[nextpage title=”Introduction and Unboxing”]
When there were rumors about dual-camera smartphones to take over the market, Huawei stepped up and brought the Huawei P9 in 2016. Then what you see is a long line of smartphones, everyone of them started featuring the dual-cam setups. Huawei Mate 10 was the last flagship from the company that featured the same. This year the company has stepped even further and introduced a tri-camera setup in its latest flagship Huawei P20 Pro.
Huawei launched the Huawei P20 Pro in Pakistan in May for Rs. 100,000/- (approx. $815) that’s sure one of the highly priced smartphones in Pakistan among the flagships from Samsung and Apple. However that price may reflect the position P20 Pro currently has got among competitors. Camera on the other hand is commendable. If you don’t believe DxOMark’s chart with the P20 Pro on top, here is the full review of Huawei P20 Pro’s massively featured camera. Or you can wait for a brief version of it in this device review.
Huawei P20 Pro Key Features
The P20 Pro’s camera makes the phone stand really on top of the competition with its capabilities. Just put this unique and first of a kind camera setup aside for a while, Huawei P20 Pro also comes bundled with a superpower of everything. It boasts company’s latest and fastest processor – Kirin 970, and also features a big 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. 4000 mAh battery is there to help it stay alive for the whole day.
It’s not only the chipset Kirin 970 that P20 Pro borrows from the Mate 10 but also keeps the configuration intact with four cores of Cortex-A73 clocked at 2.4GHz as well as the other four Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.8GHz. Not to mention the same RAM/storage configuration. Huawei even kept the battery capacity exactly the same as Mate 10 Pro also with all that supper charging features.
P20 Pro boasts a big 6.1-inch AMOLED display with not so popular notched-cutout on top. Huawei always seems to tell that anything that Apple does, isn’t anything hard to do. Well in fact, there was not only iPhone X with that unwanted so-called notch, we knew about something like that when Essential phone came to light. Do not forget the late-coming Vivo V9 and OPPO F7 which also adapted the notched display afterwards. But none of them gave you an option to kick this notch out of the display if you don’t want it. P20 Pro can virtually destroy the notch by camouflaging into a fully black status bar.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
|
|
Huawei P20 Pro unboxing
Huawei P20 Pro comes in a standard white box that Huawei usually ships its smartphones. I have to admit that Mate series comes in more premium box. The box pops out from top and reveals the P20 Pro on top of everything. Beneath the phone tray, there is an envelope box containing an add-on silicon back cover and other paperwork.
Alongside you get a stereo earphones with USB Type-C connector, because the P20 Pro does not have 3.5mm audio jack – unfortunately, as I don’t like that change. Though you get a USB Type-C to female 3.5mm jack adapter inside the retail box.
Further you get a is a fast charger and a USB Type-C cable but it’s worth noting here that fast charging only works when you use both of these together. The charger won’t give the phone enough juice with any other USB-C cable for fast charging. Still it’s much better than Apple that enforces you to buy add-on accessories/adapters in addition.
Let’s not just talk about tit-bits and move on to next page for more detail.
[nextpage title=”Build & Design”]
Huawei P20 Pro – Build and Design
Huawei doesn’t seem to be coming back to metal/aluminum body for it flagship devices. Following last year’s Mate 10, the new P20 Pro also features the same dual-glass body with the metal frame inside. P-series, however keeps its distinction from the Mate series with a flat rear panel and curved edges.
Talking about the build and handling, the P20 Pro feels a bit heavy in hands than most smartphones out there. But you need to compare it with the top class now and it’s not as heavy as it sounds. With 7.8mm thickness the P20 Pro is 0.7mm thinner than Galaxy S9 while it’s 0.1mm thicker than iPhone X.
P20 Pro also comes somewhere in the midpoint of Galaxy S9 and iPhone X when weighing – 10-grams lighter and 6-grams heavier than respective competitive devices.
First word is that P20 Pro is “stunning” and stands out of the competition with its decently shining and dazzling premium look – out of words, may be. This beauty is available in four shining colors – Twilight, Midnight blue, Black, and Pink Gold. The one we got here is the Midnight blue variant.
Hold-on, I was just talking about the single-tone “Midnight Blue” variant above. The “Twilight” is even more attractive comparatively. I had got a chance to experience that dual-tone attention grabber during the launch event – Huawei has built this thing with heart.
All of the four variants have been design with one thing in mind – to illuminate. Huawei built the body from toughened 3D glass panels with curved edges on both the front and back. The glass curves join into the metal frame that is aluminium but polished to look like a steel. It really is a combination of attraction.
Good things also may have their flaws, and specially in smartphones when they are too good at their finishing, you have to be afraid of it being dirty. Dirty, in the sense – when your hands are dirty I mean. The more your hands clean, the more P20 Pro will remain a beauty. As soon as your hands get dirt and oil, this P20 Pro will get that accordingly. While the smudges on the phone can be cleaned out easily, this sure is a bad impression on any phone out there.
Components
While we are talking about the rear side of the phone, let’s just count in the components we have on the back. The most important thing of those is the triple-camera for sure. This machine is processing a total of 68 million pixels on three camera units at once, which is the first of its kind in smartphone industry. These three cameras are – 8MP telephoto, 40MP RGB, and 20MP monochrome. We’ll talk about that in separate section.
If you are wondering about the two cameras in separate black module while the one is isolated, then you have a right question. You should note the larger bump in the block, it’s probably due to making a separate room for the two cameras which need more physical space – the larger primary camera and the telephoto camera. Whereas the isolated one has has only a slight bump.
Other than the cameras themselves, there is dual-tone flash as you can see but this flash module also hosts as color temperature sensor. There are also two special things between the two cameras on top, hidden inside the separate black module – the laser transmitter and the laser receiver for auto focusing.
Huawei has also changed a little bit of their back labels layout. They have shifted everything to left edge instead of the center which was the all-time favorite place for almost all vendors. All these labels include the LEICA branding with the specially designed lens information.
On the bottom left side, there is “HUAWEI” branding without that blooming Huawei logo you usually see on other Huawei smartphones. It’s not end there, alongside the company’s branding, there is regulatory information in much smaller size. Well, that’s almost the heaviest information you’d ever see on any smartphone but frankly, on P20 Pro it’s looking cool on the side, rather than in the middle.
The metal frame between the two back and front glasses hosts the power and volume buttons on the right side. SIM slot is on the left and this is just a dual-SIM slot (CLT-L29 variant sold in Pakistan). Huawei did not offer expandable memory slot with P20 Pro. So the 128GB internal storage is the maximum you get with P20 Pro – that should be enough, right? Let us know if you still need more.
Okay, now down there we have a USB Type-C port that offers USB 3.1 connectivity for faster data transfer rate. In addition, the phone comes with Super Charge technology and fast charging only works if you use the bundled purple-colored USB-A to USB-C cable with the provided fast charger. Other USB-C cables won’t give you the fast charge.
On the head of the phone, the little but efficient IR blaster that works with the pre-installed Smart Controller app. It works with the really long list of branded TVs, VCRs, STBs, ACs, and lot other things.
Besides you get a secondary microphone for noise cancellation or stereo audio recording. Yes, you thought right, there is no traditional 3.5mm audio jack on P20 Pro, the fact that I never welcomed. I mean, who actually loved the “lack” of that old but ever-standard headphone connector? I really did not, and I think there was enough room for that in 7.8mm thicker phone – last year’s Huawei P10 was only 7mm but it had the audio connector. Inspiration from good things is appreciable but adapting unpopular things? But thanks that Huawei shipped the USB-C to 3.5mm jack adapter in the retail box.
Let us know what do you think about the lack of that friendly audio jack that you could use with widely available compatible headphones.
The front is fully a screen now with the minimal chin-bezel and the one-more-unpopular thing, the cutout (aka notch) on the top. There is nothing else on the front except a home button with embedded fingerprint sensor on the bottom. That notch houses the front-facing camera and the earpiece along with the proximity and ambient light sensors. There is also tiny-invisible notification LED.
[nextpage title=”Display & Battery”]
Huawei P20 Pro – Display & Battery
With the minimal chin bezel, the P20 Pro has almost zero bezels on the left, right and top edges edges. Though the phone had to host the earpiece and other common sensors along with the front camera, the display is cut through with a notch. That notch takes less much less space on the screen unlike iPhone X – less than one third of the width with only few millimeters vertically.
The 6.1-inch screen of P20 Pro is taller with Huawei’s FullView AMOLED display. It’s company’s “best screen to date to deliver superior color gamut”. It serves with full HD resolution of 2240×1080 pixels at aspect ratio of 18.7:9 and pixel density of around 408 ppi.
Huawei seems not to be really friendly with QHD screens as they tried going for this higher resolution in last year’s P10 Plus and then Mate 10 as well. But the company didn’t want to bring it on and the P20, P20 Pro both has full HD resolution. Frankly speaking, I am happy with that especially if it helps keeping the battery juice for long run.
As you can see there is no physical navigation buttons on the bottom bezel but only a home button, the on-screen navigation is present. You get additional content area on the screen due to the status bar shifted around the notch on top. If you are one like me and do not like to have that unneeded notch interference, thankfully Huawei has provided an option to virtually hide the notch into darkened status bar. The status information remains right at their places and feels like you the top bezel with display.
If we talk about display performance, Huawei P20 Pro has good brightness control. In fact auto-controlled brightness goes beyond what the manual max brightness would do. Overall it’s good improvement over P10 even when P10 had LCD which should be brighter theoretically. So the AMOLED display of P20 Pro is appreciable for being brighter.
Contrast ratio is also impressive outdoors under sunlight but the screen still has less reflection control. So when that bright sunlight comes with shadows, it becomes troublesome in sometimes.
To deal with your own color preference, Huawei has given a range of color options with presets and manual overrides. You can control vividness and saturation as well as color temperature on top of it. You can also turn-on eye comfort to reduce the bluish tint if you want.
I found the darker overall interface better and more comfortable to the eyes than the white one. The option to set this is not in the display settings, not in themes, but in the battery settings.
Where most of the flagship phones feature around 3300mAh battery capacity, Huawei has long been using larger batteries. P20 Pro is no different and boasts with a 4000mAh battery.
It’s not only the numbers, during our tests Huawei P20 Pro has performed pretty nicely with battery consumption on various occasions. Most importantly, being a camera phone, P20 Pro lived up to the mark in the field with losing battery in affordable way.
Video playback and browsing were moderately good while the GPS navigation takes the battery juice more than than other tasks. Gaming on the other hand varies from one title to the other. Overall the P20 Pro did well as a daily runner with two SIM cards – one connected at LTE network while the other is on 3G.
[nextpage title=”Software/UI and System Performance”]
Software and User Interface
Where Huawei P20 Pro brings most of the hardware – not the camera indeed, from Mate 10, The software comes with Android 8.1 Oreo out-of-the-box and EMUI 8.1 skin on top.
Huawei shifted its UI version from 5 to 8 with the launch of Mate 10, probably to align with the cycle of Android versions. P20 Pro is not much different with that software but it has some new things to tell.
The top most is the physical notch that, if you feel wonderful with it, you can have it all the way through your usage. Otherwise, if you feel awkward or if you want to keep it different from Apple’s, this notch on P20 Pro can be disguised with the black status bar. You can also customize it to stay on with some apps and off with others. When you go for the black status bar option, Huawei keeps the rounded corners above the remaining working area of the display that’s smart too.
Software based Notch Handler
It’s good that this software based top bezel aligns with the notch’s bottom edge and more importantly it matches the physical chin bezel below the screen. Even better is that the software bezel on top keeps all the information that would show up alongside the notch as statuses and other notification icons.
Lock, Unlock and Home Screen
First of all, the lock screen comes first after you have setup your phone, with the same Magazine style by default as always. You can change the categories to load wallpapers from, in this specific style. Just in case if you didn’t know, this style loads a new wallpaper every time you press power button to wake up the phone. Some quick options are also present on the lock screen.
The home screen can be configured as always to have different layout of icons. Folders and context menu is there that you can initiate by tap and holding an icon – you can still drag the icon that way by ignoring the menu and continue with dragging.
App Drawer
Default home screen style is just old without the app drawer but you can turn it on by going through Settings > Display > Home screen style > Drawer. Huawei must move this option to the home screen customize settings, it will be more quick and easy that way.
Variety of Navigation Styles
In addition to common on-screen navigation buttons, and the fingerprint scanner swipe gestures for navigation, Mate 10 provides another navigation control – Navigation Dock. When enabled, a dock is appeared floating on the screen which you can simply tap, tap & hold, hold & stretch and drag to respectively navigate to back, home, recent tasks view or move the dock itself.
PrivateSpace
In addition to various security and privacy features like App Lock, user profiles, Huawei has added a new PrivateSpace which I guess is more useful than user profiles. Unlike user profiles you don’t need to choose the user first to switch to. Instead, you can just turn it on with your main profile and set a different PIN code to unlock into this space right from your own main profile’s lock screen. In fact you can set a different finger to go into this space without any other input on the lock screen. It’s a perfect option to apply on a case when you need to give out your phone temporarily to anyone for a while, you can put your finger (that you have set for PrivateSpace) on the scanner and it will be unlocked into that space. You can even share that PIN code with them as it’s totally a separate space and won’t show anything from your main profile.
Not purposely, but this PrivateSpace can be used for twin apps. Whereas the built-in App Twin feature only supports a few aps, you can use literally any app as a twin of it in PrivateSpace.
Dark Interface Colors
Another thing that was quite usable for me, the “Darken interface colors” to use all black on the background with white text. I think this option should have been in the display instead of battery section. Huawei has not mentioned as what black it is – a black color or the turned-off pixels, as we are dealing with an AMOLED display here. If latter is the case, then sure it would conserve battery at much higher capacity. Well, if that is the case, this option is rightly there in battery section.
The option itself says about saving power, but it also suggests to adjust colors to darker hue to do that.
The phone manager is still there and it’s an important part of Huawei smartphones, I appreciate that as most of the things it would handle from management of memory to the privacy features.
Phone manager app include everything from permissions, mobile data control, memory cleaner and management, Avast virus scanner is built-in, app locker and then a shortcut to battery options.
System Performance
Huawei P20 Pro is packed with its latest Kirin 970 system on chip with primary four cores of Cortex-A73 clocked at 2.4GHz and other four cores of Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.8GHz. It’s the same configuration as came first with the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro late last year. With 12-core GPU Mali-G72 MP12, the P20 Pro is packed by 6GB of RAM to run the system smoothly.
Well, the system indeed runs as smooth as supposed with the hardware it has packed in. We never felt a minor jitter or anything like that while using the P20 Pro – whether it’s long scrolling like Facebook, or playing games like PUBG Mobile. Some software bugs were noticed though such as the Google feed didn’t appear on left-most home screen but has nothing to with hardware, means some software based issues get resolved over time via OTA. In fact some further optimization is also delivered via software updates.
With all that happiness that you have a nice flagship phone running smoothly in every task for you, P20 Pro loses at numbers when benchmarked and compared with other flagship phones. Here are a few of top test titles.
AnTuTu v7 Benchmark for Huawei P20 Pro
You can clearly see that P20 Pro with Kirin 970 is just in line with the Snapdragon 835 powered devices. The Galaxy S9+ with the Exynos 9810 (equivalent Snapdragon 845) is way ahead.
Geekbench Benchmark for Huawei P20 Pro
The Geekbench test also noted the P20 Pro’s performance around Pixel 2XL’s SP 835 while the S9+ is little less than the double of the P20 Pro’s score. It was the single-core test, while the multi-core test is not that great as well. P20 Pro could only beat the devices from last year.
This year’s S9+ is way ahead of P20 Pro while we don’t have Sony’s to test but only Xperia XZ2 with SP854 could stand beside Apple’s iPhone X’s scores by now.
GFX Manhattan Benchmark for Huawei P20 Pro
On the graphics side, P20 Pro might show some strength in on-screen Manhattan test by GFX OpenGL and led by a 10-point margin in frame-rate compared to S9+. That’s due to the higher resolution of S9+ that it has to render more pixels than P20 Pro.
You can see here that P20 Pro again didn’t perform up to what S9+ could. In fact S9+ was also ahead of Apple’s iPhone X.
Even though P20 Pro is a good performer but when comparing, numbers do the trick to make one fall down or go up. I think it’s Huawei’s release plans of new chipsets which usually occur later the year with a new Mate-series smartphone which in turn stand up with the competition. But using that same chipset with P-series smartphone next year – as Huawei did in recent past, is the main reason that keeps its most popular smartphone series below the competition due to them having latest tech.
Huawei needs to replan its chipset lifecycle and try to catch up with Qualcomm – the pioneer in chip making. Samsung has done that, Huawei should too if they don’t want to stay behind in benchmark testing.
[nextpage title=”Camera – Interface, Image and Video Quality”]
World’s First Triple Camera
Huawei P20 Pro has a unique triple-camera system which is currently the first attempt to do something which, if one dual-cam could do, other could not.
There were two major setups of dual-cameras as far now. One setup is what Huawei initially brought with Huawei P9 as a monochrome sensor would help improve image detail and provide depth mapping. The other setup features a secondary camera with a telephoto lens to take distant photos with optical zoom. P20 Pro’s triple-camera setup combines both the setups and offers all those features in one package. Here is a quick look at the camera specs.
- 40MP RGB: Main camera with large 1/1.7″ color sensor with quad-bayer structure. It captures more light with f/1.8 aperture lens.
- 20MP B&W: Secondary camera with monochrome sensor to help improve image detail and provide depth information to simulate bokeh effect.
- 8MP Telephoto: A third camera with 80mm equivalent 3x optical zoom tele-lens and features OIS.
Read: Huawei P20 Pro In-Depth Camera Review
Huawei has completely overhauled the native camera user interface to no my likes. This new UI has lot more detail, but all in one row. You can’t switch to a certain mode with just one or two taps. Unlike the three-windowed interface Huawei used in its camera UI that let you swipe-left for settings or swipe-right for all modes. Now everything is on the slider, you move it left or move it right.
The problem is you have to move the whole slider to reach the mode at the end. There is now a gear icon on top right corner which will be available for each mode for its settings. While Huawei offered a lot of modes in its modes-window, thankfully Huawei didn’t put them all in the slider. There is “More” option far right on the slider that would bring the same modes-window with remaining modes.
Still Photos mode offers to shoot with auto/forced flash and always-on flashlight. Live photos or “Moving pictures” as Huawei calls it is also present that records a few seconds before you take the shot. Color modes – standard, vivid, or smooth, options are available in most modes.
By default, the camera is set to take 10MP shots as this is the recommended resolution which you’d mostly want to use with all the available features – such as brilliant optical zoom. Check camera review for detail.
P20 Pro can record videos up to UHD 4K resolution at 30fps and 1080p at 60fps, however the stabilizer is only available up to 1080p 30fps video recording.
Most importantly there is so far the only night time shooter in an impressive way among smartphone, that is P20 Pro. While you can always use “Pro” mode for such situations but a specific “Night” mode offers you to straight out of the box option to take shots in darkest environment. The mode can work impressively when hand-held if you try to keep yourself steady. It takes a 5 sec exposure at lowest possible ISO sensitivity according to the scene. You can choose your own exposure time and ISO as well in this mode. Just for a reference ta look at the following shot.
Huawei’s Master AI is still present and has improved to identify 19 different categories – Mate 10 identified 14 scenes. The categories, P20 Pro can identify, include cat, food, group, natural colours, close-up, night shot, text, greenery, portrait, dog, fireworks, blue sky, flowers, stage, document, sunset, snow, waterfall, and beach.
P20 Pro offers 3D Portrait Lighting driven by the on-board AI. It uses “3D facial modeling tech to follow the contours of your features and adjusts for most flattering selfies.” The system also also provides a set of six types of studio lighting effects and turns your selfies into good looking portraits.
With this interface, Huawei has provided separate modes – one “Portrait” to take shots of people with a few additional options like above studio-lighting. The other “Aperture” mode is separated to take shots of still objects. Both simulate blur background but the level of aperture can only be changed in “Aperture” mode.
Read: Full Camera Review of P20 Pro Published Separately
You should head over to the in-depth camera review of Huawei P20 Pro, however here are a few photos that you will go in detail with our full review.
Read: Huawei P20 Pro In-Depth Camera Review
[nextpage title=”Conclusion”]
Conclusion
The P20 Pro looks stunning and really cool in hands. It’s premium and eye-catching with its shining back glass that has a gradient color finish – though we didn’t have it in our Midnight Blue variant, it’s available in Twilight and Pink Gold variants.
There is no doubt, that it’s the triple-camera that makes Huawei P20 Pro a unique device of this year. However it does not restrict us from telling that the camera is not alone in the phone that did well, other departments of interest were also without complaint.
I don’t count The-Notch as a feature but it is really something that could attract some customers. If you justify the fact of keeping some standard elements of a phone in that small place then, it was present before Apple’s iPhone X, even in shorter form. I don’t deny the acceptance of that Notch by some people as well as it’s their preference. Notch haters could still want Samsung Galaxy S9+ released this year as it still went with a clean shorter bezels then an unequal top line.
There are some important things that would like to keep having in my smartphone, that is the 3.5mm audio jack and the expandable memory slot. P20 Pro misses them but gives you the IR blaster with a built-in Smart Controller app.
Battery on P20 Pro is moderately good to go with you whole day on one full-charge. Huawei P20 Pro defines itself to be some different than all those smartphones with a little or no change in recent years.
Let us have your feedback in comments below, you can ask anything you want about this phone and we’ll bring you an answer.
Huawei P20 Pro in Photos
