How much do you think a smartphone with a camera should cost in the top 5 according to one of the most authoritative
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. Paperclip – It's a beauty, and the adapter is... white. In a box with a blue smartphone and in a world where most headphones – black.
Case – transparent, made of soft silicone.
What does he look like?
Honor– the brand is youthful, bright, dynamicand that's all. Therefore, design plays a paramount role in brand models. I got my hands on the blue Honor 20 Pro. The color feature of this device – it's a darkening around the edges that adds an interesting effect.
The back panel is made of glass (seen incharacteristics, because the sound is more reminiscent of plastic), so glossy that you can see your reflection in it, albeit a little distorted. And fingerprints – Well, don’t take it out. There will be no such problem with a case. Ends – made of 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 the smartphone without a case.Didn't slip out of your hands and didn't get deep scratches in a bag with keys and other hard objects. There are small ones and are a little noticeable when the light plays on the curves of the case.
There is only one speaker, on the left at the bottom end.Loud, ringing, but if it were stereo it would be even better. Next to him – microphone and USB Type-C. The connector, however, was placed asymmetrically. Is there really so little space in the case?
Fingerprint scanner built into the keyscreen lock. Probably the most convenient place. The unlocking process occurs instantly, completely unnoticed. Faster and more convenient than with a face recognition sensor. The only thing was that it seemed that it was necessary to press harder on it to reboot the smartphone. But reboot – It’s a rare thing, you can push it once or twice a month.
Above the lock button – volume key. SIM card slot – on the left side, top – microphone and infrared port.
Front side – almost continuousscreen, frames occupy 1-2 mm on all sides, the screen accounts for 84% of the front panel. The front camera flaunts in the upper left corner. Although formally it has begun to take up less space on the screen, a large piece is still eaten away from the interface; for my taste, this solution is little better than last year’s teardrop cutouts. By the way, if you don’t like the cutout, you can hide it along with this part of the screen. Eh, iPhone, why did you do this to us? So we would live without cutouts on the display and would not know grief.
Is the screen decent?
Honor 20 Pro screen – savings item.Not in the sense that it has problems with brightness or color reproduction, but in the fact that it has an IPS matrix. The matrix is decent, the difference will be noticeable only to a trained eye. The screen diagonal is 6.26 inches, resolution 1080x2340 pixels (pixel density 412 ppi). The characteristics are generally typical for its price category, although manufacturers already offer OLED displays for that kind of money.
As for the picture quality, under the rayssun – Everything is fine. In games and graphics tests, the picture is also good for an IPS matrix, with contrast. Probably until you put a smartphone with OLED next to it. But I haven’t had this happen, and it’s unlikely that the owner of a smartphone will either.
In the display settings, you can control color rendition, adjust the automatic brightness adjustment to suit your taste, and activate eye protection mode when the color rendition is warmer than usual.
How is it with performance?
The model is equipped with a Kirin 980 processor and 8 GBоперативной памяти. Это даже больше, чем у Huawei Mate 20 Pro, который был у нас на обзоре и впечатлил своей производительностью. Это восьмиядерный процессор с архитектурой big.LITTLE (4 ядра Cortex-A55, 1,8 ГГц, 2 ядра Cortex-A76, 2,6 ГГц и 2 ядра Cortex-A76 1,92 ГГц) и поддержкой GPU Turbo 3.0. На сегодняшний день производительность устройства все еще избыточна для большинства пользователей с хорошим заделом на будущее. В тесте Honor 20 Pro показывает результаты на уровне прошлогодних флагманов. В жизни у меня было около 80 приложений, если посчитать все в списке настроек, интерфейс работал без промедлений. Asphalt 9 и Shadow Fight 3 шли плавно
Speaking of memory. The model received a 256 GB flash drive, but there is no expansion slot.
And with autonomy what?
Honor 20 Pro battery capacity is 4000mAh This is my first experience using a smartphone with a processor made using the 7 nm process technology. The energy efficiency of the processor 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 on my smartphone (news, notes, chats), I Google something, most online purchases – also from a smartphone. But I don't play. Youtube– also mainly from a smartphone, at home and on the road. In normal power consumption mode with this usage scenario, my smartphone worked stably for a day and a half.
Once, when Honor 20 Pro had to spend a whole dayact as a camera, voice recorder and the only device for work – writing and sending texts, communicating in instant messengers, navigator, etc.) – he “died” at about 18-19 pm (I took it off the charger 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 Android OS9.0, on top of which the proprietary Magic UI 2.1 shell is used. The interface is typical for all Huawei/Honor smartphones, which we have already written about many times (there is a detailed review of the shell 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 constantly reminds you intrusively about protection against “theft”, data loss, etc. and in every possible way leads to the need to create 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 Vivo V15 Pro. I looked into AppGallery out of interest. From the start, the store offered a rather strange selection of recommended applications.
But in general, the further you go, the more you feelthat the company is working on developing software and attracting developers (to whom it promises “full support”; according to some data, there are already 560 thousand people in the developer community). In addition to popular global 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 backup your data in your account and the cloud (suddenly you don’t trust Google), you can transfer your data from an old Huawei/Honor smartphone to a new one in a couple of clicks through the Phone Clone function in the settings.
There is a separate section in the settings for fansgames – games center Here you can activate the “game without pauses” mode so that notifications do not bother you during the process, enable acceleration for games (will increase energy consumption and performance) or configure the launch of a specific game when a gaming accessory is connected.
Top smartphone today (and a year ago too)– the creature is already quite intelligent. This model has, for example, 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 or reject a call.
Or, for example, the intelligent HiTouch function withUsing the ViSense platform, you can search for a product by picture in various online stores. The truth is mostly in Amazon. I didn’t find Ukrainian ones 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 clothing with specific characteristics, you will be offered only vaguely similar options.
Do cameras shoot well?
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.
The Huawei/Honor camera interface is also familiar to readersggand those who have already used branded smartphones.As camera capabilities evolve, additional shooting modes are added. Here it is, for example, super macro – for shooting objects at a distance of up to 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. Sees a person in the frame – switches to portrait mode. At night – at night. When shooting landscapes, it suggests switching to the super wide-angle module. Below – An example of shooting with a regular module and a super wide-angle one.
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 essentially this is the only complaint about the camera(DXOMark experts don’t consider this a problem at all; they awarded Honor 20 Pro 4th place in their ranking. Above – Samsung Galaxy Note 10 5G, Huawei P30 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, followed by last year’s flagship Huawei Mate 20.
Example of a 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 get a chance to hold the Mate 20 in my hands, but...The Huawei P20 Pro camera was remembered for the fact that it shot excellently in proprietary modes, but was washed out and lost to the same Samsung in the evenings or in the forest on a sunny day, when a lot of light breaks through the foliage, and it shot extremely poorly against the sun against the background of a competitor. Honor 20 Pro no longer has such problems (or almost none). The camera gives excellent results in different conditions in the “pointed –” format. took”, which makes it a great solution for people who like to take photographs, but are not particularly good at it. 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”.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with the quality of the photos.There is one nuance that caused inconvenience. While photographing people, the camera always seemed to freeze for a split second, trying to focus better. Because of this, it was difficult to catch a good angle or facial expression, especially when it came to a photo of a child or a photo of people who are busy with something and do not know that they are trying to be photographed. We can only hope that this is a glitch that will be fixed, because it interferes with life.
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?
Within the brand line, the model has twoalternatives. Huawei Mate 20 Pro with similar hardware, but a slightly larger screen. In fact, within a year the model has not become outdated in terms of hardware (maybe the camera in it is a little simpler, but for the mass user the difference is unlikely to be noticeable). In my opinion, its main advantage – screen. There is an OLED matrix and an Always On mode, which, in theory, improves energy efficiency. Additionally, the Mate 20 Pro has a unibrow cutout and rounded edges. Some people may prefer this option. Among the disadvantages – the price is several thousand higher for the model with 8 GB of RAM. And the design of the rear panel, for my taste, let us down.
Honor 20 is the little brother of the firmware.A slightly simpler camera (the differences are very small), a slightly smaller battery and a younger USB version, no FaceID, half the memory (128 GB versus 256 GB) and 6 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB. Price difference – 2000 UAH
Slightly cheaper, but still in this categoryThere are two Xiaomi models – Mi 9T and Redmi K20 Pro. They have simpler cameras and less RAM, but they are cheaper by the same couple of thousand hryvnia. And there is an audio output.
In the dry residue
Honor 20 Pro is definitely one of the mostinteresting offers in their price category, if not the most interesting. The smartphone is comfortable to use in terms of performance and autonomy, has great ergonomics and is equipped with an excellent camera. The only argument against the purchase may be the IPS display – in this price category the scales are already tipping towards OLED solutions. Yes, and fans of audio output 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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SpecificationsHonor 20 Pro
Display
IPS, 1080x2340 pixels, 19.5:9 (~412 ppi)
Housing
dimensions 155x74x8 mm, weight: 182 g
CPU
64-bit 7nm HiSilicon Kirin 980, 2×2.6 GHz Cortex-A76, 2×1.92 GHz Cortex-A76 and 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G76 MP10 graphics, 2xNPU
RAM
8 GB
Flash memory
256 GB
Camera
48-megapixel wide-angle with aperturef/1.8, 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle with f/2.2 aperture and 8-megapixel telephoto with f/2.4 aperture, 2-megapixel super macro 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, IR port
Battery
4000 mAh, non-removable, fast charging 22.5 W (50% in 30 min)
operating system
Android 9 Pie + Magic 2.1
Sim card
2x nanoSIM
For those that want to know more:
- Huawei P20 Pro review: the world's first Leica triple-camera smartphone
- Review of Huawei Mate 20 Pro: Android flagship at max speed
- Huawei P30 Pro Review: Night Vision
- Huawei P30 lite review: 48 megapixel smartphone
- Samsung Galaxy S10e review: less doesn’t mean worse