Although predominantly focused on its Chinese home market these days, Huawei has a new release for Western audiences in the flagship Mate 50 Pro. Pricing it at a hefty £1,199/€1,199, Huawei still wishes to compete with Apple and Samsung hardware, but you have to scrutinize the broader package at this level too.

As with all recent Huawei releases, the absence of GMS and Google app support continues to be a barrier that most consumers won’t want to hurdle. While Huawei claims the app situation is ever-improving, the workaround remains somewhat cumbersome and still can’t provide all the services or experiences Western audiences are used to.

In the past couple of years, a reason to overlook this lingering issue has been Huawei’s best-in-class camera expertise. But with the Leica partnership over, can Huawei still lead the mobile photography field?

As you’d expect from Huawei, the Mate 50 Pro is a well-equipped flagship handset. Highlight features include an IP68 rating, a multi-day 4,700mAh battery, fast 66W wired and 50W wireless charging, and a vivid 120Hz 6.74-inch OLED display. The inclusion of ultra-secure, 3D depth-data-powered face unlock sees a return of a large notch, though this dates the looks somewhat.

There are some bigger caveats here, though. Despite the inclusion of a powerhouse Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, there’s only 4G modem support onboard. So no 5G connectivity. EMUI 13 is based on Android 12 (not Android 13, as you might expect), and Huawei promises an increasingly below-average two-year OS and three-year security update pledge.

Still, the phone’s highlight, for me, is the design. The Mate 50 Pro is lighter than rival handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, while the rear Kunlun glass (which boasts Switzerland’s SGS 5-star glass drop resistance) feels great in the hand and is resistant to fingerprints. Not everyone will love the curved display, but the circular, symmetrical “Space Ring” camera housing continues to offer a unique look. Huawei offers three colorways: black, silver, and orange (vegan leather).

But the real reason to continue to pick up a Huawei flagship is for the cameras. Powered by a 50MP RYYB main sensor with 10-point f/1.4-f/4.0 variable aperture, 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide, 64MP f/3,5 3.5x periscope camera, 13MP f/2.4 selfie snapper, proximity light sensor, and laser autofocus, backed by Huawei’s Ximage software, there’s plenty to sink our teeth into here.

Let’s take a closer look at how the phone’s camera package performs.

Let’s start out with a broad selection of snaps captured with the Mate 50 Pro before diving into a closer look at some specific scenarios.

In general terms, most photographers will be very pleased with the results below. Colors are punchy without veering into frustrating oversaturation, fine details are present, and the main camera flies through HDR and low-light environments without issues. The handset’s white balance is also exceptional, for the most part.

One complaint is that Huawei’s algorithms can result in the odd underexposed and desaturated image, while details can take on a processed look (likely owing to image fusion algorithms) in some situations. Thankfully that’s not a really common occurrence, and it won’t be an issue for the majority of users who never crop in.

While I’m being really picky (which is my job), the comparison with the Galaxy S22 Ultra shows the pros and cons of Huawei’s approach to detail processing.

In daylight, there’s a comparative level of detail to Samsung’s flagship (Huawei actually overtakes in low light). However, the trade-off is fractionally sharper-looking shadows and marginally more aggressive denoise that creates a more painted look on a 100% crop. There’s not a lot in it, but any presumptions that Huawei is well ahead in the detail game no longer hold up.

HDR and low light

Turning to trickier environments, the Mate 50 Pro hangs with the best. HDR capabilities have long been one of Huawei’s strengths, and the phone stands up well next to the mighty Google Pixel 7 Pro in this regard. In our first samples, you’ll find similar highlight preservation and shadow detail between the two. However, the Mate 50 Pro has a bit of a purple tint in the top left that looks like chromatic aberration, which could be a result of lens distortion caused by the wide f/1.4 aperture.

The second image, above, is also incredibly similar. I give the Pixel 7 Pro the nudge on taming scene highlights. However, there’s much less shadow noise in the Mate 50 Pro’s picture, possibly in part thanks to its unique RYYB sensor configuration.

Turning the lights down lower reveals consistently solid white balance and detail capture. However, as we previously observed, the Mate 50 Pro is a little more aggressive in its processing than Samsung, which trades off lower noise for sacrifices in detail. Personally, I don’t mind a little grain in my images if it results in less distracting sharpening.

Oddly, the Mate 50 Pro dials up the color in low light. This could be in a bid to avoid the desaturation we often see with minimal light sources. Compared to the Pixel 7 Pro above, the color pop ends up looking a bit too much, in my opinion.

Compared to previous Huawei smartphones, something has definitely changed in this area of processing. It could be down to moving algorithms over from its in-house Kirin to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform or to the loss of Leica’s partnership. Either way, Huawei’s low-light images, and details more generally, aren’t quite as clean as I recall in past models.

Ultrawide and macro

On paper, Huawei’s ultrawide camera fits even more into the frame than Samsung’s S22 Ultra 12mm, 120-degree lens. It’s actually fractionally broader than the 13mm, 126-degree Google Pixel 7 Pro, making it one of the wider cameras on the market. See the example below.

Usually, I’d be very hesitant about a camera this wide. However, Huawei’s software chain provides rock-solid image correction, chromatic aberration reduction, and denoise. The level of detail preservation is a cut above competing flagship phones, although it’s still notably inferior to the main camera. White balance can also be a bit hit-and-miss and doesn’t always match the main camera.

The 100% corner crop above clearly shows superior detail and color capture, but there are still telltale signs of distortion, much like the Pixel 7 Pro. Huawei attempts to correct for common purple haloing, but we can spot blue artifacts in their place. The Mate 50 Pro also attempts to correct for its extreme field of view to produce a “flatter” image; the perspective is just so-so in its utility, at least to me. It also has a knock-on effect on macro photography.

Like virtually all flagship handsets, Huawei offers you the option of an optimized macro mode, blending imaging from the main and ultrawide cameras. It works well enough but leans more on the ultrawide camera than some competing phones, which can produce slightly odd perspectives in some instances.