Huawei Mate 40 Pro to arrive in PH this December 4

Showcasing the pinnacle of Huawei technology, the new Huawei Mate 40 Pro is Huawei’s dedication to innovation and its unrelenting determination to create the best Mate ever.

The Huawei Mate 40 Series has the Mate Series DNA at its core. From powerful performance to unique user interactions, everything about the Huawei Mate 40 Series has been fine-tuned to provide the most exciting smartphone experience possible. Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ incorporate the world’s first 5 nanometre 5G SoC, Ultra Vision Cine Camera system and the iconic Space Ring Design, as well as a smarter, more attentive digital experience.

There are a lot of features to be excited with! From space ring design, experiencing a new standard performance, from experiencing the best of the best videography capabilities, Huawei Mate 40 Pro is Huawei’s one of the best smartphones to be released this year! Good news is – the Huawei Mate 40 Pro will be available in the Philippines on December 4! Buy from December 4 to December 6 and get the Ring Light Case worth PhP 3,999!

Leap further ahead with the iconic Space Ring Design

Marrying iconic design with innovative technology, Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ are informed by the design principle that form manifests function. The uncompromised design of the Huawei 88° Horizon Display creates an immersive viewing experience in a compact package, while the silky curve also means the devices are comfortable to hold. The handsets also offer IP 68 dust and water resistance, a choice of both virtual and physical volume controls and enhanced mistouch prevention algorithms.

Objects of sheer beauty, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ devices carry a small front camera cut-out, which is packed full of technology, with 3D Face Unlock, an Ultra Vision Selfie Camera and Smart Gesture Control.

Turn the devices over and you will see that the Huawei Mate 40 Series adopts the Space Ring Design, an evolution of the Huawei Mate Series’ iconic circular and symmetrical design. Huawei Mate 40 and Huawei Mate 40 Pro are available in Black and White, as well as an enchanting Mystic Silver, a finish with a colour-shifting effect that evokes the mysteries of the unseen. There are also two vegan leather variants, Yellow and Green. Meanwhile, Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ features an exquisite nano-tech ceramic back panel available in two iconic colours: Ceramic White and Ceramic Black.

Leap further ahead with Kirin 9000 setting a new standard for performance

Powering the best Mate ever, the Kirin 9000 Series is fully equipped for 5G, capable of handling intensive computations and multi-tasking operations with ease. Embedded in Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+, the Kirin 9000 is the most sophisticated 5nm 5G SoC available, delivering vastly improved performance and power efficiency over its predecessor. For the first time ever, the flagship 5G SoC has more than 15.3 billion transistors, making it the densest and most full-featured 5G SoC to date. The powerful CPU features a three-level power efficiency architecture with cores running at clock frequencies of up to 3.13GHz. Also integrated into the SoC is a 24-core Mali-G78 GPU, as well as an innovative NPU featuring two big cores and one tiny core, taking on-device AI to a new level.

The 24-core Mali-G78 GPU in Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ is the most powerful GPU ever seen on a Huawei device. This delivers advanced graphics performance and is complemented by an amazing audio visual experience for immersive gaming. The 90Hz display works together with 240Hz touch sampling rate for greater responsiveness and now provides haptic feedback to correspond with the visual experience. This entertainment set-up is completed with dual stereo speakers to create experiences with super bass stereo.

The Huawei Mate 40 Series is also equipped with the battery technology that is needed to keep up with the demands of 5G, supporting the fastest iteration of Huawei SuperCharge.

Leap further ahead with an all-round imaging system engineered to make photography simple

The camera system on the Huawei Mate 40 Series has been co-engineered with Leica to provide the best camera solution possible and sees breakthrough upgrades to the ultra-wide angle lens, powerful high-definition main camera, impressive telephoto camera and more. With the Dual Cine Cameras and Dual Ultra Wide Cameras on Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+, users can capture amazing wide angle videos and images from both the front-and rear-facing cameras.

When it comes to cinematic videography, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ are unparalleled. The Dual Cine Cameras feature a 3:2 cinema-style shooting ratio sensor. Capturing high quality footage is easier than ever with Steady Shot, while the XD Fusion HDR Video ensures balanced exposure, even when users are capturing with extreme lighting contrast. Other evolutions include Tracking Shot, while Story Creator allows for true cinematic effects. Background music, filters and effects can also be added with ease. Not neglecting audio, Huawei Mate 40 Series features Audio Focus, Audio Zoom, and dual stereo speakers.

The Ultra-Wide Cine Camera now offers an even wider field of view, as well as richer detail, improved low light performance and distortion correction algorithms, allowing users to capture beautiful expansive landscapes, while the Super Sensing Wide Camera provides true high definition shots. Image quality has been further enhanced with Full Pixel Octa PD AutoFocus. Improved distortion correction targets the face, body and limbs, making the ultra-wide angle lens useful in more scenarios than ever. Huawei Mate 40 Pro features a Periscope Telephoto Camera to support 10x hybrid zoom and 50x digital zoom, and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ takes it further with a dual-telephoto camera system that enables 20x hybrid zoom and 100x digital zoom.

The Ultra Vision Selfie Camera on the Huawei Mate 40 Series take selfies and videos to new heights with support for 4K capture and the option to shoot in one of three available fields of view, ranging from up close and personal to ultra-wide. Slow-Motion Selfie adds even more versatility to the front camera by letting users add dramatic flair when documenting their fast-paced actions.

Leap further ahead with an all new user experience

Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ are set to revolutionize how consumers integrate smartphones into their lives with new user-centric features including Smart Gesture Control, which allows total hands-free control of your device. Simply hover your hand over the device to wake it up or navigate your phone by swiping left, right, up and down. There is also an air press gesture for call answering.

A device that is always there for you, the all new dynamic Eyes on Display on Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ can be activated at a glance, with fully customizable interactive displays hosting all the information you need from your phone. The ring of incoming calls can be reduced by making eye contact with your phone.

Improved MeeTime functionality is a gateway to a better connected, more intelligent life. When combined with the power of Huawei’s 1+8+N ecosystem, Multi-screen Collaboration offers an intuitive way for users to operate multiple devices at once, running several apps simultaneously, combining smartphone and PC to deliver unique experiences.

When it comes to privacy and security, the EMUI 11 operating system has always featured comprehensive security solutions to protect Huawei device users. The Trusted Execution Environment operating system is CC EAL5+ certified, which is the highest certification level for commercialized security microkernel. EMUI 11 also comes with new privacy features. When transferring images, users can easily purge sensitive personal data such as location, time and device details from the file before it is sent.

Huawei Mate 40 Series comes equipped with the innovative Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), bringing users a smarter, richer, more convenient and secure smartphone experience. During the launch, Huawei also unveiled new apps available for global Huawei users, including Petal Search, a search engine with support for multiple types of searches; Petal Maps, a map app that utilizes the Huawei Mate 40 Series’ gesture control feature; and Huawei Docs, a unified word document service. These apps come together to lead the way towards a better digital life for the 700 million Huawei device users worldwide.

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Exploring ‘nightography’ with the Samsung Galaxy S22+

02/25/2022

One of my main considerations in choosing a phone for myself is camera quality. I love taking photos, whether for social media or just for me, and I value having a pocketable alternative to our mirrorless camera.

And yes, smartphones can provide high-quality captures, especially flagships, but the challenge remains on how good these are in low-light.

That’s why I got excited when Samsung sent us over the Galaxy S22+ to try out.

The company’s latest flagship devices are riding on a Nightography campaign that highlights the low-light capabilities of the cameras on these phones.

Boasting both hardware and software upgrades, what Samsung aims to offer is an easy and fuss-free way to take night shots without worrying too much about lighting.

So, of course, we decided to test this out.

Handling low light

So what does Samsung claim?

Well, the new Galaxy S-series devices are now equipped with a Big Pixel sensor that’s 23% larger this time around. Captured images then go through low noise processing to get rid of undesirable artifacts to produce cleaner, sharper, images even in low light.

Of course, the natural thing to do now is to test that. So Kevin and I went out late one night for a quick photo walk.

We were both happy with how the photos turned out.  Shadows and highlights were balanced even in difficult lighting situations and colors were well saturated as well. One thing we noticed, though, is that there are moments that the Portrait or Photo mode tends to over brighten — at least to our liking.

Understandably, this is the software working to lift the dark areas. The fix is simple, at least. You just have to remember to slide down that exposure just a tad before you take your shot.

The enhancement, which works for both day and night, isn’t always unwanted, though. I find that I appreciate the adjustments more for candid shots and selfies as photos come out bright and more detailed.

The sharpening can get a little too much at times but that’s just me being nit-picky. Bottom-line, the images are impressive.

And speaking of selfies, the front camera keeps up too. While I didn’t use it as much in my time with this device, the selfies that I did take were easily photos I would post on my socials with no hesitation.

Now since we’re trying to push the device a little further, I also decided to dive deeper into Pro mode. I set up a tiny shoot with just one light source.

Samsung’s Pro mode is one of my favorites, so far. It’s easy to use and gives flexible controls over essential parameters like ISO, white balance, and more.

It also allows you to choose the lens you want to use and switch to manual focus. There’s even a focus assist that works in real-time so you can always make sure your subject is sharp.

Opt to shoot in RAW and you’ll just how hard Samsung’s software works to give you a nice, clean image without doing any work. The RAW images showed a good amount of noise but a quick noise-reduction pass in Lightroom cleans it up.

And speaking of Lightroom, I also tried to quickly color grade the RAW photos and found they responded well to different adjustments. Shadows are quicker to lose detail but overall I’m pleased with the amount of information the device is able to retain.

Wrapping things up here, both Kevin and I agree that our night photography experience with the Galaxy S22+ was an enjoyable one.

Casual snappers will enjoy post-worthy shots straight out of the camera but the system also offers a good amount of flexibility and controls if you want to go manual.

The super clear glass found on the rear cameras also works to reduce lens flares, making them look more pleasant in photos rather than a harsh ball of light.

What about video?

Now let’s quickly talk about video performance. Here are the things you may want/need to know: The rear cameras of the Samsung Galaxy S22+ can record up to 8K at 24fps with HDR10+ support. The front camera, on the other hand, supports up to 4K at 60fps well.

Here’s a sample video we shot at 4K slow motion, downscaled to 1080p.

Shooting at a high frame rate obviously caused some quality loss as its able to take in less light. Still, I’m happy to see details are still visible for the most part.

Noise and grain are also evident but acceptable considering that, again, we were shooting at 60fps. Samsung’s Super Night Solution did have a hand in helping to reduce noise and the results aren’t bad at all.

The stabilization works well, too, but doesn’t totally eliminate the typical ghosting or warping you see when trying to stabilize low-light footage.

Still, videos come out nice and smooth and we were able to achieve slow motion shots even at night.

Final thoughts

It’s no surprise that a tech giant like Samsung is able to produce a device that works incredibly well in low light. The large sensor combined with the super clear glass is able to capture detailed and pleasing images and, in the background, the software works to make things instantly post-worthy.

But I also love the flexibility the manual mode offers. Whether for photo or video, the tools onboard make it easy to be creative and achieve the look you want.

And since I personally like post-processing my photos, I’m happy that the RAW images are easy to work with as well.

So is it the best phone for low-light photography then?

Well, what makes these phones great in low light is that you won’t have to think much about camera settings to get a great-looking low-light photo. But at the same time it also allows you to take full control should you want to be a little more creative.

It is still early in the year, though. More phones are expected to release as the months go by and who knows how many of those are built to be low-light shooters as well.

But if you need one right now and have the cash for it, you probably can’t go wrong with any of the members of the Samsung Galaxy S22-series.

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