Skip to content

Honor View 20 First Impressions

Honor View 20 is 2019’s first smartphone that comes with some unique features. The phone comes with a punch-hole display design and has a hole in the screen for the front camera. Moreover, it comes with a 48 MP rear camera sensor along with a 3D ToF camera with AI and flagship Kirin 980 chip.

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor launched its latest flagship Honor V20 in China last month and the same will be launched as Honor View 20 in other markets including India. The company has been teasing the launch of Honor View 20 in India on January 29. Before the launch, we spent some time with the phone and here are our first impressions about it.

Design and display

The biggest highlight of the Honor View 20 is the hole on the top left corner of the display which houses the selfie camera. The View 20 is the world’s first phone to sport a cutout on the screen. It is a small cut out, measuring just 4.7mm and is barely visible during use. It is not as intrusive as a notch.

Coming to the build quality, Honor has ditched the metal unibody design and gone for a glass and metal body instead. It sports a 3D curved glass back panel that is surrounded by aluminum frame. The textured back panel also has a reflective V pattern made through a nano-coating process, which looks really stylish. We have the Blue color variant with us which looks attractive and unique.

The fingerprint scanner sits at the back and there is no in-display fingerprint scanner. At the bottom, you get a single loudspeaker, microphone, and USB Type-C port. While the 3.5mm jack and secondary mic are located on top. The volume rocker and power button are on the right side and the SIM tray is on the left.

Honor View 20

If we talk about the display, there is a 6.4-inch FHD+ (2310×1080) panel with minimum bezels and small chin. It sports a screen-to-body ratio over 90 percent and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. We were impressed with the quality of the display in the limited time we used it. The colors are vivid and viewing angles are also good. Also, the brightness is good enough for outdoor usage.

Overall, the Honor View 20 with its V-shaped glossy back pattern, punch-hole display, and the metal-glass body becomes a premium looking phone.

Cameras

The camera is another important feature in Honor View 20. The 48 MP camera with Sony IMX586 sensor will offer extremely detailed images as it has the ability to create a super-rich 12 MP image with 4-in-1 pixel binning technology which Huawei calls light fusion tech. We clicked a few pictures and the results were quite pleasing, especially with the AI.

In addition to the main camera, there is also a 3D ToF secondary camera for the depth sensing up to 25 meters. Up front, it has a 25MP selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture. The selfies we captured in daylight looked great.

Other camera features include a Pro mode and a Night mode which allows users to change the ISO and shutter speed. It also comes with AR stickers as well as 3D avatars that use the secondary TOF sensor. It can record slow-mo video up to 960fps. We will test the camera in-depth in our full review.

Performance

The Kirin 980 chipset is Huawei’s flagship chipset based on the 7nm process. It powers the Mate 20 Pro and is now coming to the View 20. It has dual NPUs that will offer better AI features. It is paired with at least 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. Because of the Kirin 980 chipset, performance is pretty much smooth. We are yet to test the performance after playing some heavy games.

Honor has refreshed its software with the View 20. EMUI has made way for what Honor is calling Magic UI 2.0 (based on Android 9.0 Pie). Along with a new coat of paint, Honor has finally simplified its settings menu and reduced the number of gestures and custom features.

Battery and Connectivity

The Honor View 20 packs a big 4,000mAh battery which should be enough for a day’s usage. The EMUI’s battery saving features will also help to get the most out of the battery. It also supports Huawei’s SuperCharge fast charging and comes with a 40W charger. Connectivity options include Bluetooth v5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, GPS/A-GPS/ GLONASS and USB Type C port.

The Honor View 20 India launch is scheduled on January 29. It is rumored to come with a price tag of around Rs. 40,000. If you have any questions regarding View 20, ask them in the comments below. Also, what do you think of the View 20, let us know your thoughts?

nv-author-image

Satyendra Pal Singh

Satyendra explores the latest happenings in the tech world and writes stories about those. He likes to play around with the latest gadgets and shares his views through articles. In his free time, you can find him watching movies/TV shows and/or reading books.