Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro camera specs revealed

The Huawei P20 Pro has one of the best cameras ever fitted on a smartphone and it’s still the highest rated device on DxOMark Mobile. For the upcoming Mate 20 series, Huawei will continue to retain a triple camera setup but it appears that the cameras on the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will offer something extra.

Roland Quandt who has been leaking a lot of details of Huawei’s upcoming flagship has just shared more details of the upcoming camera setup. As seen before, the Mate 20 series will feature a distinctive 2×2 camera + LED flash camera array. The imaging collaboration with LEICA continues and interestingly, the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will have different lenses and even the LED flash is placed differently as well.

If you look at the text underneath the LEICA branding, you’ll notice that the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will feature a telephoto lens. For the Mate 20 Pro, it appears to offer 5X optical zoom with a focal length 16mm and 80mm while the Mate 20 could offer 3X optical zoom with a focal length of 17mm and 52mm. With Huawei’s hybrid zoom feature that utilises both telephoto and monochrome cameras, it’s possible that the Mate 20 Pro could deliver clear zoom of up to 8X with minimal distortion. You can check out the P20 Pro’s 5X Hybrid zoom in action here.

From the specs, the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro offers a wider angle lens (17mm and 16mm respectively) when compared to the P20 Pro which has a minimum focal length of 27mm. Another noticeable difference is the largest aperture on the Mate 20 is f/1.8 while the P20 Pro is f/1.6.

However, it is worth pointing out that the text label on the exterior doesn’t necessary tell the full story. For the P20 Pro’s triple camera setup, the f/1.6 aperture is only applicable to its 20MP monochrome sensor while the main 40MP RGB shooter is having an aperture of f/1.8. Meanwhile, its 8MP telephoto camera with 3X optical zoom gets an aperture of 2/4. There are no details of the actual image sensors for the Mate 20 series but it is likely to be similar to the P20 Pro.

Below is a leaked press render of the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro with a transparent silicon case on. As seen below, the Mate 20 Pro on the right will get an in-display fingerprint sensor while the standard Mate 20 on the left will come with a rear-mounted sensor.

The new Mate 20 series will be powered by a newer Kirin 980 processor that comes with dual-NPU for faster processing for AI-oriented tasks. Apart from Master AI, Huawei is expected to add more AI features for photography which may include AI Smart Zoom that offers automatic focus and zoom tracking for moving objects. The Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will be announced in London on 16 October 2018. Looking at last year’s Huawei Mate 10’s release, we expect pre-0rders to be available in Malaysia shortly after its global announcement.