I’ve been struggling finding my muse when it comes to taking photographs. I was a bit skeptical when I got the chance to test Honor 200’s 50-mp camera, which is equipped with Professional Harcourt Portrait Modes.
I took some street shots quite haphazardly, but what do you know? The majority of my photos turned out, modesty aside, nice. Honor 200’s megapixels may be lower than the other Honor phones, Honor 90 5G with 200 mp (which is my workhorse these days) and the Honor X9b with 108 mp, but the output is by far the cleanest and clearest I’ve seen, so far.
There will be more about the camera capabilities of the Honor 200, but first, let me run you through the basics.
Design and Build
Colors: The device is available in four stylish colors: Coral Pink, Moonlight White, Emerald Green, and Black.
Dimensions: With a length of 161.5mm, a width of 74.6mm, and a depth of just 7.7mm, the smartphone boasts a slim and elegant profile. The device’s weight is 187 grams, making it light enough to handle comfortably.
The quad-curved screen enhances aesthetics with its seamless design delivering an immersive display and minimal bezels. It also enhances the viewing experience because of the depth and wider field of view, which is particularly beneficial for multimedia and gaming enthusiasts.
The ultra-slim design enhances portability and ease of handling, making devices more comfortable to carry and use on the go. This not only contributes to a more compact device but also maximizes screen size within a smaller footprint, optimizing space efficiency.
I need to mention the durable plastic construction is splash-resistant and it’s almost a pity to use a protective cover. Note also that the screen glass is made of aluminosilicate glass, which means it offers exceptionally low thermal expansion, transparency, chemical durability, and strength.
Display
Size and Type: The smartphone features a 6.7-inch Amoled quad-curved display. This design gives users the impression of a borderless screen.
Quality: The display is a Super Dynamic Vivid Display with a refresh rate of 120Hz, offering smooth scrolling and a responsive touch experience. The resolution stands at 2664 x 1200 pixels, ensuring crisp and detailed visuals.
Brightness and Clarity: With a peak brightness of 4000 nits and a pixel density of 435 PPI, the screen remains clearly visible even under direct sunlight, making it ideal for outdoor use.
Eye Comfort: Honor has integrated several eye-comfort features into the display, as it has in its other smartphones. The 3840Hz risk-free PWM dimming technology minimizes flicker, reducing eye strain during prolonged use. The AI Circadian Night Display adjusts the screen’s color temperature based on the time of day, promoting better sleep patterns. Also, the display is TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free certified and designed to emit low blue light, further protecting users’ eyes.
Performance
Processor: Under the hood is the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 Mobile Platform. This chipset includes a combination of CPU cores:
- 1 × Cortex-A715 at 2.63GHz
- 3 × Cortex-A715 at 2.4GHz
- 4 × Cortex-A510 at 1.8GHz
This configuration provides a balance of performance and efficiency, handling both demanding tasks and everyday activities with ease. Will get more on the performance on the mobile gaming part in the coming days.
Graphics: The GPU is the Adreno 720, which promises excellent graphics performance for gaming and media consumption.
Camera
The camera setup promises cutting-edge technology and high-quality optics to deliver exceptional results across various shooting scenarios.
However, Honor 200’s main value proposition is its studio-level photography made possible with its partnership with Studio Harcourt Paris, which prides itself on the highest quality black-and-white portraits. The photography studio was established in the 1930s (that is 90 years now) by Cosette Harcourt in, well, Paris. It boasts portraits of actress Cate Blanchett, Michelle Yeoh, Marion Cotillard, and tennis superstar Roger Federer.
The Studio Harcourt on Honor 200 offers three features: Vibrant, Colour, and Classic (or the black and white which ended up being my favorite.) I know that it calls for “studio-level portraits” but I couldn’t help it testing on street portraits. (For those who may call me out for data privacy, I took photos only in public places and at public events.)
Initially, I was frustrated with the shutter response. In street photography every nano-second matters and when I miss the shots I like, it’s utterly frustrating. So, I just adjusted the frame-per-second (fps) from 30 to 60, and voila! problem solved.
50MP Studio-level Portrait Camera
What makes the 50MP Studio-level Portrait Camera so special and buzzworthy? As with everything else in today’s tech world, everybody’s talking about AI and Honor 200 is equipped with an AI Portrait Engine, which promises precision, versatility, and artistic freedom in capturing and editing portraits.
Honor 200’s AI Portrait Engine promises to deliver AI-driven photographic precision. Using advanced AI algorithms, the engine learns facial features to optimize portrait shots. It intelligently adjusts settings for portraits, backgrounds, and lighting conditions, ensuring perfectly balanced images that highlight the subject’s best features. This made my street portraits exceptionally clear (yes, that’s a superlative) and detailed. It is also important to note that most of my shots are taken while on board a moving vehicle.
One of the notable capabilities of the AI Portrait Engine is its AI-enhanced Night Portrait Mode. Leveraging a large 1/1.56-inch main sensor and Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), this mode excels in low-light conditions. It preserves true colors and captures detailed portraits and backgrounds even in challenging lighting environments. The robust AI algorithms work to reduce noise and enhance clarity, delivering night portraits that are vivid and look natural.
The HDR Dual Style mode offers flexibility in enhancing portrait shots. Users can switch between HDR modes to achieve different artistic effects — highlighting portraits or creating silhouette atmospheres. This will enable you to customize portraits according to your creative vision.
The inclusion of a 50MP portrait selfie camera ensures that self-portraits retain the same level of precision and artistic finesse as rear-camera portraits, making it ideal for capturing professional-quality selfies. Guess this is most helpful for influencers and brand endorsers as they have to constantly take photos of themselves as part of their job.
Now we’re talking bokeh.
Bokeh can give depth and a professional look to any, and I mean any shot. You can post “how much” bokeh you want in your shots at the left corner when the camera is on.
For users keen on post-processing their portraits, the AI Portrait Engine includes editing capabilities to adjust bokeh effects. This feature is most helpful if there is clutter around the subjects that you cannot control and achieve your desired depth-of-field effect.
I struggled (again) a bit with the Supermacro feature because my hands are a bit shaky so finding the right blurred background took a lot of effort. But if you have steady hands, or I suggest you use a tripod, your macro photography skills will take up a notch with this one.
Dive into the specs of the camera for your guidance.
The Triple 50MP Studio-level Portrait Camera consists of three main cameras:
The 50MP Portrait Main Camera features a 1/1.56-inch Sony IMX906 sensor, which ensures excellent light sensitivity and detail capture. It is equipped with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) for sharper images and utilizes a 4-in-1 pixel binning technology, resulting in equivalent 2.0 μm large pixels. With an impressive f/1.95 aperture, it promises excellent low-light performance, capturing detailed portraits with clarity.
The 50MP Telephoto Camera utilizes the HONOR x Sony IMX856 sensor, optimized for telephoto capabilities. It offers 2.5x optical zoom and supports up to 50x digital zoom, that can capture distant subjects. OIS is also integrated, ensuring stabilized telephoto shots even in challenging conditions. The f/2.4 aperture enhances clarity and detail in zoomed-in photos.
Completing the trio, the 12MP Ultra Wide and Macro Camera combines a dual-purpose wide-angle and macro lens in a single module. It provides a wide 112-degree field of view, perfect for expansive landscape shots and group photos. It allows for ultra-short focus of up to 2.5cm, enabling detailed macro photography of small subjects.
In practical use, the Honor 200’s Triple 50MP Studio-level Portrait Camera excels in capturing intricate details, vibrant colors, and accurate skin tones, making it ideal for portrait photography. Whether capturing close-up details with the macro lens, expansive scenes with the ultra-wide lens, or stunning portraits with the main and telephoto cameras, this setup promises to take mobile photography a notch higher in terms of quality.
Watch out for more pocket reviews of some of Honor 200’s features here on Back End News and on our social media channels including Tiktok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Threads.