A Day with the Huawei Mate 30 Pro: Kirin 990 and 7680 FPS Slow Motion Tests
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 23, 2019 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Kirin 990
- Mate 30 Pro
- 7680fps
Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro: Testing 7680 fps Slow Motion
One of the headline features of the Mate 30 Pro is its super slow motion capabilities. Most smartphones available on the market today, if they offer slow motion, do it at either 120 fps, 240 fps, or up to 960 fps. This typically comes in the form of a sensor and system that can take 120 frames per second video and do clever interpolation to appear as if it is a higher frame rate. We’ve seen some good and bad solutions here.
The way that traditional slow motion cameras work is on a sliding scale – the trade-off between frame rate is resolution. If you reduce the area of the sensor that needs to take the image by one quarter, then technically the fast memory storing the video data can store 4x as much – as long as you can poll data from the sensor at 4x the speed, it should be good to go.
It seems that Huawei is doing a mix of things here to get 7680 fps. The camera offers several settings, which comes with a slider from 2x to 256x. Any setting 32x or lower gives a 1080p video, while 64x and higher gives a 720p video:
- 1080p at 120 fps = 4x speedup
- 1080p at 240 fps = 8x speedup
- 1080p at 960 fps = 32x speedup
- 720p at 1920 fps = 64x speedup
- 720p at 7680 fps = 256x speedup
There are no graduations in between. At 4x and 8x, users can take as much video as they want, and extend it all into slo-mo, but for the 32x speedup and beyond, the system will record a certain amount of video and slow it down. At 32x speedup, the video is 16 seconds, essentially recording 0.5 seconds of video. At 64x, the video is 32 seconds, recording 0.5 seconds of video. At 256x however, the video is also 32 seconds, meaning that the sensor can only record 0.125 seconds of video. It is worth taking that into account.
The other thing with slow motion video on this scale is light. The thing being filmed has to be illuminated sufficiently in order to get full detail. For anyone going around with 7680 fps photography on the brain, carrying a strong LED light for those dark areas of existence is probably worth the effort.
So here I’m going to show three videos taken with the Mate 30 Pro. This first video is the camera in 1080p mode, recording at 960 fps. This is what most high-end smartphone cameras can do.
Here we have a steady set of bubbles being created from the stream of water.
Now we can slow that down to 7680 fps.
Those first drops of water can accurately display the ripples from the spoon. One thing to note here is that with a smartphone camera, getting the thing to focus correctly while also holding a light is a right pain. That’s partly why the water stream is a bit out of focus in our close up shot. In the continuous stream section, we have some super slow motion water.
This third video was taken outside, and the simple act of dropping a leaf on a windy day.
If anything, 7680 fps here is too slow. Again, the focus plays a role here, and without a manual lens it is quite difficult to get it right for the shot as a whole. We can see the cyclist in the background slowly peddling through the shot, but we have lost detail on the leaf itself.
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pberger - Monday, September 23, 2019 - link
I'm more impressed with the 76'206 AI-Benchmark score of this phone thanks to the new NPU more than twice more performant than the 980 one.Now how this can be compared to desktop GPU scores? Any link?
designerfx - Monday, September 23, 2019 - link
", the bottom left is a 40MP f/1.6 camera with OIS, and the bottom left is an 8MP f/2.4 telephoto camera and lens, also with OIS."might want to specify which bottom left, apparently - or fix your typo
eastcoast_pete - Monday, September 23, 2019 - link
Thanks Ian! Question: how is the reception and call quality of the phone? While I use my smartphones for all kinds of other things, my smartphone is also my main phone, and I had some otherwise good smartphones fail at being good at that - making phone calls. Any impressions?saru44 - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
I am really upset with the direction the smartphone reviews are going! They have so many advanced tools and benchmarks to test the display, processor etc, but they outright skip the most important aspect of a phone to many people - Telephony. There is nothing in the reviews about call quality, ear piece volume levels/ clarity, network reception quality inside buildings/ poor network coverage areas, microphone quality (how good the person sounds to the caller on the other side), etc.. Just nothing!peevee - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
"This does one of two things. Firstly, it affects how we change the volume, as there is no volume button control. In order to adjust the volume, the user double taps on the edge of the display, and the volume pop-up allows the user to swipe up and down, using a thumb on the edge of the display, to adjust the volume"Meaning that:
1) There is no rim, so placing the phone display down will scratch the glass with a grain of sand etc
2) a case cannot protect the sides of the phone as that would disable volume adjustment function.
3) You cannot adjust volume by feel in your pocket/phone holder without taking it out and turning on the screen first.
Stupid designs are stupid.
s.yu - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
I noted the volume issue at GSMA, I said that if the rumors are true (which they turned out to be), then the volume implementation would be a total gimmick. NEX3 has a highly similar screen yet their volume is pressure based, which is compatible with a case.peevee - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
"At 256x however, the video is also 32 seconds, meaning that the sensor can only record 0.125 seconds of video."Useless. Typical reaction time is over 0.3s. Way more when a person is tired. Nobody can catch the event lasting 0.125s.
Somebody needs to start prosecution for false advertisement.
peevee - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
The resolution in the high-fps video is not 720p either, it looks like 160p. Looks like they "interpolate" not just frames but pixels in the frame. All while advertising high fps and high res. Fraudsters.s.yu - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
Wow I was thinking 360p, 160p is.........I think they read out more than that, but it could be a little harder to test, you'd need something flying by at high speed on basically the same plane as an MTF chart.Or have the MTF chart flying at high speed, which is even harder.
Or have the phone fly by the MTF chart at high speed while keeping a constant plane of focus, which sounds equally as hard as the flying MTF chart.
s.yu - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
...However, one could shoot the same scene with the slo-mo 720p, and with a regular 60fps 720p, and see if there's a notable degradation in resolution. If the degradation approaches what the video looks like downscaled to 360p then upscaled back, then it suggests fraud.