Honor 8 Pro – Camera

The dual-lens camera that’s become synonymous with Huawei’s recent phones makes an appearance in the Honor 8 Pro, but it’s had a bit of a downgrade compared to the far pricier Huawei P10 Plus. Both the RGB and monochrome sensors on the Honor 8 Pro are 12 megapixels; the Huawei P10 Plus bolstered its monochrome offering with 20 megapixels.

The logic behind those twin sensors remains the same. Light is the ultimate commodity when it comes to photography, so two sensors equals more light. With a little software magic, the Honor 8 Pro can then combine the data from both sensors for an image that displays more contrast and punch.

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The f/2.2 lenses aren’t Leica branded, unlike Huawei’s P10 and P10 Plus. But they can be used for a ‘wide aperture’ effect, which uses software trickery to emulate the background blur ‘bokeh’ effect. This can be a bit hit and miss, especially if you’re pushing the effect to its limits with a particularly narrow depth of field. With a little restraint, however, it can have impressive results.

^{Wide Aperture set to f/0.95}

^{Wide Aperture set to f/4}

While the physical aperture isn’t as generous as some competing cameras, low-light performance was still respectable. Noise was well controlled and shutter speeds didn’t veer too low, resulting in blur from camera movement. Image quality isn’t at the same level of some of the more expensive phones available, but it’s still very good overall.

^{Plenty of detail is captured in tricky areas such as Montgomery’s fur}

^{Photo taken at the Art of the Brick: DC Superheroes exhibition}

Performance from the front-facing 8-megapixel camera under low light wasn’t anywhere near as impressive, however. Trying to take selfies in poor lighting can see the camera struggle to focus, resulting in some very noisy images. It also lacks the wide selfie option available on the Huawei P10 Plus, which is a shame.

Video capture goes up to 4K at 30fps, which resulted in perfectly sharp video. EMUI supposedly compresses video for smaller file sizes, but this didn’t seem to have a negative impact on image quality.

With EMUI 5.1 come some useful changes to the Gallery app, which now incorporates aspects of GoPro’s Quik app. For those unaware, Quik is an app that can automatically edit together video and photos to create a highlight video. In the past, this has typically been used with content captured by action cameras, but the app can in fact be used with content that isn’t captured with a GoPro.

Quik’s automation is now incorporated directly into a ‘Discover’ tab of EMUI’s Gallery app, and it can process your photos and videos to create videos without any user input. If you use Google Photos, you’ll probably be familiar with the concept. It’s a great feature for those short of time or editing ability, and can result in some genuinely delightful content. The Discovery tab can also automatically group content by location.