Huawei P20 Pro

Huawei P20 Pro comes with a killer camera set that has the potential to capture images in low light. The phone contains a whopping 40-MP primary camera, which when paired with a 20-MP monochrome camera and a wonderful 8-MP telephoto, shoots this phone to the top of every photographer’s wishlist. As the company advertised, these cameras are precision-engineered to capture detailed, rich, atmospheric images. Available at a price of Rs. 59,999, in the range of other competing flagship phones, P20 Pro easily surpasses its competition when it comes to photography.

While it might lag behind in performance, Huawei offers a powerful battery at 4,000 mAh. Couple that with an amazing fast-charging capability and Huawei makes sure to give you enough value for your money. The set comes with Android Oreo and EMUI 8.1 with Huawei’s own customization, which might be challenging for regular Android users to navigate.

Huawei P20 Pro brings the ‘shine’ into your hands. The Rounded-off Gorilla Glass has a  metal finish, and the chrome colour comes with high reflection which catches your eye. But this makes it vulnerable to finger smudges and easy dust collection. It is IP67 water-resistant and can easily handle being dunked in 1m water for 30 minutes, which we recommend you not test!

There’s a notch but Huawei presents one of the smallest notches, so it won’t be much of a distraction. But unfortunately, it doesn’t come with a headphone jack.

The display is not that great. Having a resolution of 2240 x 1080, this 6.1 inches OLED screen is not that sharp, compared to its competitors. Even when it comes to peak full-screen brightness, P20 Pro falls short with only 461nits compared to 574-nit of iPhone X and 620-nit of Galaxy S9+.

As usual, Huawei uses its own chipset – the new Kirin 970. While the performance clocks at par with the Snapdragon 835, it falters against the new Snapdragon 845 inside Galaxy S9. The overall performance of P20 Pro was 6,240 – easily beaten by Galaxy s9+’s 8295. However, this device packs a 6GB RAM which gives enough room for the processor to multitask. Kirin 970 provides a dedicated AI sub-processor which helps in-camera recognition and intelligent filters. In terms of the graphic chipset, Huawei could just get it up to 2,991 which is very low compared to the 4,634 of Galaxy S9. Rest assured, you can play heavy games, but there might be some lagging.

With the world’s first triple-lens smartphone, Huawei stands out in the crowd of competing smartphones. It contains a primary camera of 40 megapixels, which has been paired with a 20-MP monochrome lens and an 8-MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom. Huawei has also brought in an increase in the size of the image sensor, making it much larger than flagships of Samsung, Google, and Apple.

With this sensor, you can capture crisp images even in low light. The P20 Pro collects all the visual information and binds the pixel together to give better colour accuracy and less visual noise. But that isn’t everything. Huawei also comes with a Master AI that makes changes in exposure parameters to match the scenes and objects with the help of the inbuilt neural processor.

Two major breakthrough features introduced in this device is – Night Mode and AI Stability. The Night Mode keeps the shutter open for 4 seconds till more light reaches the sensor. Don’t worry about wobbly hands though – the AI Stabilization discards the use of tripods and removes any hand-shake from the image. But the night mode is best for immobile objects; when it comes to moving objects, it falters a bit.

Huawei kills it again in their battery department. With a whopping 4,000-mAh battery (500 mAh larger than that of Samsung Galaxy S9+) this device holds enough juice for 14 hours and 13 minutes while streaming web pages. It wins against Pixel 2 XL. lasting 12 hours and 9 minutes and the iPhone 8 Plus at 11 hours and 16 minutes. Add to that the company’s Supercharge protocol makes the charge go from 0% to 80% within just 45 minutes! However, the P20 Pro does not allow the currently standard wireless charging unlike the Mate 20 Pro – so that’s a downer.

The design and display of P20 Pro are not up to the mark. You do lose out on headphones but that’s becoming a standard now. But it gives you an amazing low-light photography experience. Pair that with an amazing battery life, and you have an efficient high-end phone. However, it does not provide the sharp display and performance expected from a phone that priced at par with other flagship products. Samsung Galaxy S9 wins in the battle for display and performance in this price range. Although, once you turn the dedicated Night Mode on, the Huawei will sprint ahead by a large margin. If you want to capture the world at night, this is the product to go for.