More often than not after reviewing a phone, you feel that it could do with better features and specs. Rarely comes a flagship that aces all departments – camera, performance, design and advanced technology – and makes you want to change for better. We’re talking about Honor View 20 that is the one of the first flagship phones of 2019. What Honor has really done is, it has given a heads-up to competitors that the race is only going to get more and more fierce. With a whopping 48-megapixel camera, the phone has dropped the notch to give way to a punch hole display. Truth be told, this alone makes the Honor View 20 quite a show.
So, let’s see after a full-blown weekend of hardcore usage, how did the Honor View 20 really perform.
But let’s look at the specs first, shall we?
Display - 6.4 inches, 1080 x 2310 pixels
Android - 9.0 pie, Magic UI 2
Processor - Kirin 980
Battery - 4,000 mAh, USB-C
RAM - 6/8GB
Rear camera - 48-MP
Front camera - 25-MP
Internal memory - 128/256 GB
Colours - Phantom Blue, Sapphire Blue. Midnight Black
Design
Honor has always been high on style. Most smartphones, irrespective of being mid-ranger or entry-level, sport a similar looking design. It’s as if they have acquired a set formula and are cashing on it. Honor always took the high road to buck the trend and present something new and catchy to customers.
With the View 20, Honor has come with a chevron pattern on the back glass and boy, it makes the phone stand out. The light shimmers down the ‘V’ pattern and it’s something we’ve never seen before. Full marks for the design.
Talk about the touch and feel, the phone looks sleek and is a good fit for one hand. Also, the punch hole display brings us one step closer to having a full screen. One look at the blue variant and you will be convinced what the hype is all about. It’s neither too loud nor too mellow. And by keeping the headphone jack, the View 20 has already become our favourite. No kidding!
There’s a USB-C port at the bottom with a single speaker and a microphone. There’s another surprise in store for you - the IR blasters. Well, with this you can use your smartphone as a remote and can control your TV and set top box among other things.
Display
Let’s start with one of the most talked about features - the punch hole. There was a lot of pre-launch buzz around Honor View 20 and now that we’ve seen it, let’s tell you that it was all worth the hype. The punch hole is quite a refreshing feature and is way better than the notch. The phone has a software feature that lets you hide the hole by making the top display portion black. Smart move!
It sports a large 6.4-inch display with a 19.25:9 aspect ratio. That’s the highest aspect ratio any smartphone gives you. It has an LCD screen that offers you excellent sharpness and vibrant display of colours. What makes the View 20 even cooler is the option to choose the normal and vivid colour profiles by going into settings.
Performance
From every flagship you have expectations and the View 20 lives up to each and every one of them. With 6GB-128GB and 8GB-256GB RAM and ROM variants, it boasts off some killer specs. Powered by the world’s first 7 nm AI Kirin 980 chipset, the processor is Huawei’s best and most hefty processor.
Okay, so we might not have done an exclusive lab test of this phone, but we did use it rigorously day in day out for a weekend. Here’s a peek into a day in the life of the Honor View 20 when we used it as if the world was about to end.
- Played hardcore combat and racing games for 2 to 3 hours straight because procrastination and weekend
- Had a con call for 2 hours discussing the flabbergasting La Liga match
- Spent half a day exploring the city using Google Maps
- Turned into a YouTube DJ at a house party
- And clicked a gazillion pictures while scrolling continuously through Instagram
Battery
Well, the Honor View 20 has an impressive 4,000mAh battery. It can easily survive the day on a single charge despite heavy usage. In fact, we were still left with 20 percent battery. Fueled with a fast charger, Honor View 20 is capable of charging up to 55 percent in 30 freakin’ minutes. That’s some super-fast charging, right?
Camera
As we all know, Honor offers the best camera quality in every price range, and this flagship is no different. The front camera is a 25-MP shooter. On the rear, the View 20 uses Sony’s IMX 586 sensor offering a 48-MP shooter which is paired with a 3D TOF sensor. There’s this amazing new feature in the camera which we’ll like to tell you guys about. This feature uses the advanced depth detection of 3D camera. Both the cameras are capable of portrait lighting giving detailed and sharp images. Selfies, low light pictures, low light selfies or normal pictures you name it and this phone will work wonders.
The 25-MP snapper allows plenty of room to zoom-in the pics and edit them, all this without losing much detail. It can also shoot slow motion videos at 720p resolution since it supports 960fps.
The AI camera is clearly the winner here. Whether it’s improving the brightness, colour composition, sharpness or reducing noise, once you enable the AI you might as well start calling yourself a photography pro. Not a joke!
Software
The Honor View 20 is backed by Android 9.0 Pie. The Magic UI 2.0, which is a re-branded version of Huawei’s EMUI, is a feel-good interface with some amazing features that are practical as well as very useful. Features like the one-handed mode, motion gestures to launch the apps quickly and the party mode app will totally impress you. There’s a sudden house party and you don’t have a Bluetooth speaker? Fret not, the party mode allows you to sync music playback across various phones giving you a real surround sound feel. How’s that for a perfect hack?
The Verdict
All in all, this flagship is a complete package deal for people who give equal importance to aesthetics and performance. It’s very rare that a flagship manages to tick all the right boxes. We’re still in January and still hot on our resolution list - a list dedicated to making a change in our lives for better. If you’re planning to change your smartphone, then we’d suggest you change for a better camera, better performance and better design.…change to Honor View 20. The 6+128GB variant available in Sapphire Blue and Midnight Black colours is priced at Rs 37,999, while the 8+256GB variant in Phantom Blue is priced at Rs 45,999.
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