In October, Huawei released its flagship Mate 10 / Mate 10 Pro, featuring two highlights, a full screen and artificial intelligence.
The two high points this year for which smartphones compete are precisely those two. Apart from the "all-in-one" full screen, as the concept of AR was set hot on standalone devices, it eventually got on smartphones Like PokemanGo, artificial intelligence is perceived through certain terminals, then smartphones are undoubtedly the best carriers.
A few days ago, we got Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, which is not yet available for sale. We conducted a few days of testing and gradually figured out what Huawei's full screen and AI are for Mate 10 / Pro .
For such a cell phone that shouts AI loudly, our experience is also focused on starting with the AI to see how smart it is.
Visual Intelligence: AI makes stunning photos
For Mate 10's AI capabilities, we roughly divided into visual, voice, language, three aspects, of which visual intelligence is Mate 10's focus.
Although the best-known example of artificial intelligence is AlphaGo, the most mature, first-of-its-kind application capability is its visual appearance.
1, image processing: powerful NPU
On Mate 10, visual intelligence is evident, with most of its AI power highlighted through the built-in NPU (Neural Network Processing Unit) for visual image processing. This IP comes from the Cambrian NPU known in the image recognition processing, natural language to understand flash faster than the CPU 25 times, reducing energy consumption by 50. In the conference, Huawei used the number of pictures per minute this indicator to reflect the unicorn 970 NPU capabilities.
Now there is a lack of running tools to quantify AI hardware capabilities. But since Huawei emphasized NPU's ability to handle image processing, we took a look at NPU capabilities through a photo processing application called Prisma that uses neural networks.
As a reference is equipped with Snapdragon 835 Samsung flagship Note 8, it is worth mentioning that, although Mate 10 points total score higher than Note 8, but on the GPU points, Note 8 slightly stronger than the Mate 10.
In the filter application Prisma offline rendering comparison test, equipped with a built-in NPU unicorn 970 Soc Mate 10 Pro, almost all ahead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 equipped with Note8, some pictures even than the latter to complete rendering a few seconds . Note8 and vice versa can not form such an advantage.For GPU image rendering capabilities, Mate 10's Mali G72 compared to the Adreno 540 of the Snapdragon 835 does not prevail, but after using NPU in a specific image Mate 10 is already working on the task.
Run points to run points, the phone is to be used after all.And in practical applications, Mate 10 stressed that the AI's ability in the visual area is not a showpiece.Especially when taking pictures, you can really feel the artificial intelligence Cell phone imaging capabilities to enhance.
2, Scene Recognition: AI like to eat meat?
Mate 10 in the application of artificial intelligence camera There are four specific functions, namely scene recognition, AI Selfie, AI snapshot, AI night shot.
In auto mode, the Mate 10 camera recognizes 13 prominent scenes including text, food, stage, blue sky, snow, beach, cats and dogs, night scenes, sunrise / sunset, plants, flowers, portraits , The camera to take the most suitable shooting parameters of the current scene, optimizing the final imaging results.
In view of the importance of eating, we specially tested the performance of Mate 10 in food identification and found that the engineers responsible for scene recognition in Huawei Mate 10 should be more meat lovers. In the face of meat (whether it is true Meat or light on the light box), Mate 10 will quickly recognize it, go to food shooting mode.
The logic is better understood, meat texture characteristics and color are more significant and easy to identify from the film effect, Mate 10 in ensuring the performance of food 'appetite', but not too much color correction , But in a balance between absolute truth and performance.
After testing the meat, we tried it again with a vegetable platter - a problem that in fact hides a dilemma: how does it tell a cell phone that a green thing is not a leaf but a vegetable?
Mate 10 Pro did think of it as a green plant when it came to almost the entire screen of the lettuce (as it was); but as we turned the fan, the melon and the mushroom, Mate 10 Pro immediately The reaction came in. With more references, Mate 10 Pro's understanding of food is still quite deep.
3, AI Selfie
Mate 10 series front camera in the parameter is not outstanding, 800-megapixel + f / 2.0 aperture quite satisfactory.But using the front camera open portrait mode, you can get close to the back of the double photo effect, the people The face highlights from the background.
Artificial intelligence here played what role? Because there is no double photo, no reference to the depth of information, the front of the single camera want to achieve the effect of shallow depth can only rely on the algorithm, the portrait 'pull' out, and then the background virtual Huawei engineers said in exchange with us, in order to ensure the effectiveness of front camera algorithm than the post-dual camera more advanced, while it also benefits from more artificial intelligence results.
With Mate 10 front single camera self time, the unicorn 970 in NPU due to training a large number of facial images, can help the camera more precise portrait stripped out to highlight, can more natural portrait and background transition, and There will be no fuzzy edge situation.
The actual effect of how? We deliberately find a beautiful little sister test.
Of course, the back of the double camera is also portrait mode.
AI assisted digging portraits in mobile phone photography has become a significant learning Mate 10 shallow depth of field Selfie principle and Google Pixel 2 with a single camera to achieve dual photofocus effect; and iPhone 8 / X portrait mode, also used the same Technology.
4, AI snapshot
AI snapshot corresponding to the camera scene, it is to capture, especially capture high-speed motion scenes.
For mobile phones, it is difficult to shoot high-speed moving objects in advance if you do not manually set parameters such as aperture shutter ISO in advance. Mate 10 has been specially optimized in this respect so that the camera can immediately adjust parameters when capturing moving objects To high-speed photography mode, to prevent paste film.
This feature does not seem to be used frequently, but it means the phone automatically takes pictures and further covers the scenes beyond its power, but also means that the dedicated camera's memory may be further compressed.
5, AI night shot: is the top level?
However, Mate 10 Pro AI blessing camera features, the most impressive even can be said to be amazing, or the Mate 10 Pro night shoot ability.
In the light of the daytime scenes, the differences between the flagship models are usually not too large - the exam questions are simple and everyone can test the high scores. Night shot is more test the imaging quality of mobile phone camera.
We used the camera evaluation agency DXOMark score 94 points (taking a single score of 100 points, the same with the Mate 10 Pro), belong to the top flagship Android campfire Note 8 and Huawei Mate 10 Pro night shot contrast. Note 8 Using a dual 12-megapixel wide-angle + telephoto camera, the aperture is f / 1.7 (wide angle) and f / 2.4 (telephoto).
Mate 10 Pro is f / 1.6 aperture, 20 million +12 million black and white color dual camera.
Previously, Samsung Note Series has been a powerful night shot ability to distrust Andrews machine, but Mate 10 Pro imaging capabilities at night, have not lost Note 8.
From the image below, the Mate 10 Pro's fully automatic filming is better for screen latitude than Samsung Note 8 at the harsh conditions of nighttime complex lighting. (The bottom left of the three images is Note 8 shooting, right Mate 10 Pro shooting)
Mate 10 Pro better take into account the bright and dark parts of the screen, the details appear relatively complete, from the bright neon lights and dark windows can be seen.
The Note 8 face complex lighting conditions, the dark and bright have different levels of detail loss.Light illumination at Note 8 appeared overexposed situation, the dark window is also difficult to see.If you choose to take care of high Brightness area, then the dark will be further 'sacrificed'.
Automatic filming mode is the difference between the film out of unicorn 970 in the NPU, it identifies the detection of night scene shooting scene, it will automatically call more suitable for night shooting algorithm to improve the quality of the film.
For a more concentrated light box, the same is true, the Mate 10 Pro is still more able to meet the challenge, but in color, Note 8 in the dark light will be slightly more accurate.
As you can see, with the help of NPU and f / 1.6's large aperture, the Mate 10 Pro's night shooting capability is already top of the handset and its automatic night-spot recognition mode allows us to get better without any setup A film effect.
6, visual intelligence into mobile AI application pioneer
From Mate 10 Pro and earlier released Google Pixel 2, Apple iPhone 8 / iPhone X, we can see an artificial intelligence hardware acceleration + neural network to greatly enhance the trend of mobile phone camera capabilities. And in practical applications We can also see significant improvement.
So far, there are still many consumers still think that AI is a gimmick used by mobile phone manufacturers to drive up the premium of the product, which is not very affordable for them.But Huawei Mate 10 significantly improves the imaging capability under the AI blessing, Artificial intelligence, yes indeed can significantly enhance the capacity of the phone.
It is true that many users with a slight understanding of photography can output more creative and artistic images in manual mode, but AI cameras can help them output more easily for the larger users An average of the photos.
Compared with the AlphaGo raging chess chessboard can only be a melon, Huawei, Google, Apple's AI mobile phone camera so that people can really feel the artificial intelligence brought about by the upgrade.It does not seem so important, but for Mobile phone manufacturers to enhance their competitiveness, so that smart phones become truly 'smart', but it is very necessary.
Voice Intelligence: A key step has been taken
1, Voice Assistant Small E: Huawei girl grew up early
In addition to visual intelligence, Huawei Mate 10 also showed a voice of intelligence in the domestic sale version, Mate 10 on the line a voice assistant, small E, pronunciation is the industry's popular young women.It needs to be noted that, Phonetic Assistant Although the prefix is phonetic, it is also inseparable from the AI's ability to understand language, which is a mountain of artificial intelligence applications.
One of the highlights of Mate 10's small E is that it wakes up by voice when it's out of screen without having to press an extra knob to get it out of the way. To avoid false awakening as much as possible, The word 'hello, small E' (or you can also customize, but also need four syllables.) E childhood performance, its voice recognition and semantic understanding of capacity compared to the previous Huawei voice service has been leapfrog Enhance.
Set the alarm, set the schedule, read the information, brush microblogging, navigation taxi to find food, and so on, can call this voice assistant to complete and she not only can call the system comes with applications, but also access the drops , High morality, Jingdong and other third-party APP to enhance their service capabilities.For some less convenient hand-operated scenes, such as driving, Mate 10's small E can provide effective help.
However, in the process of using small E, we also found that in most scenarios, voice interaction is not as simple and efficient as touch interaction. The highly mature touch interaction allows users to make multiple choice most of the time, Touch to the screen will have immediate feedback; and when the command is given in voice, you never know how your phone will understand you before it's spoken.
So whether it's Huawei's Little E or Apple's Siri or Google's Google Assistant, there's still a long way to go to become a more mainstream, not ancillary, way to interact.
At present, it is necessary to make breakthroughs in hardware, artificial intelligence, and software, and in hardware, the mobile phone needs a pickup module with a low cost and a sufficiently low volumetric power consumption. The artificial intelligence In contrast, CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) has developed an effective neural network for natural language understanding, as CNN (but it is really hard to find the ambiguity of the language and the relative image does not know where to go) ; In the software, you need to get through more software, access to more services, voice assistants can provide more functionality.
For Huawei, it is more hopeful to make more breakthroughs in the ecological construction of software services at present.Huawei has the world's top three smart phone market share, large enough shipments and strong enough development ecology, and will become a small voice assistant for Huawei E features a major evolution advantage.
2, AI noise reduction: call to give birth
Relative to the more difficult, involving a lot of voice assistant, simply enhance the voice of the AI noise reduction function is doing well in the background noisy circumstances, Huawei Mate 10 Pro's NPU will be based on the voice of the owners usually speak, focus Extract the user's sound waves, to enhance it, while suppressing environmental noise.
In order to test the Mate 10's AI noise reduction effect, we selected a crowing horn at the crowded junctions and phoned five volunteers using three different handsets, including the Huawei Mate 10.
Although the first two phones were all equipped with noise-canceling microphones, strong noise mixed with totally inaudible voices forced five subjects to surrender quickly, while Mate 10's AI noise reduction reduced traffic noise to one 'Acceptable range', while the speaker's voice can also be heard.
This feature makes the more noise, the other can hear the words of the Mate 10. In various places where the tsunami shakes, when the audience for their own support for the star, the team crazy call, AI noise let Mate 10 users inundated in the waves can also call.
Behind this is the use of deep learning techniques to capture the acquisition of human voiceprint features. For voice assistants, AI noise reduction can help to hear the user's instructions, for users, is to ensure that their own words in a noisy environment to convey.
But for the moment it only makes sense for those who answer the phone, and the person on the phone still has to cover his ears.
Language understanding: offline is also powerful
1, wisdom screen: blow up the text after the establishment of new services
In language processing, Mate 10 has a word segmentation function for plain text, smart screen recognition - double click on the text, the text will be disassembled to form different keywords.This feature and Luo Yonghao Hammer cell phone launched 'big Explosion 'principle is the same, all through the neural network in natural language understanding in the participle.
However, Huawei took one step further. After the word segmentation, it not only used for text processing, but also connected with the service to show the card information in the form of window, access to telephone calls, taxi, navigation and other entrances. After the text exploded, a service chain was rebuilt, a mindset that clearly excludes people's needs more than encouraging users to do a lot of word processing on their cell phones.
2, AI translation: born for the call
Mate 10's built-in AI accompanying translation with Microsoft is another area where artificial intelligence is used, officially claiming it is 300% faster than phones without AI acceleration and supports 50 languages translating each other.
It is worth mentioning that, under the AI acceleration, Mate 10 can be very quickly (within seconds)) to achieve a paragraph camera translation.This feature is quite good by Mate 10 users.
▲ Mate 10 series camera translation function
This feature comes with Chinese-English translation by default, translation packages can be downloaded if there is translation requirement for other languages, Mate 10's translation supports up to 50 languages, and after downloading offline translation packages, Mate 10, with NPU support, Even without a network, you can not get a comparison from a cloud database and you can quickly get good translation results.
In addition, Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, although with 4000mah huge battery and 22.5W fast charge, but in order to further ensure the battery life, Huawei also uses artificial intelligence in power management.
The specific form is still to learn the user's habits, the user is divided into games, business, travel, camera four categories, each category is subdivided into 14 scene labels.Consider the use of mobile phone users and all kinds of labels Fit, customize a set of personalized power solutions.
However, this set has always been running in the background, so there is no intuitive way to reflect, but in the moderate use of the two days, Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro are only a round of charging.
The evolution of the full screen with the highlight of the glass back
After reading Artificial Intelligence Kung Fu Mate 10, we finally return to the appearance of the cell phone 'brain' so that the face is equally important Yan value of justice that sentence, the phone is also set up.
In all fairness, the positive value of Huawei Mate series has been maintained above the standard, mainly due to Mate series forehead, chin, border are narrower, higher screen share brings a better look and feel. Mate 10 Pro Mate 10 is more like the previous generation than Mate 10. The Mate 10 Pro has a circular fingerprint on the back, while the Mate 10 has a round-key home button At the front.
The difference between the appearance of the core reason is the screen is different.
The Mate 10 Pro uses an 18: 9 AMOLED screen, while the Mate 10 uses a 2: K resolution 16: 9 TFT LCD with the difference in visual appearance between different screens.
Mate 10 Pro's AMOLED screen is more prominent in color performance.When the Mate 10 Pro and Mate 10 together, we can see Mate 10 Pro color saturation, more layered, and the use of the RGBW array The Mate 10 will be brighter (with a maximum brightness of 730 nits), making it easier to see the screen in bright light.
Mate 10 Pro metal mid-frame surface with a brushed design, showing some business temperament Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro placed in the middle of the interface on the box slightly different, the latter canceled the 3.5mm headphone jack, water and dust level reached And iPhone 8 flat IP67, the former in the case of retaining the headphone jack, waterproof and dustproof capacity is IP53.
Another point is not easy to see is that, Mate 10 Pro's power button using a matte process, you can see, touch small particles, a certain non-slip effect, and Mate 10's power button is a smooth design.
In addition to the positive color value of the box on the upgrade and careful, the use of glass backplane Mate 10 also make a lot of color, the light irradiation, the glass material with champagne gold colored metal looks quite texture.
Of course, in addition to the look, the glass back also provides a good feel, the edge of the surface treatment of the grip is very friendly. Glass material to meet the perception and feel, but inevitably sticky fingerprints. Wear the shell or choose to pursue the hand, depending on the user chosen.
After working together with Leica to develop a mobile phone camera, the photographing ability of Huawei's mobile phone is on the rise, taking pictures as a key feature of Mate 10. Huawei Mate 10's camera has this year's F1.6 industry's largest aperture dual camera and AI software and hardware , Its demonstrated ability is also proved by the above test, which is consistent with its appearance.
Conclusion: end smart home phone at the start of landing
After a few days of experience, from a pure mobile phone perspective, we can think of the Mate 10 / mate 10 Pro as a top-of-the-line flagship with great features and upside.
But if we look at it from a larger perspective, Huawei Mate 10 actually reflects how the most important mobile terminals evolve as the mobile Internet era shifts (or overlays) to the AI era. In the future, end devices need to become Smarter, and smarter than ever without the need for a network to connect to the cloud - the so-called 'smart end'.
At the moment when AI is moving from the lab to the application, 'end intelligence' has become a hot topic, and only AI is stuffed into a real-world electronic gadget and promoted to the general public in some simple perceivable form Experience, then it can truly change from a 'story-telling' need to a real one.
Apple, Google are in the hardware and software coding, smart phones to achieve end intelligence while Huawei's hand Mate 10, also represents the domestic mobile phone camp, opened a head in the smart end.