The Huawei P50 Pro and its true-to-life photography released worldwide at a flagship price
Huawei has continued to develop its signature phone photography technologies, after starting or expanding on several mobile camera trends like the multi-sensor and periscope zooming phenomenons.
Its latest flagship P50 series include the P50 Pro that has not only undergone the regular design and specs upgrades in terms of display quality, processing speeds, battery life or charging abilities, but has also introduced new mobile camera technologies.
Huawei P50 Pro price and release date
- P50 Pro release date: February 7, 2022
- P50 Pro price: €1100 for a 256GB model
The new Huawei P50 Pro is already available for preorder and will be released on February 7 in the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America regions, basically everywhere but North America for obvious reasons.
Huawei P50 Pro design and display
The P50 Pro features an all-new Dual-Matrix design with two signature rings on the back housing the many cameras and sensors of its photography kit. While that makes it instantly recognizable, the choice of its two Cocoa Gold and Golden Black colors is also adding to the unorthodox looks of the glass phone.
At the front, the Huawei P50 Pro lands a has a 6.6" curved glass display that makes the phone fit comfortably in the palm when grasp with a centered punch hole for the front-facing camera. The HDR screen is capable of covering the wide DCI-P3 color gamut, and has a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate with the whopping 300Hz touch sampling rate for lower latency while gaming.
Huawei P50 Pro specs and camera
Huawei's 2022 flagship is powered by the Snapdragon 888 chipset without a 5G component (probably for sales approval purposes) and sports 8GB RAM as well as 256GB of storage. These may seem like 2021 specs, but with the P50 Pro Huawei has been squarely focused on the camera experience.
Those two signature camera rings on the back are housing some really impressive hardware. The big 50MP True-Chroma main camera sensor is aided in light capture by the 40MP monochrome one at the bottom ring.
A 13MP camera does the landscape and big crowd photography duties, while the "200x zoom range" is achieved by going from the 0.5x ultrawide camera to the 64MP 90mm 3.5x periscope zoom shooter in a 13mm-2700mm equivalent span.
The Huawei P50 Pro camera specs
The all-new physics-defying HUAWEI XD Optics allow consumers to capture amazing images. For the first time, the optical imaging system is granted computational capabilities, creating the industry’s first inclusive image signal restoration system that can apply computations to rectify optical errors and reproduce fine details. This surpasses the limits of optical design to restore as much as 25 percent of the image signal.
Besides the breathtaking camera hardware, Huawei introduces a new True-Chroma Image Engine that "delivers the highest possible colour accuracy, creating images that reflect what is seen by the human eye" by leveraging a new 10-channel multi-spectrum ambient light sensor whose input gets additional calibration on 2000+ colours along the P3 spectrum.
Huawei claims that the True-Chroma Image Engine can capture a much higher percentage of the camera subject image information that's in front of the lens than other phone camera, and we'll put these claims to the test with the review unit.
As for light sensitivity when it comes to night shots, the P50 Pro has added many improvements there, too, such as a new Super Colour Filter System, with the True-Chroma color and monochrome cameras syncing up to double the main sensor's light capture abilities for sharper, cleaner photos when the amount of photons goes down.
The new colour filter system gets an extra hand by an improved Super HDR tech that "captures 28 percent more of the dynamic range for better backlit performance, while light and shadows are optimised, creating richer textures and more pronounced layers."
Last but not least, the P50 Pro's camera captures 4K video definition all along the record zoom range of the phone with a new AIS Pro image stabilisation that Huawei says is good for timelapse modes even. Videos can then be edited directly in the Gallery with the built-in PetalClip tool.
Huawei P50 Pro battery and charging
The 4360mAh battery pack in the Huawei P50 Pro can be charged via the fast 66W brick in the box, or with a 40W wireless charger. These are much quicker charging speeds than what we tested in our Huawei P40 Pro+ review and are mighty fast no matter how you slice it.
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