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  • apphil - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    One thing I am extremely curious is the performance of the GPS chip as it is one of the first phones with L5 GPS and this should increase accuracy a lot. Can you guys comment on that or maybe test that, as better navigation and positioning would be a very interesting feature for me.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    One of the benefits of this was in more urban areas with tall buildings, unfortunately I wasn't able to actually test this out. The phone's location APIs also does not disclose whether it sees L5 satellites or not - usually you see it when there's a duplicate ID, however this does not appear on the View20.
  • 808Hilo - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    The cam is disappointing. Can we just have a big sensor and a manual lensring of my choice and 4k or 8k raw at 30fs the back. NOW!!!

    Its not difficult. Just do it. Nikon in my case. I got a nice selection of 8-50mm lenses and dont want yours.

    Engineering a phone is not difficult. Adding a lensring and a big sensor is a breeze.

  • Valantar - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    Difficult? Not if you don't care about size, no. The flange distance of the Nikon Z-mount is 16mm, for their F-mount it's 46.5mm. Add a handful of mm to that for the display, and 10 or so for the sensor and shutter array - more if you want IS. That's a chunky phone, even with a Z-mount. And constructing lenses for shorter flange distances with large sensors is _extremely_ difficult, as you'll have to correct for ever more distortions towards the outer parts of the sensor. Of course they could have spacer rings or similar to adapt lenses, but that would kind of defeat the point, no? You wouldn't be able to fit it in your pocket unless you're wearing MC Hammer pants. Also, 8k30 in a phone? At what bitrate, 50Mbps? For any bitrate worth the pixels in 8k, you'd need storage in the several-hundred-GB amounts for even a collection of short clips, and the processing power needed would require large interchangeable batteries - unless you want your phone to die after filming for 5 minutes? And good luck getting that video material off a phone with non-removable storage in a reasonable amount of time. I suppose you'd want it to have an SSD bay too?
  • hanselltc - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    >Engineering a phone is not difficult

    build ur own phone m8 :v
  • Manch - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    TOF sensor would be great for 3D scanning! Why not have an app to take advantage!
  • jabber - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    You know I'd settle for a truly excellent 8MP main cam to be honest.

    Forget going mega megapixel. Just get the fundamentals right first.
  • shabby - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    Nothing to do with megapixels in this case, the sensor is great, everyone uses sony sensors, its the isp and software that sucks. The isp on these chinese made soc's is way behind the snapdragon isp.
    Heck even sony doesn't know how to fully take advantage of its own sensor. The pixel 3 and pocophone use the same sensor and we all know which phone takes the best photo's.
  • Midwayman - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    Yes. This. Especially with more phones putting on more than a single lens. I care way more about the quality of the pixels than the quantity of pixels. 48mp photos just take up more space if they are just a grainy mess in anything but the brightest light.
  • jabber - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    Exactly. They spend all the time fussing over the sensor and then throw out the lens/flash/focusing/software/compression/NR features.

    I bet the sensors from 4 years ago would beat most current flagships if they bothered to spend more than a weeks development on all the other fundamentals.
  • philehidiot - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    You'd be amazed when you go back to old phones with older sensors. I found a dick pic from about 4 or 5 years ago and you'd be amazed at how grainy and small it looked with the optical distortion. Only goes to show how much effort they've put into the lenses and how things incrementally improve over time.

    That's if you see grey hair as an improvement, that is.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link

    Would be nice to have more than 3x optical zoom, too.

    Will be interesting to see results from the OPPO? phone with motors and extra horizontal lenses too see how their 10x zoom results look.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link

    motors == mirrors
  • StormyParis - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    Very interesting and insightful, thank you.

    I'm wondering how all those fancy AI-, Night-, ... modes deal with moving objects since they all seem based on some kind of HDR.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    They take up to 4 seconds to capture so they're no good with moving objects.
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    @Andrei: Thanks for this review. Did I get it correct - the 40 MP are more virtual than actual? I am curious how the Sony "40 MP" sensor compares to the very large 40 MP sensor in the Nokia Pureview 808. That sensor was a beast, and didn't just have 40 actual Megapixels, but also on-chip 4-in-1 binning. Any comments? Whatever happened to that sensor?
    Lastly, for any manufacturer who might read this: As somebody who really looks for a good camera in my phones, I for one don't mind a notable hump for the camera if (IF) you make it worth it in the photo and video quality.
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    Okay, I think I answered my own question: yes, the Sony chip is a "virtual" 40 MP, but that comes at a cost, mainly in form of really small imaging pixel size. I also took another look at the 41 megapixel Pureview sensor that Nokia's 808 featured: pixel size: 1.4 µm; 7728x5368 actual (not virtual) pixels, and a sensor size of 10.67 × 8.00 mm. When it came out, it monstered pretty much any compact fixed lens camera with better details and overall picture quality. I would love to see something similar in a smartphone with modern tech (Snapdragon 855 or Kirin 980), Android 9+, and BSI instead of FSI. For that, I take the big hump any day. Anybody else who'd be interested in that kind of kit?
  • serendip - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    I still have an 808 that gets used on sunny days. That said, my cheap Xiaomi phones have much better overall photo quality with Google Camera's HDR. The 808 has lovely detail rendering, almost like a Micro 4/3 sensor, but dynamic range is lacking and noise is terrible.

    Now someone needs to take that big sensor and marry it with a fast GPU and IP. Microsoft tried this with the Lumia 1020 but the SoC in that was too slow. A new Snapdragon 855 should be perfect for this.
  • tuxRoller - Friday, February 1, 2019 - link

    Here's a comparison with the lumia

    www.androidauthority.com/huawei-mate-20-pro-vs-nokia-1020-924642/
  • jjj - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link

    Would be nice if you could also camera review the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7, just to see the differences between this and a 150$ phone.
  • 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.
  • jahid - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    This brand not available in Bangladesh
  • Beaver M. - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    Not really a good setting for testing a camera like that. Needs to be brighter and sunnier. Some pictures arent even comparable because they were taken in much darker light.

    So far I am actually impressed. I thought it would be much worse, but its actually very usable. I just love zooming in on pictures and seeing more details. This camera delivers that... in a smartphone at that. Not too long ago I thought that wouldnt ever be possible.

    For me it surely would decide the choice in a smartphone. If you want really good image quality, you will need a proper standalone camera anyway.
  • alistarsmith3 - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    I am really happy to hear and saw this mobile phone which has its own compatibility. It has a nice RAM and good storage space also it comes with full display screen which has no notch design on its screen.
    You can also click on the below link to Configure Belkin Router To Use DHCP: https://www.contactroutersupport.com/blog/a-manual...
  • ummduh - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link

    This phone would be on my short (very short now a days) list of there was better developer support for this soc... Other than that it seems really nice.
  • jgates603 - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link

    I don't know how the low light photos of the View20 would be preferred over an other phone. Details look like they are from a painting and very flat looking.
  • Nupi - Friday, February 1, 2019 - link

    I can get the mate 20 for slightly cheaper than the view 20 (roughly 450 vs 500 eur) - one of the two or waiting for mi 9? (i have a mate 9 so I know I can live with emui)
  • Ritesh Benjwal - Wednesday, February 6, 2019 - link

    In this article about camera explained very well. Similarly happened with the case of redmi note pro 48 megapixel camera... check this one <a href="https://techforyouths.com/">redmi note 7 camera</a>.

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