Amid a heated allegation claiming violation and fraudulent theft of vital trade secrets Honor launched their newest flagship, the View 20 smartphone. With this offering, Honor aims to flag of 2019 with a quest to differentiate themselves from a being a cheap Huawei sub-brand to a worthy adversary in the flagship segment.
The Honor View 20 has come a long way from its earlier iteration. The biggest change is a hole in the screen which makes way for an all-screen front with 91.82 percent screen-to-body ratio. Highlights also include a 48-megapixel AI camera, and an eye-grabbing chevron-patterned glass back design.
Let’s dive in deep to find out what Honor View 20 has under its belt?
Display and Design
The first order of business is definitely the punched hole in display through which the camera protrudes. This leaves a massive 6.4-inch FHD+LCD screen on the front followed by a small chin at the bottom. It’s only a matter of time until you completely zone out the placement of a camera on the surreal display. The display offers splendid colour saturation and brightness with excellent viewing angles.
Honor nailed the ergonomic proportions with a thickness of 8.1mm and weighing in under 180 grams. The corner has been rounded off to ensure adequate grip. Back is rather flamboyant with a glossy light reactive layer underneath the glass. This chevron pattern resembles a sunburst electric guitar. Honor goes old school with the placement of a fingerprint sensor on the centre back that’s both fast and accurate. Bottom houses the down-firing speaker and a USB Type C for charging and connectivity.
Performance
The performance from the Huawei`s 7nm Kirin 980 processor is just exhilarating. Coupled with a 6 or 8 gigs RAM option, the device is a workhorse, handling everything that we throw at it with a breeze. It wipes the floor against the Snapdragon 845 that runs the 6T. Being one of the only three devices to be certified of running Fortnite at 60 fps, speaks for itself.
Battery life is great with an average run time of 31 hours coming from a 4000mAh pack. Charging is rather quick with 100% coming up in just under 1 ½ hours.
Software
The View 20 comes with Honor`s own Magic UI 2 software build on top of Android 9 Pie. The Magic UI is essentially a crafted name of Huawei`s EMUI, coming in with a whole lot of features with Huawei`s own touch to it. The OS was cluttered with a whole lot of bloatware pestering around with intermittent notifications. Over all the transitions were fluid and app loaded quickly. The Android 9 architecture ensures a performance boost allowing for optimal battery usage. Honor claims to resolve any future bugs and issues with timely updates and security patches.
Camera
Honor aims to turn around its biggest weakness into a strength through its benchmark camera. The all-new 48MP IMX586 primary camera with a secondary 3D ToF depth camera blows the competition out of the water. It produces 12MP images through the combination of four pixels into one. Honor adds an AI Ultra Clarity mode that combines 48MP exposures over the course of a few seconds to create a crisp, Hi-res shot. The photos were rich with ideal exposure and white balance, while the colours came out life like with accurate depth information from the secondary sensor. Camera App is perfect with plenty of shooting modes to choose from. It also accommodates a full feature Pro mode that allows the user to have manual control over the contrast and dynamic range. The camera can shoot Raw 960 frames-per-sec slow-motion videos with crisp details keeping the subject in focus at all times.
Coming to the front, we praise Honor`s engineering effort to accommodate a full 25MP camera right in the screen itself. However, the camera output is quite elementary, to say the least. The images were acceptable with selfies featuring adequate light and face detection focus. It does handle low light well but lacked the lively true tone touch we were looking for.
All considered, the View 20 is hands-down one of the best camera smartphone available in the market at this price point.
Gizmo Verdict
Seeing the numbers OnePlus has managed to clock over the last year, it was hard to comprehend the possibility to thwart off the tile of “Flagship Class Phone with a midrange price” from the OnePlus.
Honor deems to be the worth adversary that respectfully delivers unmatched performance, true bezel-less display and a spot-on camera at a justified price point. The Honor View 20 is downright, a conspicuous opponent to the OnePlus 6T, with its ace cards all lined up to bolster good sales figures. With an Ultra Hi-res camera and an infinity pool like display, Honor has a winner up its sleeves.
It has its fair share of cons, like the absence of water resistance, wireless charging and a wide-angle lens, but at this price point, all such nuances fade away. If you want a high-end device that ticks all the right boxes but are reluctant to pay the prices that goes with the top end models of the spectrum, Honor View 20 is a perfect choice.
