Huawei, the Chinese, smartphone giant has really redefined the smartphone camera with the launch of their P20 Pro smartphone. The Huawei P20 Pro offers 3 rear cameras, that’s right! not one not two but three rear cameras. This is the very first smartphone to take the camera game to the next level. We were lucky to get our hands on the Huawei P20 Pro at the Ejaz Art Gallery in Lahore where the smartphone was showcased for the first time in Pakistan.
While the highlight of the event was the camera capabilities of the phone, however, there is much more to the P20 Pro, both good and bad, which we will be going over in this article.
Huawei P20 Pro Form Factor and Build Quality
Right off the bat, the first thing you will notice when you pick the Huawei P20 is the premium feel of the device. The body constitutes glass on the front and back while the frame is made of high-quality aluminum. The body feels very sturdy and tough, while the glass gives it a nice premium look.
The form factor is reminiscent of any 2017-18 smartphone flagship. The smartphone features a bezel-less display with a notch at the top and a little chin at the bottom. The notch houses the front camera, the earpiece and the proximity sensor.
While the bezel is not the thinnest we have seen on a smartphone, it’s not too bad either. the corners of the screen are rounded as can be seen. There is a physical button at the bottom of the phone. The volume rocker keys and the lock key are on the ride side of the smartphone. The sim slot is on the left side while the USB C port is at the bottom along with two speakers. The phone comes in four colors, namely: Twilight, midnight blue, Pink Gold and Black. The Twilight color looks absolutely beautiful and we loved it, there is really no reason for anyone to get another color on this phone, the Twilight is simply breathtaking. Moreover, there is no headphone jack. Bummer!
Huawei P20 Pro Display
The Huawei P20 Pro features a beautiful 6.1 inch AMOLED display. It has a resolution of 1080 x 2240 pixels which translates to 408 pixels per inch. The pixel density is more than abundant to deliver a sharp and crisp display. The display itself is fairly vibrant, however, compared to iPhone X or a Galaxy Samsung S9, the display lags behind in brightness levels. In our experience, the display wasn’t anywhere as bright as the iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy S9.
Huawei P20 Specifications
Apart from the display, P20 Pro features a bunch of flagship level internals which is expected of a top-tier phone. The Huawei P20 Pro is powered by a Kirin 970 Octa-core CPU. While the GPU is a Mali-G72 MP12. All in all, there is plenty of processing power to keep the device fast, however, the Huawei UI is another story(we will come to that later). The P20 Pro boasts 6 gigs of ram and 128 gigs of ROM which is not expandable as there is no memory card slot. One thing we particularly like is the 4000 mah battery, we hope to see other smartphone companies follow suit and include higher capacity batteries in their smartphones. The 4000 mah battery has enough juice to easily get you through a day of heavy use and maybe even day and a half of moderate use. Everything else is pretty much what you will find in a flagship smartphone of today, nothing to write home about. The Camera, however, is a different story.
Huawei P20 Camera
So finally we come to the most interesting and impressive feature of Huawei P20 Pro. The P20 Pro boasts a three rear camera configuration. The main sensor is 40 MP sensor with optical stabilization with f1.8 aperture. The secondary is 20 MP monochrome sensor which also has optical stabilization and an f1.6 aperture. The third sensor is an 8 MP 3x telephoto lens with an f2.4 aperture. So on paper, this obviously looks very impressive but does it hold up in actual photography? The simple answer is yes. The P20 Pro camera does an exceptional job at letting in good amounts of light into the camera for excellent low light photography. It a has a wider field of view, less gain, colors are accurate and crisp.
Thanks to the sensor there is a lot of detail in the pictures taken with the P20 Pro. The camera does a good job of providing a rather shallow depth of field.
Apart from the excellent camera hardware, the phone features some AI capabilities as well, for example, the camera can detect 500 different scenarios and then choose the best color settings for that particular scenario. We should also mention that the camera received a DXoMark score of 109 which is the highest score any smartphone has ever achieved.
Huawei P20 Pro UI
The Huawei P20 Pro comes equipped with Android 8.1 right off the box. However, we were not that impressed with the UI of the Huawei P20 Pro. Huawei’s EMUI is nothing to write home about. In our experience, the UI seemed laggy and sluggish at times. The phone also comes with a lot of bloatware preinstalled which doesn’t help with the performance of the UI. In most instances, you cannot delete the preinstalled apps which is a big deal to some people. Generally, the UI was not as flawless as we would have expected. Especially having used the iPhone X, Samsung Galaxy S9 and the Google Pixel 2, the UI on the Huawei P20 Pro doesn’t seem as fluid.
Huawei P20 Pro Price and Conclusion.
The main selling point of the Huawei P20 Pro is undoubtedly the camera. If owning a smartphone with the best camera currently is your thing then without a doubt the Huawei P20 Pro is the phone you should get, however, the question is, how badly do you want that camera because this is an expensive phone, currently the price is at 100,000 PKR. many people won’t be able to justify the cost of this phone and we certainly don’t think its worth the 100,000 PKR price tag. In a country where smartphone users tend to put their trust in the company more than they do in the smartphone model itself, it is difficult to perceive that many people would be willing to spend that much on a phone by a Chinese manufacturer which still hasn’t reached the brand awareness levels of Apple or Samsung. In our final conclusion, we think that although the phone has many good features, especially the camera, the cost, however, is too much for the Pakistani consumer.
Let us know what you think of the P20 Pro in the comments below.