The Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei, unveiled yesterday the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus, a set of smartphones that are equipped with impressive dual camera setups with some interesting capabilities.
The company’s latest flagship handset features two 12MP IMX286 Sony sensors at its rear with 1.25um pixel size. While one sensor is a traditional RGB camera sensor, the other one is a monochrome one, which allows the camera to take pictures with better details, less noise, and absorb more light. Huawei claimed in its announcement that the camera setup on the P9 is able to absorb 270% more light than the iPhone 6s.
Along with the laser focusing module, the two cameras in the P9 are able to detect the depth of objects in an image, allowing for post-capture refocusing. With this feature, P9 users can change the area of an image that’s in focus through built-in editing tools. Huawei says its focusing tools allow for “Leica-quality” bokeh, or blurring of certain areas of the photo, and combined with a wide f/2.2 aperture, the two cameras should be able to create shallow depth-of-field images that are normally not possible with a smartphone camera.
The images demonstrated by Huawei at the P9 launch event definitely looked impressive, but the final say on the camera performance can only be judged once the early reviews of the handset are out.
The Huawei P9 is not the first flagship Android smartphone released this year to feature a dual camera setup at the rear. The LG G5 also features a dual lens camera setup, with the secondary 8MP module having an extremely wide-angle view.
Other specs of the Huawei P9 include a 5.2-inch Full HD display, a Kirin 955 chipset, 3GB RAM, 32/64GB of storage space, and a 3,000mAh battery. Huawei will also be launching the P9 Plus, a slightly bigger variant of the P9 that will come with a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED screen, 4GB RAM, 3,400mAh battery, and 3D Touch-like functionality.
We don’t yet know what features Apple will include in the dual camera setup of the iPhone 7 Plus, but the capabilities included in the P9 give us a look at the some of the possibilities. Apple is said to be using technology it acquired from LinX Imaging last year, which would perhaps result in functions like improved optical zoom for more detail in images, better low light functionality, less noise, improved color, and more advanced features like depth mapping for 3D scanning or image refocusing, as in the P9.