Professional photographers can't just buy the most expensive DSLR camera available and then automatically take perfect pictures. A true pro must swap between wide angle and zoom lenses, set up a tripod, and fiddle with the camera's manual settings until you've perfectly set up your lighting and aperture speed...for just one photo.
For the rest of us, photography is about spontaneity and spur-of-the-moment inspiration, not following a manual. You want to whip out a smartphone capable of just about everything a dedicated camera could do—switching between different lenses, night photography, macro close-ups—straight out of the box.
Enter the HONOR 20 smartphone, which houses a 48MP AI Quad Camera capable of automating most of the features you'd find buried in menus on a DSLR. We're showing off some photos taken with an HONOR 20 device to exhibit just how much visual power is squeezed into its thin frame, and to show off how much your own photos could improve with a proper camera (or four).
Pick your favorite lens
Even with a smartphone camera, photography should be much more than just pointing your phone and tapping a button. The HONOR 20's four camera sensors let you customize your photo framing far beyond portrait or landscape, giving even your selfies a more professional appearance.
The four cameras in the L-shape above are (from top to bottom-right) a 16-megapixel (MP) super wide angle lens, a 48MP main camera with ultra clarity lens, a 2MP depth assist sensor for portrait mode or bokeh effect shots, and a 2MP macro sensor for close-ups. Add to that the 32MP front-facing selfie camera, and you've got a formidable lineup of cameras in one device.
Outside of buying a DSLR and four lenses—which would cost much more than the HONOR 20's £399 price tag—other smartphones don't give you so many diverse options for your shots. And unlike with a pro camera, all it takes to switch between lenses is a swipe of your finger.
Moreover, most smartphones use a mere 12MP sensor. The HONOR 20 uses a technique called pixel binning that squeezes every four pixels of visual data into one compact pixel, thus converting its 48MP photos into the more common 12MP format, but with much more visual data and brightness than a 12MP sensor can typically achieve.
The 2 MP cameras might sound too low by comparison; in fact, HONOR designed its cameras to work together on some shots. In the photo above, the phone uses both the 48MP Main and 2MP Depth Assist cameras to perfectly capture the foreground subject while stylistically blurring the background.
Crammed together in an L-shape, the HONOR 20 cameras work as a seamless team, while also leaving room for a large 3,750 mAh battery that wouldn't have fit if the cameras all sat in a straight line. Your phone won't die while you're out capturing the world one pixel at a time.
Capture everything
The blurred bokeh effect can be beautiful, but so too are photos that don't leave out a single, minute detail of the world.
For that, the Sony IMX 586 48MP main camera has everything you need. Sporting a f/1.8 aperture and a 7-nanometer Kirin 980 AI chip for image optimization and AI image stabilization (AIS), your photos will look as crisp as if your phone were sitting on a tripod, and you'll be able to zoom in and spot details you'd never see with your naked eye.
Capture wider
Pro photographers don't just point and click with their most powerful lens, however. They choose other lenses based on what they're trying to say with each photo. With the HONOR 20's varied cameras, you can experiment with your auteur self.
The wide-angle, 16MP camera captures 117º of vision using a F2.2 aperture lens; to hit that kind of horizontal range on an iPhone, you'd need to use panorama mode.
For high-resolution images of urban environments, epic landscapes or group photos, the wide-angle lens will give your photos a unique look that others on Instagram or Snapchat can't match.
Plus, if you're worried that your wide-angle photos look too unique, the HONOR 20 AI can also perform distortion correction to remove any "fisheye" appearance (see slides four and five above).
Capture your night life
Taking photos at night is a recipe for disaster. If your hand moves a millimeter your photo will be blurry, and the flash makes everyone look terrible. Even with a DSLR and tripod, it's an unreliable and annoying process: you need to widen your aperture, lower your shutter speed to at least a few seconds, increase the light sensitivity (ISO) to insane levels, and then hope for the best.
With the HONOR 20's AIS Super Night Mode, you point your camera and let the artificial intelligence do the rest. The proprietary AIS algorithm finds bright pixels in every dark corner and counterbalances any shaky hand motions.
Capture your HONOR
The HONOR 20 became available to consumers in global markets on June 21st, including the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Russia. In the UK specifically, it retails for £399. For that price, you get one of the most powerful collections of smartphone cameras on the market, backed by a powerful AI.
Of course, you won't just use your smartphone for photos. Fortunately, the HONOR 20 comes with plenty of other exciting perks, including a GPU Turbo 3.0 for powerful app gaming; the aforementioned 3,750 mAh battery that supports up to 18 hours of video per charge; and Virtual 9.1 Surround Sound, an industry first for any smartphone's speaker system.
It even supports "Super Bluetooth" technology that allows your phone to pair with, and stay connected to, Bluetooth headphones more than 200 meters away. That's far enough that you might need to use your 48MP AI Ultra Clarity lens just to see it!
All this tech aside, your final decision should come back to the camera. Are you ready to take your photography to the next level?
