The Pixel 7 Pro loses its best camera crown after just a month to the Huawei Mate 50 Pro

Google’s Pixel 7 Pro launched last month and quickly claimed the top spot on the DxOMark charts for having the best camera setup on any smartphone out there. Well it looks like their time on top lasted just a month, as Huawei’s latest flagship the Mate 50 Pro would usurp its place as DxOMark’s best smartphone camera.

According to the latest DxOMark rankings, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro has scored a 149 to take the number one crown for its camera system, beating the Google Pixel 7 Pro and Honor Magic 4 Ultimate who are tied in second place with a score of 147, while the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max sit behind them with a score of 146. This marks the return of Huawei to the top step of the podium, as their last smartphone to hold this honour was the Huawei P50 Pro back in July of last year.

According to DxOMark, the Mate 50 Pro did so well thanks to the overall high quality photos it was capable of taking in all situations, with exceptional performance in low light situations in particular. They also heaped praise onto the Mate 50 Pro’s variable aperture lens system, calling it innovative and finding it great for group portraits and low light shots. The Mate 50 Pro managed great image quality from its ultrawide camera too, as well as offering solid zoom shots and high quality video both indoors and outdoors. There was also praise for its bokeh effects, its colour reproduction as well as the fast and accurate autofocus in both photo and video.

It wasn’t all perfect though, as DxOMark found that the Mate 50 Pro was occasionally slow to respond when capturing a difficult scene. Similarly, the Mate 50 Pro also sometimes showed a noticeably different image between the preview and the final image, while there were sometimes slight white balance casts that were visible. There were also reportedly some differences in sharpness between frames when capturing video.

As a quick recap, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro features a triple rear camera setup with its most unique feature here being its main 50MP camera that has a variable aperture setup, allowing it to adjust between a maximum f/1.4 aperture to a f/4.0 aperture, which up to 10 different aperture stops in between when using it in Pro mode. This gets flanked by a 13MP, f/2.2 ultrawide shooter and a 64MP, f/3.5 telephoto lens offering a 3.5x optical zoom. We got to try out the Mate 50 Pro’s camera ourselves too in a hands-on of the device, and if you’re interested to know more you can check out Rory taking it for a spin below: