The Huawei P50 Pro and its monochrome camera debut at the top of DxOMark's charts, but things aren't always as they seem

Hours ago, Huawei debuted its newest premium phones, the Huawei P50 and P50 Pro. The P series has offered some of the best camera devices on the market over the years, and it appears the latest iteration is no different, with the Huawei P50 Pro making the trip over the DxOMark and promptly dominating.

The Huawei P50 Pro does incredibly well as it manages a camera score of 144, just edging out the Mi 11 Ultra (143). That stellar performance carries over in the selfie category, as the Huawei flagship yet again tops the chart, with a score of 108. For some perspective, the iPhone 12 Pro Max has a score of 98 in that category, while the S21 Ultra sits at 99. 

At this point, DxOMark scores can hardly be considered definitive. You'd be better off checking out the review yourself, though, if only to see the samples. There's a strong trend of Huawei and Xiaomi phones taking turns at the top of the website's leaderboards, for example, despite most other outlets having Apple, Samsung, and Google's offerings as the kings of mobile photography for the most part.

To further buttress that point, it appears that DxOMark has performed those tests on software that isn't available to customers at launch. This is typically the norm with DxOMark's launch reviews. While owners of the P50 Pro may be able to get similar camera performance from their phones eventually, there's no guarantee. So yes, the Huawei P50 Pro is DxOMark's new smartphone camera champ; is it really the best camera phone on the market, though? We'll offer our opinion on that when we have review units in.

Buy the Huawei P40 Pro on Amazon.