If you thought the Samsung Galaxy S21 was lacking in cameras, then take a look at the ridiculous five-sensor array on the back of the Huawei P50 Pro Plus.
The images you see on this page come from a Twitter leak from user HoiINDI, and these renders fill in some key details about Huawei's next flagship phone. In particular, they give us a good look at its crazy rear-camera setup.
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The last big leak (via OnLeaks on Voice) showed a phone with a curved 6.6-inch screen, a central punch-hole notch and a unique camera bump made of two large circles. We now see how these are filled with a total of five sensors.
Looking back to the specs of the Huawei P40 Pro and P40 Pro Plus, we can make some educated guesses as to what these cameras are. The main camera will most likely use Huawei's 50MP RYYB sensor, which offers higher light sensitivity compared to normal sensors.
Joining it will likely be an ultra-wide camera, probably with a 40MP sensor, plus two 8MP telephoto cameras, with 3x optical zoom and 10x optical zoom. The final sensor isn't a camera as such, but rather a time-of-flight (TOF) sensor that will assist the other sensors with focus and photo effects.
This sounds fairly similar to the current top Samsung model, the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The Ultra uses an even larger 108MP main camera, a 12MP ultra-wide camera and two 10MP telephoto cameras with 3x and 10x lossless zoom respectively. This is then joined by a laser autofocus sensor.
On the other hand, our top phone for photography right now, the iPhone 12 Pro Max, doesn't remotely compare from a hardware perspective. It uses three 12MP cameras for main, ultra-wide and telephoto duties, plus a LiDAR sensor for photo effects. However Apple's world-class post-processing means that it handily beats phones with much more powerful sensors.
We don't know a huge amount more about the P50 series yet, beyond expecting it to launch in the next few months. What seems almost certain is that because it's a Huawei phone, there won't be any Google apps on offer. Nor will it be sold directly in the U.S, due to security fears cited by the U.S. government.
Huawei's phones are often excellent at photography, but don't end up on our best camera phones list due to the reasons above. All the same, the company's technology never fails to impress, and we're keen to try a P50 for ourselves to see how it compares to top performers from Samsung, Apple and others.
