Written by Daoge

Launching without a press conference and selling out online in a minute, with long lines forming at multiple offline stores, there is only one phone brand that can create such a grand spectacle, Huawei.

Last year's Meta60 series already gave the market a taste of Huawei's charm, and this time, the Huawei Pura 70 series, as a major refresh of the Huawei P series, has also brought shock to everyone.

When it comes to which phone product series understands imaging aesthetics the best, the Huawei P series is an unavoidable name.

Looking back, every iteration and upgrade of the Huawei P series has brought a shake to mobile phone imaging. This newly upgraded Huawei Pura 70 series is a comprehensive explosion of the accumulated momentum of the Huawei P series over the past twelve years.

01 From P to Pura, Unending Breakthroughs

In fact, among Huawei's phone product series, the Huawei P series's initial technical focus was not on imaging.

Over the past twelve years, this series has been breaking its own boundaries.

In 2012, the first-generation Huawei P series phone, the Huawei Ascend P1, was released.

At that time, Huawei phones were divided into four series: D, P, G, Y, which respectively corresponded to the first letters of the English words Diamond, Platinum, Gold, and Young, representing flagship, high-end, mid-range, and entry-level positions. Since then, D was replaced by Mate, G was changed to Nova, and Y was changed to Enjoy. Only the P series has continued to this day, and finally upgraded to the Pura70 series this time.

Great products must have a consistent pursuit of quality. The positioning of the Huawei P series when it was launched was to target the high-end phone market.

High-end means breakthrough and extreme. And for phone products, it also requires the product to exude an outstanding quality from the inside out.

The first product of the Huawei P series was the Ascend P1, whose sleek and beautiful appearance established the aesthetic tone of the product. Since then, regardless of the continuous iterations of the P series, elegant and textured design has always been its main label.

For a long time, in Huawei's phone design language, products are not only to meet users' functional needs but also carry every user's pursuit of personalized aesthetics and self-expression. Therefore, the P series laid its aesthetic foundation at its inception.

However, Huawei's pursuit of aesthetic beauty is only the beginning. Capturing the most beautiful scenery and the warmest moments in the world with extreme technology is a more meaningful breakthrough.

In 2016, following the breakthrough of the Huawei P8 in night photography, the Huawei P9 officially adjusted its product positioning to an imaging flagship.

Dual cameras, Leica branding, computational photography simulation blurring, professional mode, RAW format, and other fresh features were all brought together in this product. Its photos are delicate, with vivid colors, fully demonstrating Huawei's pursuit and ambition in mobile phone imaging.

The reason why Huawei intimidates its competitors lies largely in its extreme pursuit of products. If you don't do it, you do it first. And to be first, you have to make products that others can't make and solve problems that others can't solve.

Starting with the Huawei P20 series, aiming at the pain points of mobile phone imaging technology, Huawei began to tackle the problem and succeeded in conquering night photography. It was from this period that Huawei P series phones gained the status of "night photography gods" in consumers' minds.

Since then, the Huawei P30 series's "moon capture and star chase," with clear moon photos taken by mobile phones, has even shocked the mobile phone market. Technically, this product changed from dual cameras to quad cameras and added a 5X telephoto lens, ending the history of relying solely on digital zoom for distant shots in mobile phone photography.

Since then, in addition to being a "night photography god," the Huawei P series has also gained the title of "telescope".

Looking back now, both night photography and distant photography have become one of the standard assessments of mobile phone photography capabilities. The Huawei P series can be said to have been leading the technical trend of mobile phone imaging. From the P50 series to the P60 series, Huawei has begun to rethink and establish its own imaging brand XMAGE in the face of the brutal stacking mode of "adding cameras" and increasing the area of imaging sensors emerging in the mobile phone industry.

More importantly, Huawei has systematically considered the underlying logic of mobile phone photography and arrived at four dimensions: "light (optical design), machine (mechanical structure), electricity (photoelectric conversion), and calculation (image algorithm)."

Based on the systematic capabilities of the entire optical, mechanical, electrical, and computational chain, Huawei's thinking about imaging configuration has become more rational: never brute-force stacking, elegantly solving problems. The newly released Huawei Pura70 series is a comprehensive upgrade based on this basic architecture.

02 Setting Trends, New Benchmark in Imaging

The brand upgrade from the Huawei P series to the Pura70 series is a milestone for Huawei in the field of imaging phones. This is not a reconstruction or negation of the P series but a long-planned systematic improvement.

Before this upgrade, among Huawei's four major phone product lines, only the P series had a single-letter prefix, while other series had clear words. As early as May 2019, Huawei had already applied for the registration of trademarks such as "Pura" and "HUAWEI Pura," but due to well-known reasons, Huawei delayed the upgrade of the P series.

However, with "the light boat having passed through countless mountains," although Huawei Pura was late, it arrived, aligning with the three major product lines of Mate, Nova, and Enjoy. Behind the new brand name, one can see Huawei's greater layout for imaging flagship phones.

"Pura," which means pure and authentic, fits well with Huawei's brand spirit of "pursuing one's true heart and forging ahead." Since its launch, the fact has also proven that the Pura70 series continues the P series's consistent tradition, bringing users refreshing imaging performance and design.

Among them, the unique design that catches the eye at first glance is the telescopic lens described by many Pura 70 Ultra users as "explosive." Every time the camera is turned on, accompanied by the sound of professional machinery, the red-circled lens smoothly extends, giving photography a unique sense of ceremony and professionalism.

In the photography circle, the red-circled lens of a DSLR is known as a "bull's head," a nickname for high-quality lenses. And Pura70 is adorned with a unique red circle around the main camera, coupled with the XMAGE metal logo, pulling the overall high-end texture to full marks.

In the industry, the ultra-focused telescopic camera is also a first brought by the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra. Its uniqueness lies in creating a rotating telescopic lens structure, achieving both a one-inch large sensor and a large aperture in a compact body.

In fact, as users can feel, modern smartphones are getting heavier and thicker, continuously adding configurations to lenses in order to stack materials, but counterproductively, it has caused users to have aesthetic fatigue.

Undoubtedly, the functional design of smartphones is constantly compressing the space for aesthetic expression of phones. It is precisely against this background that Huawei is one of the few technology companies that have been constantly exploring, innovating, and breaking through aesthetic expression. With limited space for phone lenses, every breakthrough in light intake requires joint innovation in software and hardware, which Huawei has achieved.

Within a body thickness of only 8.4mm, a one-inch large sensor and F1.6 large aperture are achieved, allowing the amount of light intake to achieve another breakthrough.

The innovative design of the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra is refreshing. Here, one can boldly predict that this will be a new benchmark for imaging flagship phones, opening up a brand-new solution for the design of future mobile phone imaging. Soon, Huawei Pura70's leapfrogging innovation will be followed by the industry.

The Huawei Pura70 series also brings another significant breakthrough, which is its triangular wind vane design behind it.

Among a plethora of circular and rounded square modules, such a design has a very high degree of recognizability.

Huawei's design is always exploring new territories in the technological product of "mobile phones," allowing every user of the Huawei Pura70 series to experience their own unique aesthetic beauty.

On mobile phones, we are used to seeing squares and circles and have gradually formed a stereotype that phones should be in such regular shapes. But Huawei's continuous breakthroughs in appearance are telling users that phones should never be solidified. There are limitless possibilities for function and beauty, and there are still more possibilities for future phones.

03 Smart Experience, Mastering the AI Era

As mentioned earlier, Huawei has established a basic architecture centered around "optical, mechanical, electrical, and computational" for mobile phone imaging. Therefore, the upgrade of the Huawei Pura70 series not only includes a comprehensive improvement in lenses and appearance but also endows AI imaging features and more with new heights in the context of the current AI explosion.

Not only should it be beautiful, but it should also have a soul. While pursuing the purity of technology and the authenticity of design, Huawei also provides users with a more pure user experience and aesthetic enjoyment.

The key to this is the application of AI technology.

Nowadays, users have increasingly high requirements for the level of intelligence in terminal device interaction and information acquisition. The launch of the Huawei Pura70 series has brought users innovative image editing capabilities, ultra-high-speed wind-driven flash photography, Xiao Yi professional beauty consultants, Xiao Yi all-around personal assistants, and other AI smart features, greatly expanding the functionality of AI phones.

The AI removal feature of the Huawei Pura70 series is a function that has opened many users' eyes, "I didn't know you could do this."

Since the AI concept has gained popularity, other manufacturers have previously introduced many similar image editing functions. However, they all pale in comparison to Huawei Pura's AI removal function. With the support of Huawei Pura70 series' AI photo editing master, unwanted elements in photos, such as debris, passersby, object edges that affect aesthetics, and even backgrounds, can be easily removed, allowing users to easily create stunning editing effects without professional skills.

In addition, the Huawei Pura70 series' "ultra-high-speed wind-driven flash photography" has also amazed many users.

Recently, at the F1 Chinese Grand Prix, which was held at the Shanghai International Circuit, with race cars traveling at speeds exceeding 320 km/h, it was difficult for ordinary phones to capture them, but the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra could easily freeze the exciting moments of the race cars. Huawei has once again raised the ceiling of mobile imaging.

In this regard, Li Xiaolong, CTO of Huawei Device BG, also specifically published a long article to popularize this feature.

According to his introduction, the Huawei Pura 70 series adopts a new generation of ultra-focused imaging system, supported by AI motion vector calculation, combined with the innovative XD Motion motion engine, real-time dual-exposure motion blur restoration, ultimately achieving ultra-high-speed wind-driven flash photography capabilities.

By combining AI technology with imaging in such a creative way, the Huawei Pura70 series can be said to have contributed another major innovation to the industry. This feature's quick start, rapid focusing, high image quality, and ease of operation can greatly enhance users' photography experience.

In addition, the Xiao Yi all-around personal assistant of the Huawei Pura70 series can also allow users to experience the powerful auxiliary function of AI.

For example, users can access services directly by saying "Xiao Yi" on any phone interface. Based on OCR and CV technology, Xiao Yi can intelligently recognize text and objects in pictures. When you open a poster and wake up Xiao Yi to say "navigate to the address on the screen," Xiao Yi can immediately initiate navigation to the destination, without the need for manual input of the address.

For another example, if users want to quickly understand the core information of a news article, Xiao Yi can also handle it easily. Just wake up Xiao Yi on the news interface and say "summarize the full text" or send a local document to Xiao Yi and enter the "summary and Q&A" mode, Xiao Yi can quickly generate a long summary and provide three core questions, allowing you to quickly and deeply understand the document, greatly improving work and study efficiency.

Therefore, after equipping with Xiao Yi and multiple AI features, the Huawei Pura 70 series can already provide users with a more comprehensive smart experience.

In the future, there is no doubt that Huawei phones will regain their momentum. It is rumored that the channel inventory of the Pura70 series exceeds 14 million units. With its leading imaging capabilities, aesthetic design, and AI features, it is not difficult for the Huawei Pura70 series to achieve such shipments.

In photography, "the decisive moment" can create great works. And the upgrade of the Huawei Pura70 series may be the "decisive moment" for mobile phone imaging to make another breakthrough.