Honor 20 Pro smartphone review: a great camera for sane money

How much, in your opinion, should cost a smartphone with a camera in the top 5 according to one of the most respected

resources, with an almost flagship processor, made using 7-nm technology (the most energy-efficient today), and with autonomy in a couple of days? Here Honor sells such a model for 14 000 UAH. Editors gg For two weeks, she used the new flagship of the company 20 Pro and shares her impressions in this review.

What is it?

The top-end Honor smartphone with the flagship processor last fall (Kirin 980), a modernized design and one of the best cameras on the market.

What is in the box?

Smartphone, case, headphone adapter withUSB Type-C interface, documents, paper clip. A paper clip is pretty and an adapter ... white. In a box with a blue smartphone and in a world where most headphones are black.

Case - transparent, made of soft silicone.

What does he look like?

Honor is a youth brand, bright, dynamic, and hereit's all. Therefore, design in the models of the brand plays a paramount role. The blue Honor 20 Pro has been in my hands. The color chip of this device is a darkening at the edges, which adds an interesting effect.

The back panel is made of glass (spied oncharacteristics, because the sound resembles plastic more), so glossy that you can see your reflection in it, though a little distorted. And fingerprints - well, not to deduce. There will be no such problem in the case. The ends are made of an aluminum frame.

The triple camera protrudes in order above the body. But after the presentation of the latest iPhone and Huawei Mate 30, I just want to focus on the fact that the designer still worked on this model. Therefore, the camera module looks aesthetically pleasing and takes up little space. By the way, the complete Honor 20 Pro case (unlike the Vivo V15 Pro) goes around the camera, so when the smartphone is in the case, it does not stick out.

I used a smartphone without a case. He did not slip out of his hands and did not receive deep scratches in the bag with keys and other hard objects. There are small ones and a little noticeable when the light plays on the fillets of the body.

There is only one speaker, on the left at the bottom. Loud-voiced, but would be stereo, it would be even better. Next to it is a microphone and USB Type-C. The connector, however, was placed asymmetrically. Is there really so little space in the case?

Fingerprint reader integrated in the keylock screen. The most convenient place, probably. The unlocking process takes place instantly, completely imperceptibly. Faster and more convenient than with a face recognition sensor. The only thing seemed to be that it needs to be pressed harder to restart the smartphone. But rebooting is a rare thing, and you can push it once or twice a month.

Above the lock button is the volume key. The slot for SIM cards is on the left side, on top there is a microphone and an infrared port.

The front side is almost a solid screen,the frames took 1-2 mm on all sides, 84% of the front panel is on the screen. The front camera flaunts in the upper left corner. Although formally it began to take up less space on the screen, a large chunk still eats away from the interface, for my taste, such a solution is slightly better than last year's cut-out droplets. By the way, if you don’t like the cutout, you can hide it with this part of the screen. Oh iPhone, why did you do this to us? So they would have lived without cutouts on the display and did not know grief.

Is the screen decent?

Screen Honor 20 Pro - an article of economy. Not in the sense that he has problems with brightness or color reproduction, but in the fact that there is an IPS matrix. The matrix is decent, the difference will be noticeable only to the sophisticated eye. The screen size is 6.26 inches, the resolution is 1080x2340 pixels (pixel density 412 ppi). Characteristics in general are typical for their price category, although for that kind of money manufacturers mainly already offer OLED displays.

As for picture quality, then under the raysthe sun - all is well. In games and graphics tests, the picture is also good for the IPS matrix, contrasting. Probably until you put a smartphone with OLED’s next. But I didn’t have this and the owner of the smartphone is also unlikely to be.

In the display settings, you can control the color rendering, adjust the brightness auto-adjustment to your taste, activate the eye protection mode when the color rendering is warmer than usual.

How is it with performance?

The model is equipped with a Kirin 980 processor and 8 GBrandom access memory. This is even more than the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, which was in our review and impressed with its performance. This is an eight-core processor with the big.LITTLE architecture (4 Cortex-A55 cores, 1.8 GHz, 2 Cortex-A76 cores, 2.6 GHz and 2 Cortex-A76 cores 1.92 GHz) and GPU Turbo 3.0 support. Today, device performance is still excessive for most users with a good foundation for the future. In the test, the Honor 20 Pro shows results at the level of last year's flagships. In my life I had about 80 applications, if you count everything in the settings list, the interface worked without delay. Asphalt 9 and Shadow Fight 3 went smoothly

Speaking of memory. The model received a 256 GB flash drive, but there is no expansion slot.

And with autonomy what?

The battery capacity of the Honor 20 Pro is 4000mAh This is my first experience using a smartphone with a processor based on the 7 nm process technology. The processor's energy efficiency is noticeable in operation. Usually I always listen to music on the road, this is at least a couple of hours a day, I read and write a lot from my smartphone (news, notes, chats), google something, most online purchases also from a smartphone. But I don’t play. Youtube is also mainly from a smartphone, at home and on the go. In the normal power consumption mode, in this scenario, the smartphone worked stably for me for a day and a half.

Once, when the Honor 20 Pro had all dayto act as a camera, voice recorder and the only device for work - writing and sending texts, communicating in instant messengers, navigators, etc.) - he “died” at about 18-19 hours in the evening (removed from charging at about 9.00).

It so happened that with the Honor 20 Pro I traveled a lotaround the country, without access to a power outlet and without a paverbank with me, so I still had to turn on the power saving mode. In this mode, the battery lasted for about two days, and in standby mode, the charge practically did not melt.

In the PC Mark autonomy test, the device lasted more than 12 hours.

What is interesting interface?

Honor 20 Pro runs on Android OS9.0, on top of which the proprietary shell Magic UI 2.1 is used. The interface is typical for all Huawei / Honor smartphones, which we have already written about many times (a detailed review of the shell is in this review). There is no separate application menu, there are already several Huawei services, including a browser, HiCare application with support information, cloud, etc.

The smartphone all the time obsessively reminds of protection against “hijacking", data loss, etc. and in every way leads to the need to have a Huawei account. But even without this, you can safely use the device.

In this version of the shell, I immediately rushed toeyes the fact that the smartphone offers to update applications from the AppGallery brand store. Even if they were installed from Google Play. By the way, I saw the same thing in the Vivo V15 Pro. Looked for fun in the AppGallery. The store from the start offered a rather strange selection of recommended applications.

But in general, the farther, the more you feelthat the company is working on the development of software and attracting developers (whom it promises "full support", according to some sources, there are already 560 thousand people in the developer community). In addition to the world-famous services in Ukraine, Megogo, Vodafone, Kyivstar, Prom.ua, lifecell, Lanet and other Ukrainian companies have already added their applications to the AppGallery.

Honor, like Huawei, offers the userYou can back up your data in your account and cloud (suddenly you do not trust Google), transfer your data from the old Huawei / Honor smartphone to the new one in a couple of clicks through the Phone Clone function in the settings.

In the settings there is a separate section for fansgames is the center of games. Here you can activate the “game without pauses” mode so that notifications do not disturb the process, enable acceleration for games (will increase power consumption and performance), or configure the launch of a certain game when a game accessory is connected.

Top smartphone today (and a year ago too) -the creature is already quite intelligent. In this model, for example, there is a voice control function using its own HiVoice assistant. Apparently, he already knows a little Russian. For example, it responds to questions about finding a phone or can answer a call or reset it.

Or, for example, the HiTouch smart function withUsing the ViSense platform, it can search for products by picture in various online stores. The truth is mainly in Amazon. I did not find Ukrainian in the list of options. In addition, the search accuracy is low - for example, even if you look for a completely recognizable smartphone model or clothes with specific characteristics, they will offer from remotely similar options.

Do cameras shoot well?

The Honor 20 Pro is equipped at first glance with a triple camera, although the specifications indicate four modules:

48-megapixel wide-angle with f / 1.8 aperture;
16-megapixel ultra-wide with f / 2.2 aperture;
8-megapixel telephoto with f / 2.4 aperture;
2 megapixel for super macro photography with f / 2.4 aperture.

Huawei / Honor camera interface is also familiar to readers gg and those who have already used brand smartphones. As the capabilities of the cameras develop, additional shooting modes appear in it. Here it is, for example, a super-macro - for shooting objects at a distance of 4 cm.

The effect of super-macro photography seemed curious to me. Most if you want to convey the invoice of some object. But it turns out cool just at a short distance, otherwise the focus does not work.

In this generation, the camera has become even moreautomated. He sees a person in the frame - switches to portrait mode. At night - at night. When landscape photography offers to switch to a super-wide-angle module. Below is an example of shooting on a conventional module and on a super wide angle.

But what I don't like so far is that infrom year to year, the camera does not learn to normally determine the boundaries of the subject and “soap” what it considers to be the background, at random. Huawei was the first to introduce such a shooting mode in its smartphones, but every year everyone pretends not to notice the problem.

But in fact this is the only complaint about the camera(DXOMark experts do not even consider this a problem at all, awarded the Honor 20 Pro the 4th place in their rating. Above are the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 5G, Huawei P30 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, and then last year's flagship Huawei Mate 20.

Example photo with zoom.

Night shooting is a miracle as good, here the smartphones of this manufacturer (and brand) still have no equal.

I didn’t happen to hold the Mate 20 in my hands, butI remembered the Huawei P20 Pro camera by shooting perfectly in proprietary modes, but it was shaded and lost to Samsung in the evenings or in the woods on a sunny day, when a lot of light breaks through the leaves and was extremely poorly shot against the sun against a competitor. The Honor 20 Pro already has no such sores (or almost none). The camera gives excellent results in different conditions in the “point-and-shoot” format, which makes it a great solution for people who like to take pictures, but don’t really know how. That is, for the mass user.

In dim light it turns out pretty well, details are visible even in dark areas and there is no “soap”.

In general, I am as pleased with the quality of the pictures. There is one nuance that was inconvenient. Taking pictures of people, the camera constantly seemed to freeze for a split second, trying to better focus. Because of this, it was difficult to catch a good angle or facial expression, especially when it came to children's photos or photos of people who are busy with something and do not know what they are trying to shoot. It is hoped that this is a glitch, which will be eliminated, because in life it interferes.

An example of shooting on a 32-megapixel selfie camera. Again, in this mode, Huawei / Honor ate the dog, the software developers found the perfect balance between the “improved” face and natural beauty (here the aforementioned Vivo, for the sake of Asian fashion, is still on the dark side and makes faces too decorated by default). But there are still misfires with the separation of a person from the background. And you shouldn’t shoot against the sun. For selfie, there are many modes with augmented reality, in my opinion, very Asian-style.

You can look at the pictures in original resolution in a separate gallery on Torba.

Who are the competitors?

As part of the brand line, the model has twoalternatives. Huawei Mate 20 Pro with similar hardware, but a little larger screen. In fact, over the year the model is not outdated from the point of view of iron (maybe the camera in it is a little easier, but for the mass user the difference is unlikely to be noticeable). In my opinion, its main advantage is the screen. There is an OLED matrix and there is Always On mode, in theory, better energy efficiency. In addition, the Mate 20 Pro has a monobrow neckline and rounded edges. Someone, perhaps, this option will be more to your liking. Among the shortcomings is the price, it is several thousand higher for a model with 8 GB of RAM. And the back panel design, for my taste, let us down.

Honor 20 is the younger brother of the “firmware”. The camera is slightly simpler (the differences are very small), the battery is slightly smaller and the USB version is younger, there is no FaceID, half the memory (128 GB vs 256 GB) and 6 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB. The difference in price is 2000 UAH.

A little cheaper, but still in this category are two Xiaomi models - Mi 9T and Redmi K20 Pro. They have simpler cameras and less RAM, but cheaper for the same couple of thousand hryvnias. And there is an audio output.

In the dry residue

Honor 20 Pro - definitely one of the mostinteresting offers in its price category, if not the most interesting. The smartphone is comfortable in performance and autonomy, it has cool ergonomics and is equipped with a great camera. The only argument against the purchase may be the IPS display - in this price category, the scales are already leaning towards OLED solutions. Yes, and audio output fans still have alternatives on the market.

4 reasons to buy Honor 20 Pro:

the best camera for the money and one of the best on the market today;
high performance without sacrificing autonomy;
elegant ergonomics (in particular, the location of the fingerprint sensor);
256 GB internal storage

2 reasons not to buy the Honor 20 Pro:

no standard audio output;
I want an AMOLED screen.

Honor 20 Pro

Smartphone with a very good camera for sane money

The older Honor smartphone model with a focus ontriple chamber. Three lenses allow you to shoot with three different focal lengths. Especially stand out is the traditionally strong night shooting for Huawei models. The Honor 20 Pro uses the flagship processor of 2018 and is equipped with an uncharacteristically large 256 GB drive for its price category. To stop buying it can be the lack of a standard audio output, memory card slots or the desire to buy a smartphone with an AMOLED screen and the Always On function.

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Specifications Honor 20 Pro

Display
IPS, 1080x2340 pixels, 19.5: 9 (~ 412 ppi)

Housing
dimensions 155x74x8 mm, weight: 182 g

CPU
64-bit 7-nm HiSilicon Kirin 980, 2 × 2.6 GHz Cortex-A76, 2 × 1.92 GHz Cortex-A76 and 4 × 1.8 GHz Cortex-A55, graphics Mali-G76 MP10, 2 × NPU

RAM
8 GB

Flash memory
256 GB

Camera
48-megapixel wide-angle with f / 1 aperture.8, 16-megapixel ultra-wide with f / 2.2 aperture and 8-megapixel telephoto with f / 2.4 aperture, 2-megapixel for super macro photography with f / 2.4 aperture, front - 32 MP

Wireless technology
Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac 2.4 + 5 GHz, Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP; LE, aptX HD, NFC, Infrared

Battery
4000 mAh non-removable, fast charge 22.5 W (50% in 30 min)

operating system
Android 9 Pie + Magic 2.1

Sim card
2x nanoSIM