HUAWEI Nova 4 Officially Announced: The Industry’s First 48MP Phone

Today, Huawei held a press conference in Changsha, Hunan, and launched the HUAWEI Nova 4 smartphone. This is Huawei’s first ‘punch screen’ design and is also the industry’s first smartphone with a 48MP camera.

The HUAWEI Nova 4 features a ‘pole full screen’ design with a front camera in the upper left corner of the 6.4-inch screen. Huawei is not the first to come in with such an approach, but its solution is different. According to the official introduction, Huawei made a 1mm deep hole under the LCD screen but did not completely penetrate the screen. The diameter of the opening is 4.5mm, which was slightly smaller than the width of the status bar. The screen has a resolution of 2310 x 1080. The TP screen accounted for 91.8%.

In addition to the screen opening to solve the problem of the camera, the HUAWEI Nova 4 stitched the ambient light sensor, earpiece, notification light, and other components, integrated at the top of the screen. The company said that the distance sensor placed on the top of the phone has been patented. It can parallel detect the proximity of objects to ensure that the phone automatically lights up when making a call.

The back of the HUAWEI Nova 4 is made of glass. This design is inherited from the Huawei family appearance. The camera, flash and ‘HUAWEI’ logo are placed in a straight line. The new phone is available in four colors of bright black, mother-of-pearl, Suyin blue, and honey-red. Among them, the honey red uses a double-layer coating technology.

Although the space of the front lens is compressed, the front lens still has good parameters. The 25MP (Sony IMX576 CMOS) front camera supports ‘AI micro-plastic beauty’ function. According to the official statement, this function builds seven typical facial models through data learning. After the user takes a selfie, the system establishes a 2D self-photographing into a 3D model and the uses micro-plastic adjustments for the existing model matching and then returns to the 2D photo.

In addition, the HUAWEI Nova 4 supports real-time beauty and pre-AI scene recognition in WeChat video. The hardware foundation of these functions is that the HUAWEI Nova 4 is equipped with the Kirin 970 processor, and it can realize various AI camera functions with 8GB storage and corresponding algorithms.

The rear lens is another highlight of the Nova 4. Among the three lenses, the main lens has a 48MP resolution, which is responsible for imaging and supports handheld super night scenes. Its sensor size is up to ½”, the aperture size is f/1.8, it supports hardware-level HDR Pro, and it also makes the Nova 4 industry’s first phone with a 48-megapixel camera. The other two rear lenses include a 16MP 117-degree wide-angle lens, which supports an ultra-wide-angle shooting and a 2MP depth-of-field lens, which is responsible for background blur.

It should be noted that the standard lens of the standard version of the HUAWEI Nova 4 is 20MP and does not support hardware level HDR and double lossless zoom.

As for configuration, the HUAWEI Nova 4 is equipped with a Kirin 970 processor, which is coupled with an 8GB running memory and a 128GB body storage. The higher variant comes with a 48MP + 16MP + 2MP, while the standard version comes with a 20MP +16MP + 2MP combination. The machine sports a built-in 3750mAh capacity battery and does not support NFC or wireless charging.

Finally, as for the pricing, the HUAWEI Nova 4 8GB+128GB high version costs 3399 yuan ($493) and the 8GB +128GB standard version is at 3099 yuan ($449). The pre-sale has already begun, and it will go on sale on December 27.