Huawei P50 Pro Release: How Strong is Computational Optics?

Sunrise East, thank you for your expectation and love for P50 series.

The continuous delay caused colleagues in the project team next door to constantly change their strategies, and colleagues in R&D constantly optimized their solutions. In such a difficult environment, P50 finally came out.

When it comes to P series, we should consider the image part separately.

Therefore, I will divide the article into four parts to explain this product to you.

Speaking of Huawei P series, as the flagship of image, it is inevitable to talk about what it has brought to the industry.

There is a story circulating in the market. At the planning meeting of P series, Mr. Yu told the team that my goal of doing P series is to be three blocks ahead of others in image ability.

In order to achieve this goal and get the best photos and videos, R&D colleagues are constantly looking for ways.

More lenses, larger bases, stronger periscope and the continuous improvement of hardware specifications have become a key step.

Therefore, R&D colleagues start with hardware.

However, according to the current development path, we will continue to expand the base, replacing the optical zoom lens from 3X to 5X with 10X and replacing it with a larger camera module.

From the initial exclamation point design of P20 Pro to the matrix design of P30 Pro to P40 Pro, is this development path sustainable? Of course, it is sustainable, without any problems.

But is there really no problem? Yes, and it is more and more noteworthy that the larger camera module leads to the continuous improvement of the overall weight of the mobile phone.

Flagship machine is too thick, which is an inevitable situation for major manufacturers in recent years, and it is also a situation that many consumers do not want to see. Everyone wants to get a mobile phone with invincible comprehensive strength and moderate feel.

P40 Pro+ has outstanding value, and I also worked as the main engine for a long time before Mate40 series went on the market. But its weight of 226g is really a little heavy. After all, the mobile phone is a mobile phone, and the feel must be the key dimension to evaluate whether the product is excellent or not.

So, is there any other way?

Note that getting good photos and videos is our essential purpose, and a more powerful hardware stack is our means to achieve our goal. So, is there any other way? In particular, this method will not make the weight of the mobile phone continue to rise?

The answers given by Huawei are computational optics and computational photography.

These two computing abilities can solve the problems of improving color and image quality and reducing weight for mobile phones.

There is some dissipation in the optical system itself that needs to be solved, but Huawei uses the algorithm to predict the aberration loss caused by the optical path in advance, and then uses the algorithm to restore the ideal imaging effect.

In this part, you can look at Miaomiao's answer. I won't go into details. I'll put the proof directly in Versailles.

At present, I have Huawei Mate40 RS and Huawei P50 Pro.

I will put both phones in 10X to see the shooting effect of the latter two phones.

It can be seen that the film quality of P50 Pro under the cutting of 10X is no less than that of Mate40 RS original 10X optical variable lens.

When I first started, I was also shocked. After calculating the optical and photographic blessings, can the tangent 10X be compared with the original 10X?

And most notably, I can cover the focal length with only one telephoto lens, while both P40 Pro+ and Mate40 RS need two lenses, that is, the combination of 3X and 10X optical zoom lenses, to get similar invincible telephoto effects. The specifications of these two lenses make my weight about 30g heavier than yours.

That is to say, with the addition of computational optics and computational photography, coupled with powerful hardware and soft and hard cooperation, the telephoto capability of the 3.5X optically variable lens at 10X is no less than that of your native 10X lens, and the number of lens modules is reduced, so that my mobile phone can be much lighter than yours.

This is what P50 Pro really brings.

Before talking about XD fusion, let me talk about my personal views on computational photography.

By providing countless samples for the machine to learn, the machine can achieve the effect of trying other things. Machines rely on deep neural networks to try different information layer by layer, and finally integrate local information to make decisions.

Based on this principle, we can collect all kinds of photos in different scenes, whether indoors or outdoors, whether sunny or rainy, regardless of the complexity of light, the more we can collect at will, the better.

Then, we adjust these photos one by one, give the operation process and results as samples to the machine for learning, and tell it to adjust the photos correctly in different scenes.

Then after continuous deep learning, the camera of the mobile phone will know how to adjust my comprehensive information such as white balance and contrast in this case.

The difference between computational photography and the previous one is that it does not adjust the white balance, contrast, sharpening degree and so on according to an existing formula, but analyzes the specific situation and gives specific solutions.

Through the combination of algorithm and chip, the photo is no longer absolutely dependent on photosensitive elements to achieve the best film-forming effect as before. In addition to the outsole method, the ability of mobile phone photography can be improved by computational photography.

Using computational photography can reduce the weight of mobile phones and lower the threshold of photography. After all, computational photography will help you give the best adjustment plan.

This time, P50 series was upgraded to XD Fusion Pro, and a primary color engine was introduced on the basis of P40 series XD Fusion, and the true color was restored through soft and hard cooperation. Here, I also put some samples directly.

It is said that in order to ensure the authenticity of the color, our R&D colleagues bought thousands of lipsticks, which is really too difficult for the majority of R&D male compatriots.

But I also have one thing here, that is, in some cases, I don't want to give me the real color.

For example, I use Mate40 RS and P50 Pro to take pictures of my cat. Although I know the color of the latter is more real, I don't like the latter. I prefer to choose the former as the material of my circle of friends.

This goes back to the original question: Is truth necessarily good? This problem depends on the individual and the specific situation is analyzed.

In the part of computational optics and computational photography, my space is over

In a word, P50 Pro has achieved the zoom capability of mate 40 RS 10 times, the ability to truly restore colors and reduce the weight of mobile phones with the help of computational optics and computational photography.

After the photography, we went back to P50 series mobile phones.

The back cover adopts double-ring design, and at the same time, the more advanced it is, this is my real feeling.

Of course, there are different views on aesthetics, so I won't comment much.

In terms of color matching, obsidian gold black and snow white are both very beautiful. On the contrary, I think Dawn Powder is very ordinary and lacks a sense of high class.

Cocoa tea metal is in a brand-new color scheme, and its status is no less than last year's P40 Pro cream silver. It is one of the main colors, and the overall tone is light brown. Personally, I think it is a good name, which has both the feeling of tea and the element of gold.

Ripples and clouds are similar to P30 Pro, and I like this color scheme very much.

On the screen side, the center-digging design is adopted, the refresh rate is upgraded to 120Hz, and it has P3 wide color gamut global color management capability.

I believe that in the near future, Huawei's three-piece set, Huawei mobile phone, Huawei MatePad series and Huawei MateBook series will all have a unified color management scheme.

In other aspects, battery life, waterproof, sound quality and so on are very good, so I won't expand here.

However, HarmonyOS system 2 is still worth mentioning, although many questions about HarmonyOS system have been answered.

In this era, there are more and more devices for each user, and the ecological ability of multi-device collaboration has become the main concern of consumers. With a series of functions such as super terminal brought by HarmonyOS system, mobile phones, PADs, PCs, speakers, headphones, watches and smart screens, including all kinds of Internet of Things products in HarmonyOS system ecology, have formed their own ecology.

Some friends will say that Huawei has been sanctioned, so it has exerted its software ability to do computational optics and computational photography.

This idea is not desirable because it is not a sequential relationship.

Limited hardware is a realistic problem facing Huawei at present. During this period, our product line and colleagues in R&D constantly optimize the solution.

But let's assume that without sanctions, what kind of mobile phone should Huawei P50 Pro be?

Perhaps, the hardware strength will indeed be higher than now. After all, we took something because of the sanctions. But our direction will not change, and the general trend of soft-hard cooperation will not change. In this generation P50 series, we will also pay attention to computational optics and computational photography.

Starting from P40 Pro, XD fusion of computational photography was the first step, but at that time, the upgrade of light change was more concerned. But the step-by-step exploration behind it can not be ignored.

This generation of P50 Pro blessing computational optics and XD Fusion Pro bring users a better experience, and also let the industry see a new direction.

When we review the development history of P series:

Raise the banner and leave brand-new rules of the game to guide the industry forward, every step is. I can't predict whether more and more people will mention computational optics and computational photography in the future.

But at least what I see is that Huawei is bottoming out. Take every step.