The P20 is one of
two new Huawei phones launched in Paris
We went hands on with
the P20 prior to the event to see what Huawei is doing differently in 2018 for
its flagship P line of phones after last year’s impressive Mate 10 Pro.
Price and
availability
·
£599/649€ (approx $799)
·
Premium build may heighten price
·
Expect it to undercut the Galaxy S9
Huawei
is good at announcing phones with a fanfare but no official release date or
pricing information. This time around we know that the phone, along with the
Pro model, will be available ‘immediately’. However, the UK
We
also know the price is £599 and 649€ so
that’s approximately $799. A decent price when most rivals are at least
£100 more.
You
can get the P20 and P20 Pro from networks including Carphone Warehouse, EE, O2, Vodafone and Three. Those who order before 5 April will get a free pair of £329 Bose QC35 II
noise cancelling headphones.
Read our first look
review of the Huawei P20 Pro.
Design and build
·
Notch at the top of 18.7:9 display
·
Metal and glass sandwich
·
No headphone jack
The P20 is a radical
design departure from last year’s P10. Where there was once sandblasted
aluminium and bezels there is now glossy colourful glass and a pesky notch for
the selfie camera.
The phone will be available
in black, champagne gold, twilight, pink gold and midnight blue.
Gone is the headphone
jack in favour of USB-C audio, though Huawei puts a 3.5mm headphone jack
adapter in the box. It’s a flagship feature we’ll have to get used to.
There’s also a notch
in the top of the 5.84in display – yes, like an iPhone X, but also like the
Essential Phone and the Asus Zenfone 5. Like the absence of a headphone jack,
notches are here to stay for 2018, with the OnePlus 6 also rumoured to have
one.
Until manufacturers
can put earpieces and cameras in slimmer bezels, then notches are the
workaround in order to give the most screen to body ratio possible. Some will
ask why more don’t ape the Galaxy S9 design which does seem to manage without a
notch pretty impressively, but clearly Huawei has preferred the ‘eared’ design
here.
Huawei has kept the
fingerprint sensor on the front of the device. With so many so-called bezel-lesphones moving the feature to the rear, it’s refreshing to see it on the
front in a place that many prefer it.
The button is a slim
pill shape to save space and makes unlocking on a table possible. This means
less hand acrobatics in general to find a button you can’t see on the back.
The phone has a great
in hand feel and a premium air about it that eluded the P10. The glass, while
fragile no doubt, is lovely and the in-hand feel makes this a desirable piece
of kit where Huawei design was once overly practical and utilitarian.
Features and
specification
·
Kirin 970 processor with
‘AI’ smarts
·
LCD not OLED
·
128GB expandable storage, 4GB RAM
We first used the Kirin 970, Huawei’s answer to the Snapdragon 845, in the
Mate 10 Pro. Huawei makes bold claims about the chip’s AI functions, and we are
still dubious of any smartphone manufacturer claiming their products have AI
capabilities. All that ‘AI’ really means in this instance is slightly cleverer
software tweaks on top of apps like the camera.
Huawei says the camera
app will intelligently select shooting modes for you, and you can image search
Amazon from anywhere within the UI. Cool tricks, but not game-changers
– and we’ve seen it before.
More interesting to
explore in our full review will be the AI-assisted stabilisation on the P20’s
cameras.
The display you view
everything through is a 2244×1080 18.7:9 LCD (bit of a mouthful), while you get
an impressive 128GB expandable storage. The P20 has to make do with 4GB RAM,
with the P20 Pro getting 6GB.
Cameras
Even though it only
has two lenses compared to the P20 Pro’s three, the P20’s camera set up is
still impressive.
There are 12Mp and
20Mp lenses (colour and monochrome respectively) though there’s no OIS in sight
– a shame on a flagship device in 2018.Only the 8Mp telephoto lens on the P20
Pro has OIS.
The selfie camera has
also had a bump to an impressive 24Mp – just remember to turn off Huawei’s
still-annoying beauty mode unless you want to come out airbrushed.
Battery
Huawei has stuffed a
3,400mAh battery into a phone that’s only 7.65mm thick. That’s impressive, and
with Huawei’s fast-charger in the box you can easily keep topped up if you’re a
heavy user.
Huawei claims you can
eke two days of use on the battery but we remain unconvinced until proven in
our testing.
Unfortunately like the
Mate 10 Pro, the P20 does not support wireless charging – despite the glass
back that can technically allow it. It’s not a dealbreaker, but Huawei is
clearly behind the pack now.
Other stuff
The P20 is only IP53
water resistant, unlike the IP67 P20 Pro. Like the LCD instead of OLED display,
this can be seen as Huawei stripping back costs on the regular model to meet a
price that appeals to the floating purchaser – the extra saving compared to
some rival phones could nudge a few people into Huawei purchases this year.
The company claims the
face unlock feature on the P20 is 100% faster than the iPhone X at 0.5 seconds,
and works in the dark. Again, this will be tested in our review, as without the
sensor array of the iPhone X, the P20 may struggle, as other Android phones do.
It’s also less secure when relying on image only.
Software
·
EMUI is still clearly modelled on iOS
·
Less cluttered than previous versions
·
Incredibly slick and smooth
The P20 ships with
EMUI 8.1 based on Android Oreo 8.1. Based on our time with the phone so far,
it’s an improvement, though each incremental version of EMUI generally is.
Menus are becoming
clearer, and the interface is relatively intuitive, though the skin is still
heavy to the point of change for change’s sake. But the notification shade is
still good to use, and the granular controls within the camera app belyHuawei’s continued focus on photography and the company’s partnership with
Leica.
Its decision to
install Google’s Messages app rather than its own is also a positive embrace of
Google’s often superior stock apps.
A neat addition
carried over from the P10 is using gestures on the fingerprint sensor in
place of on-screen Android navigation controls. Pressing to go home or back and
swiping to open the recent apps page is surprisingly natural, and it opens up
even more usable screen space.
The software here is
less of a visual change and more additions of so-called AI smarts. New layers
of artificial help will hopefully unveil themselves to us in full testing,
something that doesn’t happen in quick hands-on testing.
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