The Huawei Mate 30 Pro has been out for a few weeks outside the US, mainly in China and India and we have gathered 15 video samples from its slow motion mode which as of today is the best performing high-speed phone ever developed.  We had some shortcomings about the way the phone reaches the highly hyped 7,680fps mode which is 1920fps multiplied by 4x in software from a small snapshot of the video memory.

We also had some suspicions that the 1080p 960fps mode was also interpolated but looking at the samples we gathered it seems that was a premature call. The phone is actually capturing the full frame rate at 1080p or close to that.  The real max mode is 1920fps at 720p which is then interpolated to 7,680fps with good success by the new Kirin 990 chipset. Your mileage may vary and the results depend on the subject matter more than anything as organic slower motion looks much better than fast unpredictable bursts that break the interpolation algorithm.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro New Slow Motion Samples:

Make sure to read our previous post on the Mate 30 Pro to understand how the phone shoots video in high frame rates if you have some doubts.

The faster the motion and the more detailed the subject like water, sand or dust can break the algorithm easily and cause unwanted blurring. The phone is creating these frames from a 1,920fps video and creating in-between frames much like programs like Twixtor or Optical flow do it on your PC video editor see our article here on this subject to understand more.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Slow Motion Specs Dissected:

• 120fps 1080p Continuous
• 240fps 1080p Continuous
• 960fps 1080p for 1 full second (960 frames in total)
• 1920fps 720p for 1/2 second  (960 frames in total)
• 7680fps 720p interpolated 4x (lasts for 32 seconds on a 30p timeline.)
• All super slow motion modes at 960p and above last 32 seconds of playback at 30fps regular speed.
• The entire buffer for the slow motion feature is 2GB and gets filled by data then dumped and encoded on the fly by the Kirin 990 chip.

There is no doubt that the more light you give the phone the better capture it will achieve. The Phone has a maximum shutter speed of 1/4000 which is the default on a bright sunny day, if you shoot in that kind of light you have a better chance of avoiding blurring and the subject will have more detail while the interpolation system on the Kirin 990 will have an easier time doing the interpolated frames.

See the samples below and our end commentary note further down:

960fps, 1920fps and 7680fps test – Huawei Mate 30 Pro incredible Slow Motion by Slow Experiment:

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Slow Motion: time control is now available on a phone by gizmochina:

HUAWEI Mate 30 Pro – Witness Your Galaxy in Ultra Slow Motion by Huawei Mobile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4wCj-nDxss

HUAWEI Mate 30 Pro – Make Every Frame Count by Huawei Mobile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNuz0Q6dXb0

HUAWEI Mate 30 Pro – Burst The Bubble with Ultra Slow Motion by Huawei Mobile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sViXkGWo1M

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Slow Motion 7680fps by Slow Motion Man:

Huawei Mate 30 Pro – 7680fps Super Slow Motion – Matchbox by AmazTech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArxIK5R4_aU

Huawei Mate 30 Pro: 7680 fps slow-motion test by: SMARTmania.cz – nahraná videa

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Super Slow Motion Video by:Shail 360

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVmqRuJVtkc

Huawei Mate 30 Pro – 7680fps Super Slow Motion – Crushing apple by: Slow Experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdCJsnd65Ew

Huawei Mate 30 Pro 7680fps Slow motion new video – high speed car by: Sparrows News

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRKBod48ugk

1920fps and 7680fps test – Huawei Mate 30 Pro incredible Slow Motion by: Slow Experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLV5A1cD3QA

Gunshot Super Slow Motion with Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro 7680fps by Sparrows News:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LExiViI5uvQ

Huawei Mate 30 Pro 7680fps incredible Slow Motion by Slow Experiment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw_gcm6fWc4

Huawei Mate 30 Pro – 7680fps Super Slow Motion – Bee Fight by The Slow Mo Expert:

Our take on the Mate 30 Pro:

To be honest we were expecting much worse performance than what the Mate 30 Pro has been able to do in the slow motion modes. Detail at 1920fps 720p is very good and nearly excellent for a phone at 960fps 1080p.  It is still a far cry from a dedicated professional slow motion camera in terms of per-pixel image quality and lack of moire but for a mobile device at under $1000 USD it is quite remarkable. 

Amazon has the Mate 30 Pro now available in Chinese version as an import here: https://amzn.to/2NGB2Wo

Sure the 7,680fps is faked from a 1920fps 720p source in memory but if you shoot people or less detailed subjects, the interpolation is so good that you might be fooled if you don’t look too closely. Problem is that usually when you want to shoot hyperfast frame rates, you want to shoot unexpected things like explosions or impacts that require a lot of details that simply get mushed by the software in the phone. However, you can easily get 1,920fps for 0.5secs at 720p and 960fps at 1080p for 1 second which is the best spec on a slow motion phone that has been achieved in a released consumer product.

Still, the phone has been banned for release in America due to Huawei being imposed restrictions by the US government. Also, the full Android OS and compatibility cannot be licensed to Huawei anymore but they have made sure to allow for a way to use Google apps. If you get this phone it will be restricted compares to other Android devices unless you jailbreak it to use a custom ROM, but then you risk your data being exposed by a bad ROM image with nefarious code in some cases.

We are ready to declare at this time that the Huawei Mate 30 Pro is the slow motion phone of the year at HSC and the one to beat for the rest of 2019 and 2020.  At this rate we expect Chinese companies to leapfrog US companies like Apple and Google and Koran Samsung when it comes to slow motion performance.  It is now on the realm of possibility that a phone may shoot 2000fps at 1080p by next year with very respectable quality.

If they could manage to improve the actual file quality with fewer artifacts then we may even have some competition for low end more professional cameras in motion analysis for some applications.

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Well done taking the lead in the high frame rate smartphone race Huawei -HSC