HONOR’s Image Stabilization Technology Explained

With a more compact smartphone body, fitting complex components for image stabilization is almost impossible. One the other hand, carrying a tripod on the go would be unrealistic as it is bulky and cumbersome. It is no surprise then that image stabilization is a thorny issue to get right in smartphone photography.

Typically, there are three categories of smartphone stabilization technologies: Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS), Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) and AI Image Stabilization (AIS). 

EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization) is generally used in videos. Due to handheld shakes or movements, videos can come out blurry. EIS technology counteracts these jitters/movements through real-time calculations of the movement and rotation of the camera. Hence, the video would appear steady.

OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) refers to actual lens adjustments to counteract hand jitters. Compared to EIS, OIS does not crop the image and power consumption is kept to a minimum. However, the range for OIS is narrow and can usually cancel out 1~2° of jitter.

AIS (AI Image Stabilization) is a perfect blend of EIS and OIS. By identifying jitters with an AI algorithm, a series of images are aligned before being merged into one single unit to achieve stabilization.

The recently-unveiled HONOR 20 PRO is one of the few flagships smartphones available that supports EIS, OIS and AIS altogether. Furthermore, the quad camera system allows for basically any conceivable shooting scenario, including telephotography, macro and night photography, as well as videography. The HONOR 20 PRO scored 111 on DxO’s comprehensive camera test, the 2nd highest score for any smartphone camera. We will explore several scenarios to explain image stabilization on the HONOR 20 PRO.

1. Handheld Camera Shake

OIS works best in cancelling slight tremors that blurs photos. The in-built gyroscope detects jitters and generates adjacent movements in the opposite direction. This cancels out the jitter and generates clear and precise photos despite tremors in the photographer’s hand.

The following figure serves as an example. ‘A’ depicts the camera when it is kept stationary, but when light emitted from objects shift, the camera senses the jitter and the image becomes blurry. OIS, however, detects even the slightest movement and adjusts the lens real-time to ensure that the light hits at the correct position nevertheless.

Both the 48MP main camera and 8MP telephoto camera on the HONOR 20 PRO supports OIS, offering users a superior photography experience by balancing hand jitters.  

2. Motion Blur

By definition, motion blur occurs when the subject moves during photography or videography. Just imagine taking a photo of a moving car, it is highly likely that your picture will come out blurry.

The solution would be to increase the shutter speed, which is to get a quick snapshot rather than prolonging exposure. However, increasing the shutter speed leads to decrease in image brightness, making it impossible to take clear pictures of fast moving objects in low-light conditions. 

The HONOR 20 PRO features an F/1.4 aperture, the largest ever on a smartphone. It guarantees an average of an additional 50 % light reception, when compared with the standard F/1.8 aperture commonly seen on the market. HONOR applies an unique algorithm to achieve an ultra-high ISO value of 204,800, effectively minimizing noise that typically comes with high ISO. The HONOR 20 PRO’s outstanding photosensitivity further boosts the shutter speed, reducing the distortion brought about by motion blur.

3. Blurriness Caused by Image Synthesis

Night mode on smartphones has become common-place. In principal, a series of photos taken within seconds apart are merged seamlessly into an integral unit. Through manipulating exposure time, the AI ensures that brighter areas are not overexposed, while darker regions are kept bright. However, since the user’s hand will inevitably shake within that few seconds, visual elements will “move” across the images, resulting in blurriness in the synthesized image.

A Typical Jitter Curve

The HONOR 20 PRO’s AIS image stabilization technology is the answer to this issue. By locating the pixels on each image, the AI algorithm detects and corrects discrepancies by the pixels, producing a sharp synthesized image.

The following are sample photos taken by the HONOR 20 PRO.