Huawei has recently been a leader in the mobile device market in terms of originality and new technologies, and therefore the release of the P20 Pro was anticipated by geeks around the world. Three lenses in the main camera - this has never happened before, and one of them has an incredible resolution - a fantastic 40 MP. What other goodies has the Chinese manufacturer prepared for us, which has seriously taken up the redistribution of the clearing in the premium price segment - read in our review today.
Huawei P20 Pro
Price and main characteristics
The gadget will go on general sale only on April 14, but the price has already been announced - the smartphone will cost 54,990 rubles, which, of course, is not little, but much cheaper than the flagship iPhone or the latest Galaxy S9+.
Specifications:
• Screen: 6.1”, 2240×1080, 407 ppi, automatic brightness adjustment, OLED; • Processor: HiSilicon Kirin 970, 8 cores (4xCortex-A73 2.36 GHz + 4xCortex-A53 1.8 GHz), + i7 coprocessor + Mali-G72 MP12 graphics accelerator; • RAM: 6GB; • internal memory: 128 GB; • camera: three main cameras 40+20+8 MP + front 24 MP; • communications: 4G LTE cat.18, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4/5GHz), GPS, GLONAS; • battery: 4000 mAh, fast charging; • dimensions: 149.1 x 70.8 x 7.65 mm; • weight: 165 grams.
Design and build
Let's start our review of the Huawei P20 smartphone with a description of the appearance. It consists of two 2.5D glass panels connected by a metal frame. The metal is matte to the touch and not slippery, which cannot be said about the panels. To reduce the risk of it slipping out of your hands, it is better to immediately put a protective case on your phone. The panels are resistant to minor scratches.
The corners of the body are rounded, the transition lines are smooth. The back side is decorated with a special backing. Some colors have a gradient coloring. On the back side, at the top left, there is a vertical camera block, which stands out a couple of centimeters above the plane of the lid. Below it is an LED flash. Below, vertically, is the brand logo.
Honor gave the bulk of the front surface area to the screen. The aspect ratio is 18.7:9. Frameless model. The side and top frames are very thin, 3 mm each. In the center of the upper edge, 4.5 mm thick, there is a so-called bang - a wider area on which the rear camera, brightness and proximity sensors are located. There is also an event indicator. The corners follow the contours of the body with smooth lines.
Below the display, in a 1 cm wide area, there is one mechanical button on which the fingerprint sensor is located. The button is used to control navigation. By moving the bottom of the display you can call up three on-screen control buttons.
On the right side there are volume and power buttons. The buttons are large enough to be easy to use. Their movement is clear, not very hard. On the left side there is a slot for two nano-SIM cards. As with all P20 models, the manufacturer did not find room for an additional memory card. On the top edge there is only a microphone, which works in the noise reduction system and when recording video. There is no IR port.
The bottom part is equipped with a Type-C port. Not only does it have a more modern look than a regular MicroUSB connector, but it also allows you to increase data transfer speeds. On both sides of it there are grilles, under one of which the speaker is hidden, and plastic covers above the antennas.
Equipment and appearance
Huawei P20 Pro is made of glass and metal, which is a kind of trend today. The “island” on the front panel immediately catches your eye - Apple products could not help but influence the design of the Chinese, and therefore placing the front camera and lens on this recess is unlikely to convince anyone that it was added for a utilitarian purpose. The smartphone is available in three colors – black, blue and twilight.
The ergonomics of the firmware are almost identical to the base P20, the difference lies in the presence of a third main camera, but it found its place exactly under the first two, so there are no unexpected experiments. We won’t describe the location of the power buttons and the SIM card slot - everything is standard, but we note that the gadget has IP67 protection, so those who like to drop their smartphones in the bathroom will be safe.
Huawei P20 Pro (Plus) - advantages and disadvantages
- + nice appearance;
- + high quality display;
- + powerful filling;
- + a lot of memory;
- + unusual camera with high-aperture optics;
- + powerful front camera;
- + capacious battery;
- + fingerprint scanner on the front.
- - non-unique design;
- - weak video core;
- - huge price tag.
If with other brands from the Middle Kingdom the cost of more than $500 is puzzling, then with Huawei this is not the case. More precisely, we are almost accustomed to the fact that Huawei is expensive, but sometimes the brand’s pricing policy still causes complete misunderstanding. Huawei looks especially stupid compared to its competitors when its limited edition flagships are more expensive than top-end devices from Apple or Samsung.
Screen
The display has grown slightly compared to the P20, its diagonal is 6.1 instead of 5.8 inches. The OLED matrix shows amazing results; the picture looks very good at a resolution of 2240x1080 pixels. It is clear that flagships have not allowed misfires in such aspects as viewing angles or, for example, brightness range for a long time, but I still want to praise the engineers from Huawei - the image is incredibly rich and perfectly readable in the bright sun, and at minimum settings you can read in the dark no harm to eyes.
In principle, the screen is not something unique - we saw more resolution, and the diagonal, and the frames here are quite familiar today. But all together it really makes a very pleasant impression and you don’t want to part with the device; the colors in the surrounding April reality are still noticeably inferior to digital ones.
Display
80% of the front panel is occupied by a FullHD+ display, which once again reminds us that this is a flagship. A diagonal of 5.8 inches can be considered the optimal solution, because thanks to the minimal frames the phone is perceived as compact and fits well in the hand. The most annoying thing is the top notch, but there is an effective way to solve the problem. In the settings menu, you can set the display operating mode and there you can choose to have a small black strip appear on top, covering it. In my opinion, the P20 looks much more beautiful without it. You can decide for yourself in what format the device’s screen will work, for which we can say a huge thank you to the manufacturer.
The Huawei P20 review introduces the fact that it uses a high-quality IPS matrix with excellent viewing angles and natural color reproduction. The high pixel density of 429 ppi ensures good picture detail and the absence of even a hint of grain. In the settings, you can enable smart mode, in which the color temperature changes depending on the conditions around you. You can also customize the color rendering to suit yourself - make the picture more realistic or, on the contrary, saturated. We haven’t forgotten about the vision protection mode, which filters out harmful blue radiation and warm colors predominate on the display.
The brightness reserve is very large. At minimum it will be comfortable to work with the phone in the dark, and maximum is enough for bright sunny days. Right out of the box, the image looks great, I didn’t even have the desire to delve into the settings and change the color temperature to suit myself. A review of the P20 revealed that it uses an unusual aspect ratio of 18.7:9. This is due to the fact that bangs were left on top. As a result, more content can be placed, which makes working with the phone as convenient as possible. Not all applications have yet been adapted to this format, but they adapt to it using pre-installed software. If you use your smartphone not in full-screen mode, then in landscape orientation there will be black bars on the left and right, occupying part of the usable space.
Performance
Huawei prefers to equip its smartphones with chipsets of its own production, which often causes skepticism among Qualcomm adherents, but the HiSilicon Kirin 970 is still a flagship piece of hardware, and therefore all the standard complaints about the processors of this manufacturer are inappropriate. Owners of Huawei Mate 10 Pro are already familiar with this eight-core monster, designed to work with artificial intelligence, and were satisfied, and the P20 Pro also uses the ultra-modern video GPU Mali G72, which will last for several years.
The RAM here is standard for flagships - 6 GB, and the internal memory is 128, and the use of memory cards is not provided. To be honest, this is a rather strange decision; there are many consumers interested in the maximum amount of memory, so it would be reasonable to release at least a 256 GB version, but so far there are not even rumors about such an option. We can talk about actual performance after the release, that is, in a week, but it is already clear that the gadget will go to the very top based on its performance in any benchmarks.
Huawei P20 Pro (Plus) - a preliminary review of an interesting flagship with a triple camera
So, recently the editor of one of the popular technology publications, Roland Quandt, shared press renderings of the upcoming new Huawei P20 and P20 Pro products, and also named their European cost. And neither the first nor the second surprised, or rather impressed, but rather in a negative way. It's all about the far from unique design and inflated price tags. China, so to speak, showed itself in all its glory: it copied the appearance and lowered the price - we are against this. But enough ranting, let's get down to business.
Huawei P20 Pro - design
We knew roughly what the new product would look like for a long time, but today there is no doubt that all these unibrows, framelessness, triple camera, etc. are true. What can we see from the front? Relatively thin frames, like the iPhone X, a fairly large area at the bottom, on which there is a fingerprint scanner in the Home button, the main camera and sensors located in the bangs, also known as the unibrow. Is it cute? - yes, definitely. Is it unique? - not at all! We understand that it is very difficult to combine a full-screen design and cameras/sensors/speakers; you cannot do without the same unibrow, but for some reason Samsung does not seek to copy everything from Apple and offers a unique design. Huawei is one of the world leaders in the mobile market, they could really try.
So, from behind we are greeted by a glass panel and, attention, a triple camera located vertically. And again, a reference to the iPhone X, since before its release, manufacturers either rarely did this or did not do it at all. The fashion for bangs and vertical cameras immediately appeared after the release of 10 and it’s stupid to argue with that. However, the Huawei P20 Pro camera looks very good and very attractive. To understand, Redmi Note 5 received a terrible-looking vertical dual camera.
Huawei P20 Pro (Plus) – display, memory, processor and battery
In fact, we live in a non-unique time, so to speak, when devices from different manufacturers are very similar to each other both in appearance and in hardware parameters. Only a few stand out, and in terms of hardware, Huawei belongs to this group. The manufacturer does not use other people's developments in the flagship segment and installs only its own processors in top-end devices. So, Huawei P20 Pro will receive a HiSilicon Kirin 970 chip, which is at the level of the Snapdragon 835 in terms of the processor unit and is significantly inferior to it in terms of graphics. That is, the Kirin 970 lags even further behind the modern 845 dragon.
The memory in the device is expected to be 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage – you shouldn’t count on anything less. Anything less will be available on the Huawei P20, so you shouldn’t expect a cheap P20 Pro and that’s not very good.
Everything has finally become clear with the cameras and we know what kind of sensors the triple photo module will be presented with. We don’t know exactly how everything will work, but here’s what we were told: the main sensor will have a resolution of 12 MP (RGB), the additional sensor will be monochrome at 20 MP, and the third will have a resolution of 15 MP and a telephoto lens. That is, the device will learn to take more believable portrait photos, as well as optical zoom, and plus the ability to shoot photos in black and white. Whether all three cameras will be able to interact simultaneously is still a mystery. At the same time, the front camera will have a 24 MP sensor and, most likely, a flash.
Based on the display, it is known that the device will be equipped with a 6.1-inch screen with an OLED matrix and a resolution of 2280x1080 pixels with an aspect ratio of 19:9. It is interesting that the regular Huawei P20 will receive an IPS matrix and OLED will be the exclusive privilege of the Pros.
And finally, about the battery capacity. The device will receive a capacious 4000 mAh battery, which, paired with a fairly energy-efficient processor and OLED display, will give at least two days of active use. Fast charging Huawei Super Charge 3.0 will also find its place in the smartphone. In addition, since the Huawei P20 Pro will be made of glass, there is simply a huge chance that the gadget will also receive wireless charging technology.
Camera
Of course, the main purpose of the device will be photo and video shooting. Three main cameras - this has never happened before in mass production, although renders of the Galaxy S9/S9+ with three lenses depicted on them are already beginning to appear.
The most powerful sensor has a resolution of 40 megapixels and an f/1.8 lens aperture, which allows it to produce images of incredible quality and detail. The second module is monochrome 20 megapixels and f/1.6 aperture, which expands the dynamic range and helps convey midtones. The third provides digital zoom, but it is wise to use it only in excellent daylight, otherwise the footage will come out very average for such technology. The smartphone has a choice of ISO values in the range from 100 to 51,200, while even top gadgets have an upper limit of around 6400. We can talk about the results after the commercial sample goes on sale, but in any case it will be a bomb. The front camera has a lot of features related to the work of artificial intelligence, so those who like to change real lighting to the desired one and create 3D models of their own heads should already be preparing to run to the store on April 14.
Speaker, sound quality
The device is equipped with two stereo speakers that sound very clear and loud. Dolby Atmos technology is available, and a complex artificial intelligence algorithm is responsible for noise reduction, so there will be no problems with conveying information to the interlocutor.
Not much is known about the musical component of the gadget; the company spends a lot of effort to convey to the public all the advantages of the camera and the work of neural networks, but we can safely assume that with a high-quality headset and with a little witchcraft in the settings, you can certainly get excellent and rich sound. But we’ll learn about all the audiophile things like clarity of highs and thick bass a little later.
Battery
Taking into account the energy-efficient processor of its own production, Kirin 970, and the OLED matrix, one could imagine that the Chinese would not bother with the battery at all, they say, it will do. But it didn’t turn out that way, 4000 mAh is an excellent indicator for such a system, so the device can easily work for 1.5 - 2 days in active use mode, and if you want to spend the whole day off watching your favorite TV series, then you don’t have to look for charging - gadget with video and 20 hours of video in a row.
The situation with games is more complicated; unfortunately, some masterpieces of the gaming industry are not well optimized and consume battery power at unprecedented speeds, but you can still count on 6-7 hours of battery life. And this is practically the top figure on the market, if you don’t take into account gadgets with incredible 10,000 mAh batteries, which, by the way, don’t even hold up to top-end toys.
Autonomy
The Huawei P20 smartphone is powered by a 3400 mAh battery. A full charge is enough for reading for 16 hours, watching videos for 10 hours, and playing 3D games for 2.5 hours. All indicators are slightly less than those of the Pro version.
Huawei SuperCharge fast charging is supported from a 4.5V and 2.5A charger. There is no wireless charging.
