Are Four-Camera Phones the Next Big Thing?

The camera craze started with the Huawei P20 Pro, which incorporated three cameras and artificial intelligence algorithms to beat every other phone camera in the market. That phone combines Leica-engineered lenses with a large 40-megapixel color sensor, an 8-MP telephoto, and a 20-MP monochrome sensor to pick up details in low-light conditions.

The new Huawei Mate 20 Pro continues with the same three-camera strategy, but it swaps the monochrome sensor for an ultra-wide angle lens.

Samsung upped the camera limit with the world’s first smartphone with four cameras. This mid-range Galaxy A9 has a sensor for every occasion: a 24-megapixel color sensor, 10-MP telephoto, 8-MP ultrawide, and a 5-MP depth camera.

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And now we allegedly have the Honor Magic 2, which sports four sensors on its flashy mirror glass back surface. There’s no details yet, but if these shots are confirmed as the real thing, the new model will probably raise the bar in terms of camera performance. Especially knowing that it is made by Huawei.

Knowing how the market runs in waves, it’s not crazy to think that we are going to face an onslaught of phones with four cameras on the back. Heck, Nokia is reportedly skipping the three and four-sensor stage and going straight to a crazy five-camera setup.

According to its proponents, this type of multiple-sensor camera setups can greatly improve the quality of images, thanks to the combination of multiple simultaneous shots into perfectly exposed images under any lighting condition imaginable. On the other hand, Apple and especially Google seem to be focused on delivering the same image advancements using less sensors and more artificial intelligence, which can really make all the difference.

We will have to wait until these phones are released to see who is on the right path to the camera phone holy grail.