Two practically identical phones, born from the same project that took two different paths, for obvious reasons. On the one hand there is the Huawei Nova 9, which relies on Huawei Mobile Services and uses a 50 megapixel Huawei photographic module, on the other there is the Honor 50, same design, same processor (with 5G) but a different camera, a 108 megapixel module that comes from the OEM market, the same module that we have seen on many other phones from China.
The Huawei Nova 9, if we think of photography as Richard Yu's company has always thought of it, is the result of a compromise: the sensor lacks its usual adventure companion. Huawei cannot produce its Kirin processors due to a "ban", and the Chinese company thus found itself forced to exploit its photographic routines by supporting them with the Spectra ISP of the Qualcomm SoC: inside the Nova 9 there is a Snapdragon 778.
When we took them in hand, trying to figure out if it was worth doing a full review, the first thing that came to mind is to see if Huawei, despite the processor change and all the difficulties, had maintained its leadership in photography.
We still have a Huawei P40 Pro+ in our pocket, and after a year we still consider it one of the Android smartphones to beat in terms of photography. The Nova 9, which always uses a sensor made to Huawei specifications, should on paper inherit part of that know-how, making a difference.
Despite the declared 50 megapixels, it is good to clarify that the camera of the Nova 9 cannot be the same 50 megapixel camera that was used on the P40: Huawei did not specify what type of sensor it has used on the Nova 9, but it clearly said that we are dealing with a 50 MP Ultra Vision sensor with RYYB color filter, therefore with yellow subpixels instead of green subpixels. We believe we are faced with the same 50 megapixel sensor that was used by Huawei for the Honor V40 5G, 1/1.56" diagonal and Omnivision production: the 1/1.28" sensor manufactured by Sony remains a uniqueness of the regretted P40.
The Honor 50, as we have said, relies on the 1/1.52" Samsung Isocell HM2 and the choice is not accidental: we needed a sensor of similar dimensions because we are ahead of the same project, and the two components due to the dimensions of the sensor / lens package, they are absolutely interchangeable. The optical stabilizer is missing on the Honor 50, and it is a lack that in certain conditions can make itself felt: a few stops of gain, especially in low light conditions, allows you to take shots less noisy to use as a starting point for the "stack" then used by machine learning systems.
We took the two phones with us to the Snapdragon Summit in December, and we took the opportunity to snap some pictures on the Big Island.
A few shots: no wow effect, pure normality
Let's start with a very simple shot at Rainbow Falls, which we took with the Nova 9 using the three modes: super wide, wide and telephoto (which exploits the sensor crop and subsequent interpolation).
Ultrawide mode photography, with the 8 megapixel sensor, is so sharp that it looks like a painting. Usually we prefer to look at the photos in their proper size, but the excessive incisiveness pushes us to look better at the detail and we realize that the phone, to mask the poor detail of the sensor, uses a neural enhancing filter that completely removes the naturalness of the photo.
That something doesn't add up can also be seen from photography with the wide lens, which should be the best camera of the lot. With a shutter speed of 1/2315 the image should be perfectly sharp, instead it seems almost blurry when viewed pixel by pixel. The problem can be traced back to a far from perfect HDR stack, with layers not lining up correctly.
Paradoxically, the photograph that appears, at least in natural size, the most balanced is the one taken with the tele. however it is impossible not to notice the lack of HDR contribution: the clouds are burned and the water too, with the detail compromised by the interpolation system which almost seems to work in upscaling, therefore with the cropping of the 12 megapixel photo and not from the original 50 megapixel.
The Nova 9, which should be the better of the two by "tradition", therefore comes out with somewhat broken bones.
Not even the Honor shines: the ultrawide photography, again with an 8 megapixel sensor, is less contrasted and therefore less artificial than that of the Nova, but it is far from clean: noisy, details smeared at the corners and rendered just sufficient.
Not even the photograph taken with the 108 megapixel camera, in "binned" mode, is as sharp as one would expect from a downsampling. There's also a lot of noise that you can't mask, it's a "normal" photo.
The use of a 108 megapixel sensor as a starting point represents a clear advantage on paper when it comes to 2x magnification, yet the result is also in this case poor in incisiveness, and above all not very balanced in exposure .
We took advantage of a visit to the Mauna Loa volcano to see, in a fairly simple condition, the behavior of the super wide: such a wide capture angle is essential to capture the crater in a single pose.
From this pair of photographs, taken first with the Huawei and then with the Honor, it can be seen how the 8 megapixel sensor is really a low quality sensor. Due to the noise present, the lack of detail and the way it spreads on the edges is a sensor at the limits in many situations. Yet there is no shortage of light, indeed, we are in broad daylight.
When the light goes down, the image that comes out of it, and you can see it in this sunset, is similar for the two models. The first photo, taken with the Nova 9, shows a better control of the detail of the shadow areas, but it's very small: there's no big difference.
The Honor 50, which has smaller pixels, closes a lot and reveals a lot of noise that a small screen view masks.
We are facing two photos, the ones above, which are not to be discarded, but we believe that today every decent phone can take these photos.
Hours go by and the situation doesn't improve: a shot at the evening dinner highlights the difficulties of both phones, even if we expected better behavior from the Nova. Huawei has always had an excellent night shooting algorithm, on the other hand it was the first to offer it with the P20 Pro. The smartphone, on the other hand, continues to have an excess of softness when it comes to superimposing frames: as in the first photo, the waterfall also the photo that uses the night mode shows a total absence of detail and incisiveness, as if the frames superimposed by the machine learning system are not perfectly aligned.
The Honor, on the other hand, does not behave badly, and it is perhaps the photo that he did best.
"Normality" can also be found in the last photo taken before nightfall: we also had the Vivo V21 with us, and the result is similar. No wow effect, a normal photograph.
Huawei loses the crown, but the entire segment suffers: between the low-end and mid-range, the differences in cameras are now minimal
Until last year, the camera represented an important element of choice for phones , and it was also one of the few parameters by which it was possible to separate the phones into different price ranges.
Then, thanks to the semiconductor crisis and the flattening downwards with 108 megapixel sensors also brought to smartphones costing a few hundred euros, the situation changed. Today there are phones capable of differentiating themselves photographically, but they are phones with a decidedly high entry price. The mid-range, and in the case of Huawei and Honor we are talking about 400/500 euro phones, doesn't offer much more than a phone that costs much less offers today.
The 50-megapixel main camera of the Huawei, although according to the company it is a sensor designed by Huawei, looks like a distant cousin of the one that Huawei has used in recent years combined with the Kirin processor. The coupling with the Snapdragon, and it can be seen in many photos, does not seem like a happy marriage.
The same thing can be said of the Honor 50: it remains a good phone, but the photographic part does not make you cry out for a miracle, and the very showy block on the back, like on the Huawei twin, is more appearance than substance.
Also forget the two super wide lenses: if until recent years we were talking about real cameras and fake cameras, referring to 2 megapixel cameras put only to make up the number, many models of the end of 2021 only have a real camera, because the 8 megapixel ultra wide cannot guarantee an acceptable quality. Zero detail, lots of noise, smeared details: it's a half-camera that clashes a lot on a mid-range phone. Unfortunately it is an increasingly popular half-camera.