Gadgetory

huawei partnered with Leica to produce the cameras on this phone and we're looking at dual image sensors with a black and white twist but does that really improve our photography I'm Juan Carlos bag now for pocket now and here's our real camera review of the Huawei p9 buckle up folks we have a lot of ground to cover and I'm gonna move pretty quick first a little housekeeping the p9 uses dual 12 megapixel Sony sensors paired with 27 millimeter equivalent lenses and F 2.2 apertures at the time this review was shot Sony had not detailed the sensor size publicly but given the 1.25 micron pixel size we're assuming that each sensor is somewhere around a one over two point six inch diagonal the inside sensor is responsible for color information while the outside sensor is monochrome black and white to maximize light and contrast in every photo taken this video was produced at 60 frames per second 1080p to match the best video quality from the camera and a photo gallery with high-res samples will be linked in the description below this review there's been a spot a controversy regarding these camera sensors as Chinese manufacturers Sonny optical is actually responsible for producing this hardware but according to POIs way Leica was instrumental for optimizing the lens design collaborated on the mechanical construction and was heavily involved in tuning the software processing it should also be mentioned that Leica has a history of utilizing hardware from other companies and then tailoring the overall photography experience to like standards like using panasonic sensors in Leica camera bodies now starting off with exposure and saturation immediately this camera handles light in color in a really unique way we had a few more overcast days in Los Angeles so some shots here will benefit from softer lighting than on some of our previous camera reviews this dual sensor arrangement achieves excellent dynamic range a blues and greens look lush rich output without exaggerating or over saturating Browns and earth tones are warm without pushing into orangish territory on rust I'm a fan of contrasting shots and there's a wonderful clarity to almost every exposure from the p9 a warmer colors are a bit more difficult to expose for but yellows retain terrific detail like the crinkly wrinkles of these flower petals a Reds are always tough for digital sensors but the p9 in producing a juicy saturated shot still holds onto a fair amount of detail we're only clipping a little on this hibiscus now occasionally the camera might push the exposure enough to turn Reds into magenta but it only requires a minor adjustment to rein that back in white objects in direct Sun are especially hard to meter for and the p9 largely uses spot metering which means the camera will try to set the brightness where you tap to focus what's fascinating about this phone unlike many other smartphones which try to push the brightness and the vibrance when producing a JPEG the p9 will regularly dial back brightness to preserve detail the JPEG for this Lily is darker than the raw file originally created we have quite a bit of room to play with the brightness and contrast of these photos in high contrast situations photos straight out of the camera preserve details pretty far into bright sections and shadows looking at the raw files it seems like we're able to push almost three stops in pulling detail out of overexposed sections of a photo this is terrific performance for her phone and it's a great safety net for folks who dabble in a little editing average JPEG vinyls are between three and six megabytes with RAW files clocking in at 22 megabytes per exposure when shooting raw each shot will take up a little less than 30 megabytes of storage now the software on the p9 borrows from previous Huawei's and expands controls through a series of gestures a swipe from the left brings in your mode auctions a swipe from the right delivers your settings and pulling this little bar here changes you from standard to manual controls it's a really well laid out app and only required a little practice before these actions felt familiar happily at no point does this app ever completely remove you from your composition window even when changing options and settings you can still reference the scene you're trying to capture looking at macro shots the p9 features a competitive minimum focusing distance you should be able to get your subject within two inches of the phone for some sharp close-up action while we might be concerned to see the smaller F 2.2 apertures over competing phones on sensors this small the difference in depth of field blur between F 1.8 and F 2.2 is fairly minimal we still achieve a nice shallow blur to backgrounds we get some fun bouquet balls when looking at light filtering through leaves the p9 does however incorporate the absolute best software blur we've ever seen on a smartphone using distance data in the dual sensors you can change the amount of blur after the shot is taken and the effects very much resemble what we might see from a DSLR to be sure the blur fall-off won't look as authentic or organic as a fast DSLR lens but the p9 absolutely crushes the hokey filters found in editing apps like Instagram Huawei utilizes laser focus assist which provides some of the smoothest performance we've seen this year the focus rolls onto your subject in a very short footed way though it's not the fastest we've seen this year it's free from the overshoots and twitches which company many phone focusing systems while terrifically accurate in daylight we did run into a few low-light situations which confused this camera the p9 was unable to recover in the street scene after focusing here for example what's odd for this camera for how terrific image processing is in general HDR photos rarely seem much different than standard photos perhaps a consequence of this camera already pushing the limits on exposure but HDR photos only showcase subtle alterations from regular shots happily when HDR processing does kick in it's usually to reduce brightness unlike most other Android devices at treat HDR is a shadow brightening mode the p9 stands in opposition by trying to avoid clipping details whenever possible Huawei does a very good job of stitching scenes together for panorama shots these power lines for example are largely complete though we have a few rough transitions exposure for pano shots can be tricky as rotating means having to account for changing light conditions but if there's one area that p9 excels it's an exposure and this phone does a great job of balancing the processing over a 180 degree turn and looking at selfies the p9 has a respectable 8 megapixel front-facing camera I'm not much of a selfie guy but performance here is solid and should do well capturing your memories in a variety of lighting conditions the beauty filters here do produce a significant amount of detail blur but actually do a halfway decent job of making me look like I'm wearing makeup as opposed to making me look like Oh doh from deep space 9 your mileage of course may vary now when pushing into low light conditions the lack of hardware image stabilization is felt but these dual sensors are soaking up enough light to almost completely compensate for that absence a little care was required in trying to hold the camera still but it wasn't difficult pushing this Hardware again we have to applaud that this camera software really doesn't seem to be trying to impress people with brighter images exposure is well restrained and sometimes that might mean a darker image than competitors might produce but more often than not this camera lands output closer to what these scenes actually felt like while we were there looking at our creepy tunnel this lens performance is absolutely gorgeous those razor-sharp rays of light coming from the street lamp just two little touches of color fringing this is the best lens we've run through this scene ever so slightly outperforming the Zeiss glass on the lumia 950 and by not over exposing the shot we get terrific detail with only minimal smearing from noise reduction moving to our creepy gate we see a subtle shift in white balance performance here in low-light conditions the camera is slightly favoring the white of this gate over the yellow orange light coming from the security lamp our walkway test shows great color accuracy between these different colored lightbulbs and again we're working with excellent dynamic range the hotspots under each lamp are well contained and we can recover more of the wall here than on any other phone we've tested in the past when looking at the raw files looking at a little white flower lit by a porch lamp again the p9 ignores the yellow tone of the porch light to deliver accurate white for the flower and lastly a flower in almost no light even with laser focusing the p9 couldn't quite grab focus on the subject and it's one of the few areas where this camera falls behind some competitors looking at night performance here overall I place this huawei slightly behind the galaxy s7 in LG g5 but ahead of the HTC 10 in delivering sharp images in low-light conditions and throwing the flash can deliver some incredible detail at night catching all of these tiny little fibers and bristles in a really delightful way metering can sometimes prove a little challenging when focusing indoors though focusing on the ship-in-a-bottle and throwing the flash here blew out the highlights on this plush alien facehugger playing with some long exposures securing the p9 to a tripod this is one of the best performers we've used you have the option to shoot up to a 30 second exposure and output is absolutely stunning dialing in the right settings for a streaking tail light shot switching over to some moving images video output isn't quite as impressive as photos are unfortunately the highest quality video we can shoot is 1080p at 60 frames per second we do save a fairly high bitrate for HD video somewhere around 35 megabits per second and this allows us to preserve high-quality color and contrast but the lack of image stabilization makes all of this footage shaky and seasick inducing all shots suffer from some kind of twitch or shake even when the phone is being braced against the ground it's unpleasant when you're trying to hold still but it's downright earthquake inducing when you start moving the phone in video we can take a look at the zoom performance but the p9 doesn't seem to use any pixel resampling instead just blowing up the image from the already low 1080p resolution this is terrible output when compared to still photos taken using the same zoom audio capture during video is also fairly unremarkable the sound created is thin flat and these mics are easily overloaded by even slight breezes now looking at exposure transitions moving from dark to bright and back this huawei blooms between adjustments in a really pleasing way white balance adjustments are subtle and quick and the recovery moving from bright back to dark is handled very well it's easy to see here the image processing which produces terrific still photos and when you want to slow things down the p9 shoots 120 frames per second 720p slow-motion video but for the life of me and I couldn't find a way to export a slow-motion video using desktop software to slow things down we get a respectable 1/4 speed but this is far from class-leading performance so let's wrap this up where does that leave us with the camera on the huawei p9 this is a really unique shooter I've honestly never handled a phone camera quite like this one and that fact alone means Huawei should absolutely be applauded for this experiment regardless of branding or certification this dual sensor brings some fantastic benefits to still photography and this is one of the most fun cameras I've used this year this is not an all-rounder though while the omission of image stabilization doesn't seem to negatively impact photos the p9 is a rather poor solution for shooting video unless it's being mounted on a tripod for every shot still this phone certainly elevates Huawei's reputation in the world of smart phone photography and this hardware is very much in keeping with Leica's imaging philosophy there's nothing else quite like it its unique exclusive we think folks who opted for a p9 will be in for a treat as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full coverage of the Huawei p9 and hit that thumbs up button for a little extra positive reinforcement for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now you can chat me up on Twitter and Instagram is some gadget guide I will catch you all on the next review