Bucket Tech: HUAWEI Kicks Off the Global XMAGE Awards 2023

 

Huawei has officially kicked off the HUAWEI XMAGE Awards 2023. As Huawei’s open platform for smartphone photographic excellence, the annual competition celebrates inspiration and creativity, through amazing photos and videos captured with Huawei devices around the world. Since 2017, users from more than 170 countries and regions have participated in the yearly competition, contributing nearly 4 million entries to date. This makes the HUAWEI XMAGE Awards a cultural heritage of its own, containing fragments of human history from worldwide perspectives.

Capture and Inspire: A New Direction for XMAGE Awards

This year’s XMAGE Awards hopes photographers everywhere – casual or professional – will seek inspiration in their photography. The award takes its name from Huawei’s proprietary Imaging Research & Development arm XMAGE. Like its namesake, XMAGE Awards aspires to help photographers find inspiration and be innovative in photography.

Launched in 2022, the XMAGE brand focuses on optical system, mechanical structure, imaging technology, and image processing in photography. All four pillars of XMAGE now form the tenets of Huawei’s new and upcoming smartphone camera technology, such as the latest HUAWEI Mate 50 Series’ Ultra Aperture Camera and HUAWEI P60 Pro's Ultra Lighting Telephoto Camera.

New Night Walk category to capture Wonders of the Dark

This year's competition has the following categories: Night Walk, Portrait, Art & Fashion, Outdoor, Hello Life, Storyboard, Action and Storytelling.

Night Walk is a new category, encouraging users to photograph the hidden wonders of night life, using Huawei’s unique night-photo settings.

 Attractive prizes and new judges

This year, the following prizes will be given out to outstanding submissions: 3 Grand Prize winners, 24 Best-in-Category winners, 27 Runner-up winners, and 5 Honourable Mentions. Winners can receive up to USD 10,000 in prize money.

New judges were invited, including Molife Kumona, GQ South Africa Editor-in-Chief. This also includes five leaders in photography: Chen Xiaobo, Vice President of China Photographers Association; Chinese fashion photographer Pei Tongtong; Portuguese landscape photographer José Ramos; Australian portrait photographer Jessica Hromas; and Li Changzhu, Vice President of the Consumer Strategy Marketing Dept at the HUAWEI Consumer Business Group.

The XMAGE Awards Submissions will close at 23H59 GMT+8 on August 15, 2023. We look forward to your participation and seeing your creativity come alive.

Users can visit the unified global submission channel via XMAGE Awards 2023 for their submission, as well as submit their entry via HUAWEI Community. Entries must be images or videos captured with a Huawei mobile phone, and there are no restrictions on when the work was captured or using which Huawei mobile phone.

For more information and competition terms and conditions, as well as submission, please refer to the competition website: https://gallery.consumer.huawei.com.

Bucket Tech: Huawei Mate 30 Series - First Impressions

While still under a huge cloud of uncertainty over their relations with the US, Chinese tech giants Huawei launched their much anticipated flagship device series in Munich, Germany yesterday. The event which was live streamed world wide was hosted by Executive Director Richard Yu who showcased the companies latest assets in the Mate 30 Series as well as new wearables, accessories and a television!

The biggest question on everyone's minds was what was going to power the new Mate 30 Series seeing that Google had put a trade block on Huawei due to the US sanctions, well the answer was given, Mate 30 features Androids open source OS, Android 10 which runs on EMUI 10, the user interface is identical to that of your normal Android device until you realise there is no Google Apps. So no Gmail, no Google Maps, no YouTube, and most importantly, no Google Playstore. Whether or not you can download these apps via a 3rd party remains to be seen but for now, it looks like you have to access some of these apps the old fashion way, via the browser. Huawei though have their own AppGallery which has over 45,000 applications already. 

Now with the device taking such a big knock already due to the US sanctions in terms of OS capabilities, the phone has to make up for it right? Well Huawei weren't going to take this lying down, the device is powered by the most advanced 5G chip-set on the market being the Kirin 990, the device also has the most advanced cooling system on the market making it up to 30% more cooler at run time. The Huawei Mate 30 Series also has the most 5G antenna's making it the best connectivity device on the market. The 5G speeds capable by the Mate 30 are phenomenal beating competitors in a speed test by almost 600mbps! That's over half a gigabyte more in the same amount of time. Huawei claim to have the best overall 5G experience with this Mate 30 device, giving you faster speeds, with a cooler device, with dual 5G sim slots and better battery performance. 

Speaking of the battery, the Mate 30 Pro comes fitting with a monster 4500mAh battery which the company claim can give you two full days of heavy usage. Being such a big battery you'd expect it to be big and heavy but its not, its actually smaller and lighter than any other competitors battery which is a major plus. Overall size to screen ratio is vastly improved on the Mate 30 Pro as it features fully bezel sides. The screen which extend over to the side has functionality too, and aren't just there for appearance. You can control the volume and has camera functions built in as well. 

The camera on the Mate 30 has stepped up big time and features a quad camera system developed with Leica in an exquisite halo ring design. Inspiration for this was taken from Leica camera lenses them self. The Mate 30 Pro camera features a 40MP (18mm) Ultra Wide lens, a 40MP (27mm) SuperSensing Wide lens, 8MP Telephoto zoom lens and a 3D depth sensing lens to give you those bespoke Bokeh shots. While it doesnt have the periscope lens of the P30 Pro, it still is able to give you up to 3x Optical Zoom with 45x Hybrid Zoom. The massive step up is on the video size, with Huawei saying that they're giving users the world's first 40 MP Cine camera that is capable of filming in 4K at 60fps, it has 4K HDR time lapse and ISO 512 000 which can shoot video in extreme low light, so not only low light photography but videography too. It has a real-time Bokeh effect recording with depth of field and dual OIS + AIS for more stable recording. The biggest surprise was its ultra slo-motion feature which captions video at 7680fps! that just blows the competition away by miles with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ only being able to achieve 960fps.

There's so much more to this device that really excites us and while the Mate 30 Pro is the one to have, the normal Mate 30 isn't too shabby either. Huawei also announced another Porsche Design Model with the Mate 30 RS. We will have to wait and see what the local offering and pricing is for the devices in the next week. So far its looking like the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer has steadied the tide against it with these but time will tell how the market will react to it. 

Bucket Tech: Huawei P30 Series SA Launch

Wednesday night saw the launch of the Huawei P30 Series on our shores, now many have asked me why do Huawei have the local launch a week after the international launch? Surely they could have it at the same time, do a live stream like others in the industry do and get it over with. I too didn't know the answer to that question until Wednesday night when Cheif Operation Officer for Huawei SA, Akhram Mohamed said that they have a separate local launch purely to show what Huawei's offering is to the country, so they customize the launch for our market, giving us more information on the devices we are getting and the prices. Which makes sense if you have to think about it, often we see these international launches and wonder if we're going to get most or all of what they are showing, here we know exactly whats coming, what its going to cost and it's more intimate with the local audience. 

Getting that out of the way, the launch itself was a glitzy affair, as per normal Huawei doesn't spare any expense on their events and this was probably the biggest one I've attended yet. Many Tech fundies of the industry were present as well as mobile operators, VIP guests and local celebs. Getting proceedings underway and introducing us to the P30 Pro was VP for Consumer Business Southern Africa, Likun Zhao. A key feature on the P30 Pro is it's four lens camera system that enables it to capture, details and light in very low light conditions, none more breathtaking that the capture of the galaxy taken by the P30 Pro in Nambia. Sure there were certain factors that had to contribute to this extraordinary picture, that being clear skies, probably a tripod being used and in night mode but still, for a mobile phone to achieve this, many professional photographers will agree that it is mind blowing. 

Giving us more details into the P30 series was Huawei's COO Akhram Mohamed, when it comes to the P Series range, the Chinese telecommunications giant always made it it's target to be the best in camera photography, they were the first to introduce dual lens technology, then the first to have triple lens technology and while they might not be the first to have a camera phone with four lenses the P30 Pro comes with it's own firsts, like the telephoto lens or "periscope lens" as they call it, since the device is so thin, Huawei had to put the lens horizontally in the phone and by means of a 90 degree mirror glass, like a periscope giving the user a lens with 5 X Optical Zoom, in a camera phone! I had the opportunity later that night to test this feature out, and to say I was blown away would be an understatement. The P30 Pro can achieve up to 50 X digital zoom and while at full 50 X, the picture will be grainy, you're still able read text and signs that is zoomed into. 

Another first for a mobile camera phone was with Huawei having their SuperSpectrum RYYB sensor allowing for more light to be included in their pictures, hence being able to capture great detail in low light conditions where other devices will fail. Huawei also achieved the highest score on the DXOMark score sheet, making Huawei the top 3 in their list. With the a dual stabilizer and AI stabilizer, most shots can be taken by hand with the user not having to worry if the picture will be blurry or shaky, the phone will take care of that for you. The stabilizers also work great with video, almost making it like a GoPro in your hand. Speaking of video, the P30 Pro will also have Dual-View Video capture, where the camera makes use of 2 lenses to record, one giving you an up close shot of the object with the second being a wide angle view. Huawei also have upped their software on the camera giving you options to capture bespoke bokeh shots with their Time of Flights Camera, which has depth perception, allowing you to capture an object and blurring out the background gradually by the distance it is away from the focal object.  The camera's on the P30 Pro include a 40MP main camera, 20MP Ultra-Wide Angle Lens, a 32MP front facing camera making it the best selfie camera on the market currently. 

Other impressive features on the P30 Pro, include it's battery which is a 4,200mAh, which is powered by a new generation Huawei's SuperCharge that can charge your device from 0 to 70 percent in just 30 minutes. It also features the 15W Huawei Wireless Quick Charge and the revolutionary wireless reverse charging technology, which can recharge any wireless device. The P30 Pro is an impressive device and Huawei have certainly brought a fight to their competition, as they do their home work in market research and allocate 14.1% of their revenue to research and development, allowing them to come up with these mind blowing features on their devices. The P30 Pro will be available in 3 stunning colours, Breathing Crystal, Aurora or Black. 

Huawei on the night also took the opportunity to showcase some of their other products which will be arriving in our country shortly, that being the MediaPad M5 Lite, the Watch GT Active and GT Elegant, Matebook 13 and the Gentle Monster Smart Eyewear. Mr Mohamed also announced the introduction to their online store, so consumers can bypass the mobile operators and purchase Huawei products direct. 

Pricing for the P Series Smart devices at time of launch

Huawei P30 Pro	R18 999
Huawei P30	R13 999
Huawei P30 Lite	R5 999

Bucket Tech: Huawei P30 Series

Today in Paris Huawei showcased its latest flagship smart phone, the P30 and the P30 Pro, along with other cool products and accessories to go with it. With Samsung having unpacked their artillery with the Galaxy S10 launch not so long ago, all eyes in the technology industry were keen to see what the Chinese had up their sleeve to match or beat the Korean's at and Huawei didn't disappoint. I won't be giving away too much in this post as I will be attending the local launch of the P30 Series next week and will have a more detailed analysis of the devices then but for now I'll just skim through the really cool features that was showcased at today's global launch.

The main feature or talking point about the P Series phones has always been it's camera, it was on the P9 that Huawei announced it's partnership with Leica and launched the world's first dual lens camera phone and it only got better from there. With the P30 much is the same with it having the world's first Leica Quad Camera, this helped  P30 Pro achieve the highest score ever by Dxomark Mobile of 112, the next  two phones on the list received 109 and those devices are also Huawei's, the Mate 20 Pro and P20 Pro. Some of the main area's Huawei targeted with the P30 camera is taking pictures in low light, with P30 Pro's camera brings in as much light as possible into it's pictures to get the best quality imagines in low light or the dark and it does this on auto settings with just one click. No need for a fancy tripod or night mode. At the launch Huawei were blunt as ever, having two of their competitors devices to showcase live to the crowd how much better their phone is.

The camera functions don't just stop there, with incredible pictures being able to be capture in auto mode, the night mode feature just takes it to the next level with you being able to capture the galaxy with the P30 Pro and Huawei's Richard Yu was quick to point out that the Samsung Galaxy couldn't replicate the feat. Huawei's P30 Series also comes with phenomenal zoom capabilities, with hybrid zoom which means you can zoom in and not lose quality of the picture or video, it truly is astounding as proven again by their live demo at the event. It also has the option of a dual video function, where the camera uses a wide angle lens and a normal lens for a cinematic effect, it will add a new dimension to videos going forward.

The battery on the P30 Pro is pretty impressive and it also has all the same qualities as the Mate 20 Pro with reverse charging and fast charging. With the screen to body ratio being so minimal, Huawei have made an acoustic display whereby the speak sits under the screen, transforming the screen into your earpiece speaker, quite revolutionary for a device and will be featured in many others to come. The P30 Series comes in a few colour options, my favourite being Aurora which I presume will be one of the favourites when launched locally. Cost wise, the P30 launched at €799 and the P30 Pro starting from €999. We will have to wait till next weeks launch to find out the costing for us in SA.

Also at the launch Huawei took the opportunity to launch other products like their new watch and wireless ear buds but one that stuck out from the lot was their Smart Eyewear which is the world's first Smart Spectacles. Well, yes Snapchat did have their one but this makes that one look like a Fisher Price toy, mind you the name of Huawei's product also sounds like a kids today "Gentle Monster". It's design is fashionable and trendy, it has no buttons and operates by touch. Has a built in antenna, microphone and dual speaker so you can take a call with it while doing whatever it is you're doing. You can even ask it for info like you would for your phone and it will give it to you. The glasses comes in it's own unique pouch which serves as a wireless charging station for it and is the worlds first contact less wireless charging device.

Getting back to the P30 Series, we've only touched on just a few things that this device is capable of doing, we'll have a more indepth look at the device once it's launched locally, and have local pricing available for the phone and to see what cool accessories Huawei chose to bring to the country.