Huawei's P10 breathing on Samsung's shoulder

Pocket powerhouse

Camera

Last year Huawei introduced its first Leica-branded imaging units, featuring a two 12MP sensors, one of which captured data in monochrome. Huawei spent heavily to let the world know about this. In reality, the performance wasn’t quite as dramatic as Huawei wanted you to think; Huawei’s specially-commissioned book of professional photography to promote the phone rather to highlighted the phone’s shortcomings, with monochrome shots dominated by a too-dark midrange. But it did bring Huawei within spitting distance of Samsung, and for social media and quick sharing, the wide aperture effects added a lot of fun.

This year’s tweaks still result in sketchy performance in low light than we’d like, or expect from a flagship, leaving Apple and Samsung with a discernible lead. In good light, the P10 turned in some excellent results, as you can see. On the positive side, colour balance is good and there isn’t the aggressive over-sharpening evident on many models.

Hover over the photos below to see a 50 per cent-sized image.