Comment by ThePhysicist
9 hours ago
The Huawei model just uses AI based upscaling and filtering which is why the images look so sharp when zoomed in, that's not depicting reality though... You can also zoom into the moon on the night sky with these cameras and easily "resolve" details that are optically impossible to resolve with the camera lens as they are beyond the Abbe limit. At the very least they should compare RAW data in these posts, not the AI scaled slop most of these cameras produce nowadays.
This sounds like speculation based on a few viral instances. Can you provide any sources? The moon problem you're describing was attributed to a 2023 Samsung, which was using neural upscaling. Can you provide a source describing this for this specific model (Huawei Pura 80 Ultra)?
Computational photography isn't just the smoke-and-mirrors of AI upscaling faking information. You really can get around the limitations of physics on a traditional lens with non-generative computational photography techniques, incorporating real information, like the time-series data over the length of an exposure, the data from other sensors like the accelerometer or lidar, or data from an array of lenses (as others have pointed out).
Even without those tricks, the Pura 80 Ultra specifically uses a much larger camera sensor than most phones.
Is that true though? It seems like the iphones are doing some type of skin smoothing algorithm but the Huawei is the only one that actually seems to produce actual skin texture and blemishes. My initial read was that the Huawei was the least processed of the bunch.
They Huawei currently are the best when it comes to still pictures, it is the one area/feature they can win, nothing wrong with that. Where Apple wins is in the total hardware and software package, which is why they are better at the video end of the picture in comparison to their competition.
Samsung in the past has also held that distinction, being able to take very good still pictures, but they too fell down when it came to hardware and software, particularly when you start adding in video performance, which requires better software/hardware chops. Nothing is gonna beat Apple chip hardware right now.
The Huawei uses a 1 inch sensor which is vastly superior in terms of hardware wrt to Apple's one
The Huawei phone has five rear cameras.
Why are the Chinese so… crass when they could be doing actual frontier stuff.
> not the AI scaled slop most of these cameras produce nowadays
As someone who has only been an Apple user for phones (and Canon, Sony and Leica elsewhere), AI or otherwise, Apple is not immune to relatively heavy post processing in software. They're certainly not inserting moons, but even the raw sensor data has had some uplift to it.
I still think there is a line in the sand between post processing which is mostly about fixing the exposure/noise, and straight up AI up scaling which hallucinates details.
And I fear the more tech reviewers do these pixel peeping side by side comparisons between phones, the greater the incentive to cheat.
> You can also zoom into the moon on the night sky with these cameras
iPhone, Samsung, Chinese phones, they all do fake moons now.
The iPhone certainly doesn’t.