Chinese smartphone maker Huawei recently managed to beat Apple to become second largest smartphone brand for two straight quarters. After launching its newest flagship Mate 20 Pro last month, Huawei reiterated that it aims to ship 200 million smartphones this year and eventually overtake Samsung as the biggest smartphone brand in the world.
However, sales volume and becoming smartphone leader is not all that Huawei is chasing. The company also ambitious new features that it hopes to bring to its flagship smartphone in the coming years. Chief among them is the ability to capture 10x zoom images without loss in detail. In an interview with German tech blog AndroidPIT, Walter Ji, President of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group for the Western European Region, revealed some of company’s ambitious plans for future flagship smartphones.
Since the launch of Huawei P20 Pro with triple rear camera setup early this year, Huawei has been trying to pitch its flagship devices as the one offering best-in-class imaging experience. While Samsung managed to beat Huawei with its Galaxy A9 to offer first quad camera experience, Huawei says it intends to release a device with four rear camera at some point in 2019.
One of the key things is that Huawei does not want its camera setup to be just about numbers. The addition of camera sensors will aid in new form of imaging experience, Huawei executive said during the interview. One of the use case, the company wants to bring to smartphones is ability to shoot 10x optically stabilized images.
Huawei Mate 20 Pro and P20 Pro support 3x optical zoom and upto 10x hybrid zoom and envisions a future where one image sensor will dedicatedly aid in 10x optical zoom. Most flagship smartphones including the Galaxy Note 9 and Apple iPhone XS only offer 2x optical zoom and Galaxy A9 with its quad camera setup is also capable of only 2x optical zoom. Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, which have the best smartphone camera right now, does not offer optical zoom.
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“Ten times the zoom in consistent quality is what could make next-gen Huawei flagships standout,” Walter Ji said during the interview. He did not confirm when the technology would be available for use on a flagship device by added that the company is still doing research and preparing a few surprises for an unspecified release timeline.
Huawei is also rumored to be working on a 5G-enabled smartphone that would pair its Kirin 980 SoC with Balong 5000 modem. This feature could appear first on next year’s P-series flagship and there are also reports of Huawei developing a foldable smartphone similar to Samsung’s Galaxy F device showcased last week at the developer conference.
