Now with the flavors of Studio Harcourt!
Welcome to Part 2 Season 2 of the Honor 200 Review! Wow that rhymed! Now, we’re going to discuss the phone’s most important component, the cameras! Now with the flavour of Studio Harcourt!
The Honor 200 is touted as a camera phone that you can use as an alternative to those bulky DSLRs or expensive mirrorless cameras. Honor even went out of their way to partner with one of France’s most prestigious studios to create portraits that are just PERFECT!
For starters, the Honor 200, in comparison to the Honor 90, has more competitive cameras. Previously, we’ve seen a setup comprising of a 200MP Primary (Samsung ISOCELL HP2), a 12MP Ultrawide, and a 2MP depth sensor. It primarily lacks a telephoto camera which was later adapted to future handsets, now that’s what you call a competitive advantage!
The Honor 200 improves upon the Honor 90 by using a more powerful primary camera, now with 50MP resolution. There is also a 50MP telephoto and a 12MP ultrawide. That’s right! Goodbye useless 2MP cameras, and hello actual portraits.
The Honor 90 had a 200MP camera so you might think that the 50MP is a downgrade. Well, big numbers are pretty interesting, but having big megapixel counts do not automatically equate to having better quality. Better resolution maybe, but resolution alone isn’t the determining factor of what makes a phone’s photo capabilities good. It is a combination of hardware and software engineering.
Actually, now that we have reviewed the Honor 90, we have a point of comparison, so let’s see what improved, theoretically and actually.
CAMERA INTERFACE
From the Honor 90, and to an extent, to all of Honor’s phones, not much has changed from the camera interface. The rolling carousel has the various camera modes. the top carousel features colour calibration and adjustments, including AI-derived adjustments, the white shutter is at the middle, and the zoom are at the top of the framed carousel. The camera interface feels a lot similar to iOS so people who are used to iPhones can feel right at home.
The phone retains many of the Honor 90’s features, such as multi-video wherein both the front and rear cameras function, an ideal piece for vlogging, Hi-Res mode, the opposite of LowRes, it captures a full-frame 50MP shot either in 1x or 3x zoom, night mode is at the left, and portrait is just beside it.
Harcourt mode activates by switching to portrait. There is also a special watermark used just for portraits, which bears the “Harcourt” name. There are other features as well, such as Story mode which allows you to create videos ala Instagram Stories so you can share it right away with your colleagues on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, with cute effects and music choices.
The phone can seamlessly switch between the three cameras with almost no delay to each one. This is perfect when you want to take life’s quickest moments.
PRIMARY CAMERA: PIECE DE RESISTANCE
Just like the Honor 90, when we presented the Honor 200 to some of our friends and colleagues, they have nothing but good things to say about it. “I like your shot, it feels like a DSLR”, “you shoot pretty well”, among other lines. They really found the Honor 200’s cameras outstanding, and some even got convinced to buy one.
We couldn’t agree more on those statements. We commend Honor for its top-tier computational photography. The post-processing might take a few seconds. When you view the gallery, you will see a pre-processed version of the image you just captured, and only when a watermark is present you’d see the final shot.
The final image is heavily processed, but it creates an image with excellent clarity, color balancing, contrast, and dynamic range. As one would expect for a camera in which the purpose is to create “studio-level” shots. It might not surpass DSLRs but for a phone at this price range, this is quite respectable.
TELEPHOTO: Zoom In and Out
The Honor 200 has a 50MP telephoto camera, matching the one from its main. It’s not everyday you see a telephoto camera matching the same resolution as its main. Although it is 50MP, the sensor used is going to be different since the main camera and the telephoto serve a different purpose. The shots above show the difference between 2.5x, 10x, and 50x zoom
This telephoto camera activates immediately upon going 2.5x zoom. In addition, this is what makes those Harcourt-looking portrait shots look absolutely studio-like. This telephoto can zoom all the way to 50x and shots stabilize despite the jittery movement from our hands.
When taking a shot at 50x, the camera will take some time to add the necessary effects and adjustments. This is through Honor’s computational photography, AI-based environmental learning, and post-processing effects. The result is an oversharpened image intended to compensate for a pixelated and blocky texture. On the bright side, you can tell what’s going on and the resulting shot still looks like a decent, readable image.
This is actually a good thing especially if you’re trying to take pictures of birds, planes, or anything far away. The main goal of a telephoto camera in phones to compensate for its lack of a bigger lens, is to ensure that images taken from extra long distances could still be read and understood. Take a look at our airplane shot, which is at max zoom range (50x) and you can clearly tell it is a plane and not some garbled, grainy mess.
However, because it is “AI” that is enhancing this image, the entire thing feels artificially upscaled, resembling early DALL-E 3 images where the image looks dream-like. Yep, this is one of those effects.
As for the regular 2.5x shot, the telephoto takes in a contrasty image with sharp details. It simply looks good and pleasing and creates “drama” that tells a story. As they say, “Every image tells a story. “And the telephoto’s processing effects encapsulate that
ULTRAWIDE: Drastic Quality Change
While Honor’s ads might say “triple 50MP camera”, only two of them are actually 50MP. The ultrawide is simply an unbinned 12MP shooter, highlighting that ultrawide shots might not be the brand’s highest priority. We’ll give them credit for at least using 12MP and not the usual 8MP that other companies do. 8MP ultrawide feels so low resolution.
The ultrawide camera activates immediately upon selecting 0.6x zoom in the camera interface. We’ve seen ultrawides that are stuck to just a single zoom level but the Honor 200’s ultrawide lens can zoom between 0.6x to 0.9x, which makes it flexible.
You’ll also notice the drastic quality shift between the main and the ultrawide lens. Shifting from the main to the telephoto lens has a subtler effect, but not the ultrawide due to it using an older sensor and less resolution.
During the daylight, the ultrawide shots look pretty good with adequate sharpness and detail, and plenty of colors as well. In short, the quality is way too good for an ultrawide lens and surpasses our expectations. However, do note that the ultrawide shots are of lesser quality than the main.
Another thing we like about this ultrawide lens is that the image feels mostly flat with little curvature, or the “fish-eye” effect. You will not notice the distortion at first glance and you might not ever unless someone points it out to you, just look at the corner sides.
Immediately you can tell that there are far fewer details on the ultrawide and it looks a lot softer. You may also notice a subtle darker tone overall, reflecting of its lower dynamic range. Overall, the ultrawide is great for group photos and on typical usage, you might not even feel the difference. So as long it takes good photos, that’s what truly matters in our day to day life.
HARCOURT PORTRAIT: The Classy Way to do Bokeh Shots
Let’s be honest. You’re (probably) not reading this review for the typical landscape shots. No, you’re here because Honor consistently marketed the phone as a partnership between the renowned French studio Harcourt and how it can create fancy-looking portrait shots looking to be your next profile picture on Instagram. Like… “be your own model” kind of way.
Well then, that’s what we’re going to next. It’s just that we’re following a format to make it uniform for our readers as they are our top priority.
The thing with these Harcourt Portrait Shots is that it is specifically designed for human subjects. It will not work as intended if you use it against non-human subjects. That’s what “Aperture mode” is for. Another is that using Harcourt Portrait mode changes the watermark. Instead of the typical Honor logo, you’ll get the Harcourt logo and the caption “Honor 200 | Portrait”. It’s a nice detail change that we like.
We were advised to take these portrait shots at 2.5x zoom which means that the telephoto lens would be used. That’s appropriate since telephoto cameras are born to do this exact purpose. Why not 2x? Well, the blur is a lot clearer and more detailed at 2.5x zoom and highlights the face more.
There are three filters to choose from. The first is Harcourt Vibrant which makes your image… well more colorful. Next is Harcourt Colour, which combines balanced colour reproduction and contrast and is selected by default. Finally, our favorite: Harcourt Classic. This is the dramatic Black and White image the studio is known for and creates for amazing, fancy shots. We’d say this is the perfect choice for profile pictures due to that “drama” and “noir” effect.
We really like the Black and White image, cause it has that certain “Scorsese” effect that probably some of you only noticed now (and it even got better with the recent Honor 400). The Harcourt collaboration certainly is quite successful the first time, unlike a certain phone company and their hassle bloods.
SELFIE SHOTS: 50MP in, 50MP Out.
We are not the type of tech reviewer to do selfies as much, in fact, we feel like this part should not be included in the final review draft and just let our techies judge it for their own thing. However, since selfie cameras are part of smartphones naturally, it feels necessary to include them whether we like it or not.
With that said, the Honor 200 takes selfies to a higher level, with full 50 megapixels worth of resolution. Though, the sensor used is not the same as the main camera, it is an older sensor that does not have stabilization.
Regardless, the selfie camera captures faces with high clarity. Since the phone can do bokeh selfies, we decided to include that as well. The blur effect is pretty accurate and we only noticed a few stitches here and there but they are really good for those Instagram-worthy shots. Color accuracy is good both at decent and mediocre lighting conditions, and all that thanks to the powerful sensor Honor used.
Part 3 is up next, where we discuss the phone’s gaming capabilities and even benchmarks!
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