Gadgetory

just as we were wrapping up our camera review for this phone while we pushed out a fairly significant update addressing camera performance the more we compared shots the more it became clear we needed to reshoot this review the mate 9 is an impressive package of big screen and big specs I'm taking a look at this second generation dual camera shooter you can pause the video here to see what hardware we'll be checking out now buckle up folks we've got a lot of ground to cover and I'm gonna move pretty quick starting with exposure and saturation like a second partnership with Huawei impresses the may 9 plays with light unlike any other phone we've reviewed aside from the Huawei p9 of course color information is captured by one sensor and then exposure and light info is painted in from the monochrome sensor it produces JPEGs which appear to have a wider dynamic range with less detail lost in brighter sections of an exposure like as image processing is more aggressive this go-around however there's a soft touch to color processing but numerous modes settings and options to filter your output for a more photographic look blues and greens are fantastically captured Browns and earth tones look rich in afternoon light yellows look delicious just bordering on clipping information but saved by that monochrome sensor and Red's were tricky often we found this phone slightly exaggerating the exposure or pushing our saturation into magenta territory Red's are always tricky for digital sensors but for most setups in daylight walking back the brightness a half stop seems to land better accuracy and a white flower in direct sunlight just to touch clipped on these pedals but perfectly exposed for the tiny structures in the center of the flower while color processing is often rich on the hole we found the white balance on this phone usually slid a little too cool for our tastes capturing a subject and shade output can feel icy which really isn't appropriate for Southern California even during our quote winter season as mentioned before JPEGs capture incredible detail even in slightly overexposed sections of your photos looking at the raw files we've got a ton of data to play with for editing purposely over exposing the scene it's really no issue walking back two and a half stops to recover almost all of the info lost in highlights this phone is a monster former offering settings and modes which rival standalone cameras but this strength is also the mates biggest weakness this app is complicated sliding gestures settings which live in some modes but not others I've been shooting with this phone for months and I still find myself occasionally missing an option or mode the consumers who opt for this phone should give themselves a little time to work out all the memorizing for where their favorite features are located we also faced a mean little gremlin with the manual focus not remembering the focus from shot to shot trying to take a long exposure after adjusting the ISO we'd routinely have to refocus the shot which was really annoying moving on post software update while we focused on zoom performance in the new hybrid 6 X zoom is something of a mixed bag sliding into a 2 X zoom the phone software processing easily competes with the iPhone 7 + is hardware zoom of pushing beyond that territory we are running into the limits of what this lens and sensor can resolve and output starts to look like the same crops we might get from other devices in good light with a steady hand you can use this to get some impressive macro shots though and as this is a software scan from a larger camera sensor nighttime shots come out a lot better than on Apple's smaller sensor zoom solution speaking of macro performance the mates minimum focusing distance is on par with other high-end phones the slightly smaller f 2.2 aperture delivers competitive background blur naturally and it's easy to create some você balls using the manual focus of course two camera sensors using the same focal length lenses deliver excellent depth information the mate 9 is the undisputed champ of software blur far more flexible than Apple's portrait mode better in the light better in close-up and allowing users to adjust blur after the shots been taken it's a fantastically fun feature to play with and only seems to get confused when pushing small details to their limits it won't unseat a DSLR with a fast prime but it gets you pretty darn close focusing action is smooth and reliable but the mate won't go down is a speed champion it was rare we'd find a photo miss focused but we do wish this phone would roll onto your subject just a little bit faster now Huawei and like I have spruce up HDR output now more noticeably different from standard auto photos we get a bit more of the processed look now pulling down highlights juicing up colors capture is a little on the slow side though this flower in wind was blowing around too much to achieve a clear capture in addition to HDR we also get quick toggles for color filters aggressively boosting saturation and contrast while also doing a little vignette except menu options from these other filters where we have to slide a menu over to get HDR but if you want that hyped up picture look say from a Samsung circa Galaxy s3 you can get your hyper color action on unfortunately the mate doesn't seem to have quite the same panorama prowess as the p9 did in this busy scene we see lots of stitching breaks and I hate taking selfies but the mate packs and upper pack performer I've solid output in bright light and shade we get a solid if a bit shaky 1080p video another area improved post update is low-light performance the algorithms for cleaning noise out of nighttime shots are well improved dual sensors plus Hardware image stabilization deliver easy handheld shots and street scenes a creepy tunnel shows off terrific lens quality some flaring and a little optical distortion but a top-tier performer our creepy gate almost perfectly nails the yellow light and the exposure spot-on for how dim the scene really is it's the last time we'll see this walkway the phone easily delineates between these two bulbs though the hot spots under each bulb are a touch larger than I'd like and this weird plant thing and almost no light wonderfully captured considering the phone was handheld the cool thing about the layout for these sensors a blind rear camera selfie is really easy you just make eye contact with the camera and you're pretty well lined up and lastly if you give me manual controls I'll never get tired of shooting some long exposure streaking taillights the phone has a light painting mode which builds light streaks like a video but honestly the exposure just looks more natural from using a longer shutter speed moving over to video it's significantly improved over previous Huawei's now capable of capturing you HD resolution with Hardware stabilization the uses h.265 compression to deliver significantly smaller file sizes than most other phones while maintaining a crisp colorful contrast II output color processing feels similar to photos though we don't seem to benefit from both sensors in the same way it's likely too difficult to balance the sensors and process high resolution video so it's a bit easier to blow out highlights and bright conditions nice shots look wonderful the mate is not afraid of noise and these shots have quite a bit of texture but output is detailed and we're preserving info over using too heavy a hand in noise reduction in in video we can get a better look at image stabilization but it feels a bit first-generation still this is shaky your output than what you'll find on many other competitors even when trying to hold still this video still feels pretty lively while walking the lens is able to help rein in footfalls but it's not capable of delivering that Steadicam feel when shooting 1080p you can use a hybrid software + Hardware stabilization but this is a perfect example of why I usually don't like mixing stabilizations the lens is moving creating subtle warping and distortion then the software tries to crop the scene around those movements and the final output is disjoint it some pieces of the scene seemingly moving independently of others I think you're better off just shooting UHD or disabling software stabilization the audio game is on point though high-quality capture with even-handed noise reduction over this freeway we were in the middle of a windstorm that was physically moving me around get the phone manage to reduce wind noise and still preserve some audio from the scene in our night time Street shot after the winds had calmed down we hear a delicious difference between a bus and a throaty muscle car it's not as robust as in LGV 20 but hallways audio solution is very well done indeed checking out an exposure test moving from dark to bright and back the phone blooms nicely in making adjustments moving to brighter conditions feels a bit more aggressive as the shutter speed changes but this is one of the better performers of the year and adjusting to changing light conditions lastly slow motion video is difficult to pin down the phone shoots a 120 frames per second 1080p but when you save the file to watch on another device it kind of wrecks the quality if we take the raw 120 frame per second video and stretch it in a video editor it looks a lot better hopefully something Huawei can address in a future software update so let's wrap this up where's that leave us with the cameras on the huawei mate 9 this phone is not for the faint of heart this is the most complicated phone shooter we've yet reviewed and the learning curve here is the steepest we've yet encountered it's not that any individual mode is difficult to use more that learning to navigate the app takes a while as menus and settings are spread out over multiple areas in the moment when you just need to capture a shot this phone requires more brute force memorization to really take advantage of everything it has to offer the mate 9 will go down is one of my personal favorite phone cameras of 2016 but it also tops the list as the most intimidating to new users we think the time investment is worth it though this fund produces unique still photos and going back over our samples has been a joy as is the improved video it could still use a bit more polish but Huawei is much improved here as well and we're just happy to see the attention this phone has recently received where the mate was a solid option out of the box this recent update really has improved low-light processing we're hopeful that quali will continue to refine as the owners learn more about the phone they purchased it's not the easiest beast to tame but we think it's worth it when you do as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full make 9 coverage including dual camera showdowns between the iPhone 7 plus and the LG v 20 and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for pocket now i'm juan carlos bag now some gadget guy on twitter and instagram and i will catch you all on the next review