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Leaked promo image by one of Huawei's creative agencies |
A new leak suggests that Huawei may be hard at work on a beastly camera setup for the next entries in its flagship P-series. According to a promotional image allegedly made by one of Huawei's creative agencies, the Huawei P11 may feature a 40MP Leica co-developed triple-lens camera setup with 5x hybrid zoom. Yes, three lenses on the back, 40MP resolution, 5x zoom, and a 24MP front-facing camera to boot.
But that's not all! The promo also portends a dedicated "Pro" night mode that will take full advantage of the "new sensor and optics," which themselves are said to be capable of capturing "100% more light." There's no word yet on how big the camera sensor itself may be, or what aperture(s) will be utilized, but it's a safe bet that the performance boost will come from a clever the combination of hardware and software to deliver better results. Seeing as how low-light performance is still one of the more problematic areas for smartphone cameras, this is great news, provided it's true of course.
#Kirin970, the world's first mobile AI chip with dedicated NPU, giving you incredible AI power in the palm of your hand. #HuaweiMobileAI pic.twitter.com/ylvDUF34ae
— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) September 2, 2017
Speaking of that, Huawei will be heavily relying on on-device AI to improve photo quality. The new Kirin 970 SoC that will power the P11 and other Huawei phones in 2018 sports a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit), which is partially dedicated to offloading demanding image processing tasks from the CPU. In fact, one of the leaked images specifically touts a "Pro AI camera assist feature," capable of things like "scene recognition" and "auto framing." We don't know what this entails exactly, but it is possible that Huawei's AI-powered tech might be capable of processing images on a per-scene basis, depending on what you're photographing, by cross-referencing your shot to a pre-existing database of other images and applying suitable changes automatically. As for auto framing, this could be a feature that helps you frame better shots by taking into account different objects in the scene and guiding you in how to position them for more eye-pleasing results (at least composition-wise).
source: Evan Blass (@evleaks)
