In a surprise discover, it appears that all three of the stunning new Huawei P20 Pro’s rear camera sensors may have optical image stabilisation (OIS).
That’s the big takeaway from iFixit’s teardown of the 6.1-inch handset, which we described as “a photographer’s dream” in our recent review.
Related: Huawei P20 Pro
Strangely though, up until now Huawei has only said that the phone’s 8-megapixel image sensor has OIS, with its 40-megapixel telephoto sensor and 20-megapixel monochrome sensor said to be using Artificial Intelligence Stabilisation (AIS) instead.
It seems like a strange omission to make, with the Chinese company appearing to undersell the P20 Pro’s image-capturing capabilities.
“Officially, only the little 8 MP telephoto cam gets hardware OIS — the others, saith Huawei, rely on Kirin’s Neural Processing Unit for things like predictive focus, settings for over 19 different scenes, and filter effects like bokeh,” iFixit notes in its teardown.
“That said, this sure looks like OIS hardware to us—three OIS hardwares, to be exact. Are you holding out on us, Huawei?”
The handset got an overall repairability score of four out of 10.
While many of its components are modular, and therefore pretty straightforward to replace, the phone’s held together by a lot of adhesive, and the glass front and back make it potentially twice as susceptible to breakage.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.