The Huawei P20 smartphone along with the P20 Pro will soon hit the shelves early next month, they promise to deliver a re-imagined camera experience with a breakthrough Leica triple camera on the Huawei P20 Pro, an advanced dual camera on the Huawei P20, and powerful artificial intelligence. The smartphones were recently showcased at an event on Tuesday along with the Porsche Design Huawei Mate RS. The expected P20 Lite was not mentioned at the event but it does exist and will be announced soon.
The camera would be the biggest selling point of this smartphone but it offers a lot more than just a good camera. So without further ado; Here is our first impressions and all the details you want to know about the Huawei P20 range.
- Designed To Stand Out:
The Huawei P20 and P20 pro are two really eye catching smartphones featuring premium looking glossy glass backs with gentle curves that make them feel really great in the hand. The vertically oriented camera setup is placed at the top left corner of the phone, you can also find Huawei and Leica branding at the back. Flip the phone over and you will find an edge to edge display with a small notch cut out on the top which I hate the most but I guess Apple has set a weird for smartphones in 2018, it still has a bit of chin which provides enough space for housing fingerprint scanner.
They come in an impressive range of color options, the one that I like the most is called Twilight which has a gradient finish that fades from purple to blue and then green making the phone stand out.
- Display:
Both the phones feature impressive looking Full HD+ displays with the slightly taller aspect ratio of 18.7:9 and a resolution of 2240×1080. The screen on the P20 is a 5.8 inch LCD display while the P20 Pro is a larger 6.1 inch OLED screen. You will also get HDR compatibility here allowing you to enjoy videos even more on your smartphones. The contrast, saturation and color reproduction is all on point. The only down point of this display is the top notch which if you find really bothersome can be hidden using the notch option available in the settings menu that basically fills the space around it with a solid black background giving your P20 a more traditional look.
- The Best Cameras:
The camera is the most exciting part of this phone, ever since Huawei announced its partnership with Leica they have been known for making great smartphone camera. The company took things up a notch (no pun intended) in the camera department which makes this phone, as of today, the highest rated smartphone camera by DxOMark.
The P20 pro sports a triple camera system which consists of a 20-megapixel Monochrome camera, a 40-megapixel camera with f/1.8 lens and a Telephoto lens with an 8-megapixel camera. The P20 on other hand has a dual camera setup which consists of a 20-megapixel RGB sensor paired with a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor. The selfie camera has also received a great improvement and you get 24-megapixel shooter up front on both the devices.
These cameras are also loaded with AI and tons of software improvements which we will talk about in our full review. Just like the Samsung Galaxy S9, this phone can also record super slow-mo 960fps videos at 720p resolution. Huawei claims that the P20’s low-light abilities are so good that it can shoot at one lux of light, which is basically close to pitch dark.
Hardware:
The phones come loaded with Huawei’s in-house Kirin 970 processor which is used primarily to cater the AI needs of the device. The P20 sports 4 Gigs of RAM while the P20 comes with 6 Gigs of RAM, both the phones have a generous 128GB of storage space as the standard. Neither model has a headphone jack and no room for expandable storage. You also don’t get wireless charging which Huawei says wireless charging speeds are not fast enough to justify the feature. However, you do get fast charge technology which supercharges your phone from zero to 58 percent in 30 minutes. The P20 Pro features a slightly bigger battery than the P20 and also has better water resistance IP52 rating compared to the typical IP67 rating.
Early Verdict:
The Huawei P20 series seems like a huge step by the company, these phones offer some pretty great and unique features but also come with a few sacrifices like a top notch and no headphone jack. We can not surely say anything about the performance and image quality for now, you will have to wait up for the full review for that, so stay tuned for more info. If you have any queries make sure to drop down a comment below.