We studied and tested in detail the flagship Honor View 20 with a hole in the screen and other interesting features.
The Chinese company Huawei and its sub-brand Honor, which we talked about in detail in this article, continue to release innovative and powerful gadgets. Devices under both brands are able to compete with the recognized leaders of the smartphone market - Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi. Let's figure out what the flagship called Honor View 20 plans to surprise users with.
Design
Honor View 20 looks stylish and unusual.
The glossy rear panel has a gradient surface - but not the same as we saw in the Huawei P20 Pro, Xiaomi Mi8 Lite or Lenovo Z5s. The iridescent patterns have the shape of triangles that smoothly descend along the body at different angles. It looks original and completely new, so the design is definitely a plus.
True, in the black color that I got, the gradient effect looks the least noticeable and impressive. In other colors - blue, cyan and red - the pattern looks much better. You can admire the rest of the colors here. By the way, the last two, blue and red, belong to the older configuration with increased memory.
On the back cover there is a fingerprint scanner and an interestingly designed camera. The main and additional lenses are located separately. It looks strange, but there is logic in this: an additional peephole is needed for 3D modeling (games and special services that do not work in Russia).
The most interesting thing is in front. The front camera is located right in the left corner of the screen, and the smartphone does not have any visors or drops. Therefore, the framework is minimal. Only the bottom one remains as usual wider than the others.
Verdict, competitors
What we liked about Honor 20 Pro:
- design, 3D design of the back cover;
- excellent all-round camera;
- speed and productivity;
- a lot of memory;
- battery life;
Flaws:
- lack of a slot for MicroSD;
- no minijack for headphones.
Controversial points:
- Useless camera for macro photography.
- no IR port (was in Honor 10);
- Fingerprint scanner on the side.
Honor 20 Pro is an excellent alternative to more expensive flagships. This is a comprehensively balanced and cool-looking smartphone with an excellent camera, performance and a powerful battery, which costs an adequate 35 thousand rubles in official retail.
Of course, there are some annoying limitations such as the lack of a headphone jack and non-expandable memory, but in terms of price-quality ratio, this is one of the best devices in its segment. The Honor 20 Pro has plenty of alternatives, but compared to the flagships of other Chinese manufacturers, our hero stands out due to a truly top-end camera.
Display
The screen itself has a diagonal of 6.4 inches and a resolution of 2310 by 1080 pixels. The picture is very clear and colorful, no complaints at all. I was even more pleased with the color rendition: the display is very rich and bright. This looks especially cool in games. Auto brightness adjustment also works adequately, always accurately adjusting to the lighting. In short, they did their best with the screen.
It’s more interesting to talk about the front camera here, because now it is located directly in the display and is directly related to it. We answer the most important survey: does a hole in the screen interfere with the comfortable use of the phone?
The hole does not interfere with the word at all. You quickly get used to it.
A couple of days - and I was no longer at all surprised by the new design and simply stopped noticing the front camera. But at the same time there was a pleasant feeling from the absence of the annoying visor. Finally they will leave our lives! If, nevertheless, the hole in the display causes discomfort, it can be hidden behind a black screen strip - as it worked with the bangs.
Technical characteristics of Honor Veiw 20
- 6.4-inch display with a resolution of 2310 x 1080 pixels (IPS, 19:9, 398 ppi)
- HUAWEI Kirin 980 processor (7 nm, 2x Enyo 2.5 GHz cores + 2x Enyo 2.0 GHz + 4x Ananke 1.8 GHz)
- graphics Mali-G76 MP10 (720 MHz)
- RAM 6/8 GB
- 128/256 GB storage without SD card support
- rear camera 48 MP (f/1.8, 4K UHD video) + separate sensor for portrait mode
- front camera 25 MP (f/2.0, Full HD video)
- 4000 mAh battery with Honor SuperCharge fast charging
- OS Android 9.0 + Magic UI 2.0.1 shell
- Ports: USB Type-C (OTG works) and 3.5 mm audio output
- sensors: light and distance sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, fingerprint scanner
- Dimensions: 156.9 x 75.4 x 8.1 mm, 180 grams
Wireless standards:
- 4G LTE Cat 13 (bands 1 - 8, 19, 20, 28, 38, 39, 40, 41)
- Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4 and 5.0 GHz), Bluetooth 5.0, NFC
- two Nano SIM
- GPS, Glonass, Beidou, Galileo
I like the situation with the connectors on the Honor View 20: they put a modern USB Type-C on the bottom edge, and they didn’t forget to place a hole for headphones on the top. And taking into account NFC and support for two Nano SIM cards at once, you get a complete set. The only thing missing is a slot for an SD drive.
There is also a full bouquet of unlocking methods: there is a fingerprint scanner (on the back) and face unlock. Everything works clearly and without failures; the finger and face are recognized correctly almost always.
Cameras and photo capabilities
Now let's move on to the most epic part: the cameras, of which there are as many as 5 pieces per carcass! In fact, the manufacturer got confused and decided to make a pocket kit for amateur photographers for a wide variety of scenarios: capturing nature and architecture, capturing a steep street from an ambush, making portraits with good bokeh, photographing pistils and stamens, getting cool shots of a city at night without a tripod...
So, an outstanding (in every sense) main block of three sensors: on top there is a 16-MP wide (f/2.2) at 117° (in fact, it completely covers the natural viewing angle of a person), in the middle there is a main 48-MP module from Sony with an unprecedented even for camera phone with f/1.4 and 4-axis optical stabilization, below an 8-megapixel telephoto with 3x optical zoom and f/2.4 aperture. Below it you can see the black eye of the laser autofocus. The flash and 2-megapixel macro lens (f/2.4) are located slightly to the side and recessed into the body.
The difference between the PRO version and the regular “Twenty” is the presence of not only a 4th sensor, but also dual optical stabilization along 4 axes, which allows you to achieve a sharp picture in the most difficult conditions. In addition, the installed ToF sensor allows you to take 3D portraits. Not the most necessary feature, but just so you know.
Main camera interface
Interface: from wide to 30x zoom
The standard image resolution is 12 MP ; to get a more detailed image at 48 MP (and there is a separate category “48 MP - Ultra-clear with AI”), you will have to go into the settings separately. RAW format is also available if you shoot in professional mode.
Thanks to the presence of a telephoto lens, the device provides 3x magnification without loss of quality, and is generally capable of 30x zoom. Of course, the image is incredibly noisy, but using a smartphone as binoculars is quite convenient.
Photo examples: from 117° to 30x zoom
Night mode pleases with its simplicity and accessibility: you don’t need a tripod, the AI itself will assemble a cool, detailed image (maximum of 16 shots). Photographing fireworks is perfect. At the same time, the night mode can make the zoomed frame clearer and more detailed.
The HONOR 20 PRO has a separate “Aperture” mode, which is great for subject photography with maximum bokeh.
Portrait mode is not overloaded with meticulous appearance settings: you can only specify the general level of anti-aliasing. AI carefully and accurately separates the figure from the background, creating a nice blur where it's really needed.
Examples of photos in various lighting conditions
Examples of portrait photos
Macro photo examples
The camera shoots 4K video at 30 FPS. You can only get to 60 in FHD; stabilization is also included in the same resolution. There is a time-lapse and a somewhat tricky slow-motion effect in the arsenal, with which it is difficult to guess what exact moment will fall into a spectacular slow-mo.
Video cutting
The front camera, which is originally located in the left corner of the display and allows you to develop creativity in the selection of wallpaper, has received a serious resolution of 32 MP and a fairly fast lens with an aperture value of f/2.0 .
Artificial intelligence works very carefully with selfies, without going overboard with enhancements and carefully blurring the background. The main thing is not to try to scatter the pictures too much, otherwise they will crumble into pixels.
If you rummage through the settings, you will find 3D emoji and a set of augmented reality effects, so you can make yourself and videos with some cute ears for fun without third-party applications. The front camera also makes GIFs and 10-second AR videos, and also shoots video at 720p (30 fps), and adequately records sound.
Front camera interface
Examples of selfie photos
Having earned 111 points in the DxOMark , HONOR 20 PRO is literally hot on the heels of Huawei’s older photo flagships. Our hero has an unprecedented f/1.4 aperture, but a weaker hybrid zoom. The P30 Pro already has 5x magnification, more subtle adjustment nuances (including the choice of film, which is not available in Honor, a wider selection of filters) and those same magic lenses from Leica that give special crystal clarity to the image. In a direct comparison, we find that our 20 PRO is obviously distorted into magenta, which can be corrected already at the post-processing stage. Filling images in Lightroom demonstrates that the top-end HONOR compresses the images quite heavily: when enlarged, outright pixel smudges appear. But on the smartphone screen everything looks juicy, bright and cool. More than enough for Instagram.
A separate macro sensor, which focuses already at a distance of 4 cm, is purely subjective; it seems to be needed more for quantity and show-off: a resolution of 2 MP means working only in good lighting. It’s easier to buy a special removable one for the main sensor or even simply sprinkle it.
System
What is Magic UI? Where the hell is my EMUI?!
Yes, this time the Chinese manufacturer abandoned the classic OS and brought in a brand new one. It was first inserted into the recent Honor Magic 2 for the Chinese market - in fact, hence the name.
The differences from the usual EMUI are more cosmetic; I didn’t notice any particular difference in operation or capabilities. It is important to note that the shell does not provide for the use of on-screen buttons at all: only gesture control, as in the iPhone. And personally, it seemed to me that the interface began to look a little worse - in terms of colors and the overall picture.
Performance
You can’t find fault with the speed - Honor View 20 plows like a real flagship.
And this is expected, with such and such hardware and parameters. Benchmarks will confirm my words with their high scores. And by the way, in AnTuTu the numbers will become even higher than usual if you run the test in a special performance mode. This may indicate that in heavy games, the View 20 increases speed to become even more powerful - this is precisely what GPU Turbo 2.0 technology should be responsible for.
Geekbench 4
Androbench
AnTuTu
AnTuTu in performance mode
The only thing is that sometimes some minor graphical glitches arise: for example, some icon or bar does not load immediately. But, most likely, the damp firmware of the new operating system should be blamed here, and not the device itself.
Smartphone games click like seeds. Which is also quite natural for its hardware. PUBG Mobile runs on the highest settings without a single problem, and in 40 minutes it eats up 7% of the battery - the result is excellent. World Of Tanks at the same time takes up 10% of the charge and flies at maximum speed in the same way. And one more thing: during games, the smartphone practically does not heat up, because NINE Cooling Technology water cooling is installed inside. Super!
The worst thing you could take from Apple is now from Honor
The main principle of the company: divide and conquer. This is expressed in the fact that each market will have its own version, with its own frequencies and language version of the firmware.
As you know, it is possible to flash a Chinese Honor/Huawei into a “Russian-speaking” one, but not in the most traditional ways: the firmware bootloader is closed and cannot be unlocked.
It is likely that in the near future, developers will introduce additional protection for system areas according to Google standards, which will make it impossible to obtain root rights.
For an Android smartphone, the lack of root with a rather intrusive proprietary firmware is death for an amateur.
However, Honor learned a lesson from the actions of the creators of the “flagship killers” and listened to users. That is why, in addition to the NFC required in Europe, the View 20 has a mini-jack for headphones.
A serious advantage, since no other flagship “Chinese” is equipped with it (except for ZTE Axon 9 , which is not interesting to you anyway).
Autonomy
Under the hood there is a battery with a capacity of 4000 Mach. If you actively use your smartphone (with games, lots of social networks and the Internet, camera, music and everything else), the battery will definitely last until late in the evening. With medium loads, I stretched the charge for a day and a half.
With such hardware, the Honor View 20 has decent autonomy.
What about charging? They didn’t give me a kit with a native power adapter, but from someone else’s 5V/2A unit the battery is fully charged in 2.5 hours. However, the manufacturer himself states that, taking into account fast charging from a native adapter, 100% will be reached in 1.5 hours. I can’t check it, so we take our word for it.
Connection quality
Huawei smartphones are famous for their excellent call quality, and the Honor 20 Pro is no exception. The device maintains excellent communication even in problem areas and has a high-quality microphone. At first you will have to get used to the conversational speaker; for the sake of framelessness, it has shrunk to a small slot, and therefore sometimes you will have to adjust and find in what position you can hear your interlocutor better.
The smartphone works in LTE networks and has fast Wi-Fi, of course dual-band. Navigation is also in perfect order - with active GPS, the phone does not heat up, the geolocation is accurate, and connection to satellites in the cold is carried out in 10-15 seconds. There is also an NFC module that supports contactless payment and travel card emulation. In general, there are no complaints about the communication capabilities of the Honor 20 Pro.
Sound
The speaker (the only one, so no stereo) produces mediocre quality sound. In general, you can listen to music and even enjoy it, but the sound is hoarse and there is unnecessary noise. There's also a lack of low end. I won’t give the external speaker a negative rating, but it doesn’t offer us anything outstanding either.
But with the sound in the headphones everything is super.
The sound is loud, clear, without wheezing or noise, with clear highs and lows. In short, you won't find fault. Listening to music is a pleasure. I carried out all the tests in my native music player, and I will say that it is good and there is no need to install a third-party one. Unless you need any special settings and effects.
Bottom line
Honor View 20 turned out to be an excellent smartphone: productive, fast, with a great camera and great sound in the headphones. And also with an original design. In general, the device is good in almost everything. The only thing that may raise questions is the mediocre external speaker and some camera functionality (lack of zoom in the highest quality, for example). In other words, you can only find some nuances in the device, and not any shortcomings.
The only stumbling block may be the cost of the smartphone. It is, of course, adequate for a flagship-level device, but this price tag will still seem high to many. So, you can buy Honor View 20 in Russia for:
- 37,990 rubles, if you are satisfied with the minimum configuration of 6/128 GB
- 44,990 rubles, if you want to buy the coolest version with 8/256 GB
Let me remind you that the older version also has a brighter, richer design. So the choice can be tough. However, if external design does not play a big role, then the low-end configuration is an excellent option, powerful and allowing you to save a little.
Honor Honor View 20
