Honor 20 Pro

The Honor 20 flaunts a 6.4-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1080×2130 and a pixel density of 398 PPI. An octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC powers the phone coupled with a Mali-G76 GPU. It runs on Android v9.0 (Pie).

It comes in two storage options – 6GB RAM/128GB internal memory and 8GB RAM/256GB internal memory. Unfortunately, there’s no provision to expand the storage capacity any further. It has a 4000mAh non-removable battery. As for the cameras, the Honor 20 features a 48MP AI-enhanced camera along with a secondary 3D ToF sensor on the rear. At the front, you get a 25MP selfie camera. Sensors on the phone include Fingerprint Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Accelerometer, Compass, and Gyroscope.

The Honor 20 is available in four colour options – Sapphire Blue, Midnight Black, Phantom Red and Phantom Blue. In India, the price of the Honor 20 starts at around Rs. 38,000 (for the base variant).

One look at the Honor 20 and the first thing that’ll catch your attention is its Aurora Nanotextured back panel. The glass back panel not only looks gorgeous, but it also reflects light in interesting V-shaped gradient pattern. On the top left portion of the rear panel, you get a 48MP primary camera, and alongside it, the 3D ToF and an LED flash are aligned horizontally. The fingerprint sensor is placed conveniently on the top middle portion of the glass-back panel.

Coming to the front display, it boasts of a notch-less and bezel-less design, thereby promising expansive viewing space. Again, on the top-left corner, you’ll notice a punch-hole that houses the 25MP selfie camera. Interestingly, the phone feels light in hand, despite its big size. The right side of the metal casing holds power and volume buttons, and the left side houses the SIM tray.

On the top, there’s an IR emitter, an ambient light sensor, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. At the bottom, there’s a USB Type-C port, a speaker, and a mic.

On careful observation and usage, the Honor 20 feels like a lighter, albeit thicker variant of the OnePlus 6T.

The Honor 20 flaunts a 6.4-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1080 x 2310 pixels. Honor has gone for the notch-less design this time around and opted for the new ‘Punch-Hole’ design. The selfie camera rests within a tiny hole located at the top left corner of the screen. The design is non-intrusive, and hence, the viewing and gaming experience is great. While the LCD panel looks sharp and bright, it’s FHD+ resolution is certainly no match for the Super AMOLED display of Samsung or even that of other flagship phones in the same price range, such as the Huawei Mate 20 Pro.

The Honor 20 allows you to tweak and adjust the colour mode & temperature to set the warmth and sharpness of the display to your liking. Regardless of its limited resolution, the screen does look bright and vivid. The colours look balanced and never too saturated to hurt your eyes. In dim lighting conditions, you can reduce the brightness levels. However, in bright outdoor settings, even the maximum brightness isn’t enough to watch videos or images clearly, although it’s enough to view the daily news updates, or temperature, time, etc.

The Honor 20 packs in an octa-core (2.6 GHz, Dual core, Cortex A76 + 1.92 GHz, Dual core, Cortex A76 + 1.8 GHz, Quad core, Cortex A55) HiSilicon Kirin 980 CPU with dual NPU, in a tri-cluster arrangement of cores, built in a 7nm fabrication technology. This arrangement supposedly boosts energy efficiency. At present, the HiSilicon Kirin 980 is reputed to be the world’s fastest processor. Also, this is the same processor that powers the Huawei Mate 20 Pro.

The 6GB/8GB RAM, coupled with the powerful Kirin 980 SoC ensures a seamless and lag-free performance. Apps and games load quickly, without any sign of lag. Navigating between apps and multitasking is also a breeze. There’s absolutely no hint of sluggishness anywhere. Coming to gaming, the phone can very well handle graphics-intensive games like PUBG and Asphalt, even in HD settings. You will not experience any frame rate drop or hiccup anytime during gaming sessions. The notch-less display makes the gaming/video streaming experience even more enjoyable.

The cameras of the Honor 20 have garnered a lot of attention and rightly so. The phone is one among the few phones to rock a 48MP rear camera. Not just that, it also has a 3D ToF (Time of Flight) camera coupled with an LED flash. Apart from the standard photo and video modes, the camera app offers many useful features like the HDR imaging, AR Lens, Night Mode, Portrait Mode, Pro Mode, Artist Mode, and Panorama Mode, to name a few. Besides you also get a lot of fun filters.

By default, the camera is set at 12MP, and you’ll have to change it to 48MP if you wish to click shots at the maximum resolution. In daylight, the camera can capture excellent images packed with detail. There’s a considerable difference between the shots taken with the AI feature and without it. For instance, in slightly dim lighting conditions, the AI feature comes in handy as it offers higher contrast and more detailing. However, there’s hardly any difference between the macro shots – both pack in the right amount of detail and keep the noise at a minimum. As for Portrait shots, the camera does offer proper edge detection. Talking about the camera, we cannot afford to miss out on Honor’s AI Ultra Clarity Mode and Night Mode. The former is designed to shoot landscapes in favourable lighting conditions. It allows the camera to click a series of photos and then amalgamates them together to produce final snaps with a significant amount of detail. As for the Night Mode, it allows you to capture even the darkest of scenes, thanks to the 48MP camera’s 4-in-1 superpixel tech and Artificial Image Stabilization (AIS).

Coming to the 25MP selfie camera, it too can capture impressive images with a lot of detail. The front cam harnesses the power of AI to detect faces and scenes successfully. Despite the missing selfie flash, the camera can take beautiful images even in dimly-lit conditions.

While the rear camera allows you to record videos in 4K resolution, video recording maxes out at 1080p for the selfie camera. With the selfie cam, you can opt to record with AI HDR that comes in handy when shooting against the light.

The Honor 20 is equipped with a massive 4000mAh battery. The battery can last an entire day, provided you use the phone for light to medium routine tasks. However, if you’re into gaming or binge-watching your favourite shows on your phone, you will notice the battery percentage dropping quicker than usual.

The phone has all the essential connectivity options like Wi-Fi 802.11, a/ac/b/g/n, Mobile Hotspot, Bluetooth v5.0, USB Type-C port, dual-SIM, FM Radio, GPS with A-GPS and Glonass, and 2G/3G/4G support.

To conclude, Honor 20 is loaded with some fantastic features that make it stand out among its competitors. For instance, the 48MP camera coupled with 3D ToF, the non-intrusive punch-hole design, the excellent battery life, and of course, the powerful Kirin 980 SoC. While it may not be the best of the best, it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. After considering everything, one thing is for sure – for a mid-range device, the Honor 20 won’t disappoint you!