” This means it’s likely to be a big focus for future Huawei flagships too, according to Pan Chaoyue: “We will be insisting on zooming – we will be offering more image quality, more features, more happy things for the consumers when using the zoom,” he promised. This has already been borne out in the impressive Huawei Mate 40 Pro Plus – and even the Huawei Mate 40 Pro has a 5x periscope telephoto lens. But which of these longer focal lengths is the most popular or important, in Huawei’s opinion? “It’s like the DSLR, it’s really depends on the situation,’ Pan Chaoyue said. “10x could be, for example,400mm on DSLR for sports shooting,200mm may be for the concert, and 50mm or 85mm is about the portrait for your wife or son.
