Honor View 20 Pros And Cons
Pros of Honor View 20. Cons Honor View 20
- No wide angle lens or zoom lens
- Not everyone will like the finish
- No water protection
Output: Advanced functionality, excellent autonomy and good price. Unless the sparkling case may not appeal to all customers.
Introduction
Honor View 20 is one of the first flagship smartphones in 2019. We can say that he sets the tone for the mobile device market this year. It has a 48 megapixel camera, 256 GB storage capacity and a hole on the screen for the camera. This is not the most familiar Honor smartphone.
Before us is a cheaper alternative to the flagship devices of Huawei, Samsung or Apple. Of course, there are not some of their advanced features, but the appearance, sensations and behavior are at the highest level.
If you don’t mind a specially sparkling glass finish, this is one of the most attractive smartphones of our time. It is so good that many observers put it in the ratings of the best for purchase at the present time.
Price and Availability
First, the Honor View 20 went on sale in China, where it is called the V20. There he began to be sold in the last days of 2018.
January 22 was the European announcement in Paris. After that, were announced in different countries. sales began on January 23 at a price of 38,000 and 45,000 rubles. for versions with a memory capacity of 6 and 8 GB.
As usual with this manufacturer, we have an apparatus with an excellent ratio of advantages and value. This is a direct competitor to the OnePlus 6T and Xiaomi Mi 8 models.
Key Features of Honor View 20
Honor and Huawei are known for two things: the first to launch new technologies and an excellent quality-to-cost ratio compared to other Chinese manufacturers.
As mentioned above, the Honor View 20 can be considered a competitor to the OnePlus 6T. In both cases, the devices are released by Chinese companies, in both cases they offer flagship features at below the cost of Samsung or Apple smartphones.
The Honor device is more unusual and bold than the model from OnePlus. It uses a glare glass finish, which we have not seen before. In addition, this smartphone is one of the first to have a new Sony sensor with a resolution of 48 megapixels. This camera shows which approach manufacturers will choose this year. And this is similar to what Nokia did in 2012-2013 in the years in the devices 808 PureView and Lumia 1020.
In bright light, all available pixels are used. In low light, pixels combine to improve image quality.
So, instead of a cutout on the screen, there is now a hole for the camera. The diameter of this cutout is 4.5 mm, the camera is located inside under a transparent layer.
Honor does not follow all current smartphone trends. The fingerprint scanner is still on the back of the case, not inside the screen. There is a 3.5 mm headphone jack and even an infrared sensor. Thus, here you can use wired headphones without adapters.
Design
Each manufacturer of modern devices produces devices from a combination of metal and glass. Honor has almost all of these smartphones, from the cheapest to the most expensive.
In this case, a new finish is applied. Light reflecting layers are located under the top layer of glass. This is familiar, but an unusual pattern is used here.
Naturally, the effect of changing colors at different viewing angles is not forgotten. The edges of the apparatus are dark blue. Closer to the center, this blue is becoming brighter. There are also red and black color options.
honor view 20 release date
honor view 20 camera
Honor View 20 can be called bold and eye-catching. For many, he is even too bold, but certainly not boring.
A hole on the screen means that the ratio of screen size to housing is among the highest here. On the smartphone there is no effect of the lack of frames, as is the case with devices with smooth bends around the edges. However, it is quite comfortable to work with, despite the large screen size of 6.4 inches.
The width of the case is 75.4 mm, the thickness is 8.1 mm. This is close to the size of the OnePlus 6T. The device is far from small, like any other modern flagship.
If some hardware components are advanced here, then others are quite ordinary. As mentioned above, there is a classic fingerprint scanner, conveniently located on the back of the case.
At the top edge of the headphone jack. The Samsung Galaxy S10 will not have it, so the View 20 will remain one of the few flagships with a similar connector in 2019.
honor view 20 specifications Price
There is an infrared sensor that allows you to use your smartphone as a remote control. Such an opportunity among smartphone manufacturers was widely popular in 2013, but has been much less common since then.
Screen
The Honor View 20 has a 6.4-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1080 x 2310 pixels. This is not an AMOLED panel and the pixel density is inferior to devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. However, at this price it is not necessary to complain.
Screen clarity is excellent, color saturation is no worse than OLED panels. In the settings there are normal and rich color profiles. The latter provides very vibrant, juicy colors.
If you want a more natural look, choose a normal display mode. In it, the red color in the Chrome logo does not look as bright as in the YouTube logo, as it should be.
As usual for LCD panels, the brightness when viewing at an angle decreases faster than on OLED screens. Contrast also becomes not too good. However, the View 20 screen is very good for its price. There are no obvious shortcomings in comparison with any other smartphone.
The most attention is drawn to the hole on the screen. This is one of the first smartphones with a camera of this kind. Surely in 2019 there will be many more.
It seems that the first attempt by the Chinese manufacturer to make such a hole turned out to be successful. The hole is round with a diameter of 4.5 mm and is located in the upper left corner. Here it does not interfere with the operation of the device.
When you play, it is likely that this area will be closed with your thumb. For this reason, game developers usually do not place any important interface elements here.
Applications that are not optimized for such screens will block the cut-out area. Those who wish can hide this hole, as is done with cutouts on the screens. The plot is closed with a black bar, and notification icons may be displayed here.
It should also be noted that this screen supports playback in HDR10 format. This can be useful if you find such a on YouTube.
Autonomy Honor View 20
Honor View 20 has a 4000 mAh battery. Thanks to him, the duration of work without an outlet is among the best on modern smartphones. Longer life compared to OnePlus 6T, Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and Sony Xperia XZ3.
After a day of work under high load, including several hours of listening to podcasts, chatting on social networks and chatting on WhatsApp, Honor View 20 by the evening has about 40% of the charge. This is an excellent result, due to which, at a more moderate load, the smartphone is surely able to work for two days without an outlet.
This is one of the few smartphones that can do without recharging at night. Of course, if you do not play it all day.
When testing for 90 minutes when watching a at maximum brightness, autonomy is good, but not outstanding. In an hour and a half, the device lost 17%, while the Huawei Mate 20 Pro lost only 10%. Obviously, the performance of the displays of these two devices is very different. The OLED screen on a Huawei smartphone uses less power at maximum brightness, as it should be when compared to LCD screens.
Honor View 20 adopts Huawei SuperCharge fast charge standard. This is a proprietary system like Oppo Vooc, which uses higher voltage and current to increase charging power.
From zero to 50%, the smartphone charges in 24 minutes, up to 70% in 36 minutes, up to 90% in 53 minutes, to a maximum in 1 hour 12 minutes. This is pretty fast.
At the same time, there is no wireless charging. With it, the price of a smartphone would be even higher, and the body is thicker.
View 20 cameras
If you read this review in January or February 2019, the camera set on the Honor View 20 may seem strange. However, later it will surely become ubiquitous.
The rear camera is dual. However, the second one is the 3D ToF sensor instead of the more familiar wide-angle lenses or zoom. Thus, these cameras are different from the Huawei Mate 20 Pro.
You can shoot with 2x zoom, but the data is collected by a Sony IMX586 48MP sensor, not a zoom lens. The second camera can be used in games and augmented reality applications.
ToF cameras were already on smartphones like the Oppo RX17 Pro. However, in this case, Android 9.0 is installed, so there is support for the ARCore framework. But only theoretically.
When you try to launch the Doll House Designer augmented reality app, it crashes. Other ARCore-enabled programs ask for the latest version of the framework. When you try to install it, it is shown that the View 20 smartphone is not included in the list of supported ones.
The ToF camera may be great for augmented reality, but so far the implementation is poor. Let’s hope that soon the situation will change for the better. Perhaps this is a Google bug, not a Honor.
Honor has significantly more control over the main camera and it did an excellent job. This unit has a lot to offer shooting enthusiasts.
If you take pictures from time to time, you can use a resolution of 12 megapixels instead of 48 megapixels. Each pixel in the image is obtained by combining the four pixels of the sensor.
The Sony IMX586 sensor is made with an eye on this technology. The pixel size is only 0.8 microns. For comparison, the Pixel 3 XL sensor has a pixel size of 1.4 microns. The larger this size, the higher the sensitivity to light, the more high-quality photographs become.
In this case, there are all the usual strengths of Huawei / Honor cameras. The device has an excellent dynamic range, so that the image becomes cleaner even when the frame is in bright sun. Such photos are difficult to take by eye, but the device manages to maintain decent detail. Software processing takes maximum advantage of the sensor.
Honor View 20 supports recognition mode using artificial intelligence. The device tries to find out the subject and change the settings for it. On some smartphones, this results in oversaturated colors. Here the effect is less pronounced.
As a result, AI shots have a more natural appearance compared to previous Huawei and Honor models. Here, noise reduction is used a little more so that the graininess is minimized.
Switching between 12 megapixel and 48 megapixel resolutions shows how much the camera depends on software instead of the hardware capabilities of the sensor. There is no big difference in detail. You need to compare with low-resolution photos, where you can see the individual pixels in order to appreciate the standard shooting of 48 megapixels.
Unlike the classic Nokia 808 PureView smartphone, when shooting at maximum resolution, you get a finished photo in JPEG format. At the same time, when starting sales, shooting in RAW format is not supported. In it, the images must be what the sensor sees them before noise reduction is applied.
To get minimal processing, for some reason you need to use AI or shooting modes with enhanced processing. For example, 48MP AI Clarity mode. It takes a few seconds for his work. Here several pictures are combined to get the most clear and detailed image.
If you look closely, you can understand how it works. Several frames are combined into one, noise reduction is less than usual. Because of this, the graininess is higher than in other modes, the bright areas may fade slightly, but the detail is higher compared to the standard shooting of 48 megapixels.
This is useful for filming on holidays to print the image and hang on the wall. The existence of this shooting format says that the RAW image may look pretty coarse.
There is a multiple exposure mode for night shooting. It resembles the Super Night shooting mode on the Huawei P20 Pro. It takes a few seconds to hold the device firmly, because of this you get good purity and a wide dynamic range.
However, even without it, the View 20 is excellent at shooting in the dark. In automatic mode, detail is even better, but the dynamic range is worse. At the same time, photographing is much faster. In any case, the image quality in low light is excellent for this price category, even in the absence of optical stabilization.
Of course, due to the lower price, many of the advantages of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro cameras are missing. There is no ultra-wide angle shooting, and at 2x magnification, the sensor pixels are used instead of the lens.
There are many other modes. Portrait photography blurs the background, and you can also change it using various visual effects. Aperture mode blurs the background when you shoot inanimate objects.
This is not the best Huawei or Honor device in terms of blur, which makes one wonder how much a three-dimensional camera is used here. There are too many errors when blurring.
The is impressive. Supported shooting 4K 30 fps or 1080p 60 fps. In both cases, there is solid software stabilization to compensate for hand tremors. Some mid-range smartphones at a similar price do not have normal stabilization in 4K format, which makes it difficult to use it in many scenarios.
There is also flexible slow motion. Recording speeds of 120, 240 and 960 frames / s are supported. In the latter case, the speed is 32 times slower than normal, the resolution is 720p. There is an automatic mode that is activated when motion is detected in a given section of the frame.
Perhaps the Honor View 20 has the best camera in its price range. Thank you for the new Sony high-resolution sensor. Software processing also contributes.
The 25MP front camera looks more mediocre. However, this can be requested, since it is among the first of its kind, located under a transparent layer of glass.
The quality of the selfie is good, including in low light. It also uses pixel combining technology. However, the quality is inferior to cameras on smartphones like the Pixel 3 XL.
One of the main disadvantages of the camera can be fixed. Several times, the application freezes for a while and does not respond to attempts to switch modes. Perhaps this is a software bug that will be fixed soon.
Software
Honor View 20 runs on Android 9.0 with the Magic UI 2.0 shell. This is a variation of the EMUI shell from Huawei. These two systems have a lot in common.
There is no default list of applications, but you can return it in the settings. The style of the icons is not as clear as on a clean version of Android, but this can be changed using graphic themes.
Honor‘s own software is less than in some shells of other third-party manufacturers. To the left of the home screen is the Google feed, not Honor or Huawei. This page can be disabled.
True, there are still pre-installed applications of the Chinese manufacturer. For example, Huawei AppGallery as an alternative to Google Photos, which no one asked for.
The Honor Store looks like a Honor website link. Party mode allows you to make a bad sound system by synchronizing the speakers of the same smartphones. It sounds better than implemented in practice.
Other preinstalled applications may be more useful. This is a voice recorder, backup tool, weather and Huawei Pay payment system. The Huawei Health program works like Google Fit, tracking fitness. This program has been developed for many years with an eye on smartphones and fitness bracelets, so its quality is quite high.
As it should be on a smartphone with a flagship processor, the device works very quickly and smoothly. Applications load fast too.
Movies and games
When you spend a lot of money on a smartphone, you need to know what you are doing it for. For example, if you want to watchs away from home and play on the go.
For these purposes, View 20 fits perfectly. It has a powerful processor, its screen is large with bright colors. 256 GB of internal memory allows you to store many games ands or photos with high resolution.
This again raises the question of a hole on the screen. How do multimedia applications handle it? If the has a 16: 9 aspect ratio with cropping, the hole does not fall into the frame at all. Black bars are on the left and right, the entire screen size is not used.
If you watch a cinematic with an aspect ratio of 2.39: 1, you can use the entire screen. For example, such a ratio on YouTube. Despite this, the result is not the best.
The hole does not distract when viewing dark scenes, but stands out when showing bright ones. Perhaps, over time, you can not pay attention to it, like a watermark in the picture. However, this time will not come immediately.
There are no such problems in games. Most of them in portrait orientation do not benefit from the extra centimeter around. Landscape orientation in the style of game consoles forces to close the area with a hole with your finger.
It’s hard to imagine that some other smartphone maker would make this hole better than Honor could.
It’s nice to see the headphone jack, but at the top it would be much more convenient. Bottom to connect headphones to it when watching games ands is not very convenient.
Even the most difficult games go to Honor View 20 perfectly. However, worse than smartphones with a Snapdragon 845 processor, such as the Pixel 3 XL. The Snapdragon GPU is more powerful than Kirin.
In 3DMark Slingshot Extreme, the result in OpenGL 3.1 was 3681 points. Pixel 3 XL scored 4400 points. You will only notice the difference in games like Ark: Survival Evolved.
The developer tries to smooth out the drawbacks of the graphics using the GPU Turbo 2.0 function. This is a method of optimizing individual games that receive all available system resources. However, for each game its own profile must be created. Currently there is support for games such as King of Glory, CrossFire, Knives Out and PUBG. Naturally, the latter is the most popular and important on this list.
What are the real benefits of this technology? It is difficult to say, since it is impossible to make comparisons on the same processor with and without GPU Turbo. However, PUBG is doing very well. Performance hardly suffers even at maximum graphics settings.
The speaker also improves the quality of games, although it is not perfect. Bass and midrange are better than usual, which makes the sound more pleasant at maximum volume.
There is only one speaker and it is located on the bottom edge of the device. When you hold the device in landscape orientation during the game, the sound may be muffled.
Performance
The Kirin 980 processor is used. Three clusters provide greater flexibility and theoretically reduce energy consumption. In single-core testing Geekbench 4, the result was 3293 points, in multi-core 9709 points, slightly better against Snapdragon 845.
True, the graphic component is slightly inferior. It uses the 10-core Mali-G76 graphics, unable to compete on an equal footing with the 630. Kirin 980 is produced on the 7 nm manufacturing process, the most advanced at the moment.
Conclusion
View 20 has become one of the best Honor smartphones. The cost compared to the most expensive flagships makes it an attractive purchase. At the same time, there are technologies that these more expensive devices cannot boast of.
A camera with a very high resolution and a hole in the front of the front camera are the main attractions of this smartphone. They set the standard that real flagships can soon follow. True, there is no protection against water, there is no wide-angle lens or wireless recharging. However, given the lower price, this is normal.
