I'm using the Huawei P10 with its Leica camera.
Recently I noticed very visible large block-like artefacts in the sky. These artefacts are present on some pictures, but not on all, and they are already present in the photos before editing them.
Here are some examples:
This picture was taken with 1/978 seconds, f/2.2, ISO 50, resolution set to 8 MP:
This picture was taken with 1/1220 seconds, f/2.2, ISO 50, resolution 8 MP:
Taken with 1/797 seconds, f/2.2, ISO 50, resolution 8 MP:
Note how the artefacts follow the contour of the trees.
What could be the reason for such artefacts? Is something with the camera hardware wrong? Or is it a bad post-processing by the camera app?
As I said, the artefacts occur on some pictures, but not on all. The pictures where they don't occur are completely fine and have a smooth sky.
EDIT
Here is a good picture for comparison. I took it just 1 minute after the first of the above pictures. The brown field on the left side is the same as the field in the foreground of the first picture above.
In this picture the sky is rendered correctly, there are none of these artefacts. And basically same scene, taken just 1 minute after the one above which has the artefacts.
This was taken with 1/952 seconds, f/2.2, ISO 50, 8 MP resolution.
So, is it likely that it's a sensor problem, if some pictures are still completely ok?
EDIT 2
I took some more shots and finally found out what's causing the artefacts: the digital zoom. All the pictures that are taken without zoom are ok, and most (but not all) with any level of zoom have these artefacts.
The Huawei P10 actually has, what it calls, 2x Hybrid Zoom, a digital zoom which is supposed to allow the level of detail of an optical zoom up to a level of 2x, by the means of two separate lenses. I don't know exactly how it works, but there seems to be something messed up in the current implementation.
As mentioned, all the pictures taken without this hybrid zoom are ok, so the bug must be in the implementation of this zoom. I will try to report this to Huawei (build number VTR-LR29C636B151).