Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ Camera review: King of camera

• CAMERA

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ is the top-end model in the Chinese manufacturer’s premium Mate 40 line. It shares many key components with its cousin Mate 40 Pro, such as the 6.76-inch OLED display or the Kirin 9000 chipset, but there are some important differences in the camera hardware.

Like the standard Mate 40 Pro, the Plus model’s primary camera uses a 50 MP 1/1.28″ sensor coupled to a 23 mm f/1.9-aperture lens. However, the Plus adds optical image stabilization to the mix. The ultra-wide camera has been boosted as well, at least on paper. Again, both models share the same sensor (20 MP 1/1.54″), but at 14 mm, the Mate 40 Pro+ offers a noticeably wider field of view versus the 40 Pro’s 18 mm. On the flip side, users of the top-end model have to make do with a slower aperture (f/2.4 vs. f/1.8).

The most important differences arguably lie in the tele-camera setup, though. While the Mate 40 Pro uses a single tele-camera with a 5x magnification, the 40 Pro+ divides tele duties between a pair of cameras. Shorter zoom ranges are covered by a 12 MP module with an f/2.4-aperture lens and 3x magnification. For long shots, the camera switches to an 8 MP module with an f/4.4-aperture lens that reaches a 10x magnification.

In video mode the camera can capture 4K footage at up to 60 frames per second, and 1080p video can be recorded at up to 480 frames per second for slow-motion effects.

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ comes with one of the most impressive camera spec sheets we have seen on a smartphone. Read on to find out how it performed in our DXOMARK Camera tests.

Key camera specifications:

• Primary: 50 MP 1/1.28″ sensor (12 MP output), 23 mm-equivalent (1x defined as 27 mm) f/1.9-aperture lens, full-pixel Octa-PD, OIS
• Ultra-wide: 20 MP 1/1.54″ sensor, 14 mm-equivalent f/2.4-aperture lens, PDAF
• Tele 1: 12 MP sensor, 70mm-equivalent f/2.4-aperture lens, PDAF, OIS
• Tele 2: 8 MP sensor, 240 mm-equivalent f/4.4-aperture lens, PDAF, OIS
• LED flash
• 4K video, 2160p/60 fps (2160p/30 fps tested)
• Multispectral color temperature sensor
• ToF 3D sensor

About DXOMARK Camera tests: For scoring and analysis in our smartphone camera reviews, DXOMARK engineers capture and evaluate over 3000 test images and more than 2.5 hours of video both in controlled lab environments and in natural indoor and outdoor scenes, using the camera’s default settings. This article is designed to highlight the most important results of our testing. For more information about the DXOMARK Camera test protocol, click here. More details on how we score smartphone cameras are available here.