Huawei P20

The Huawei P20 is the direct successor of the P10 by skipping a lot of numbers at once. They have a good reason for that, because this P20 doesn't have a lot in common with the P10. This is clearly not a small update. What we mean exactly and what role Leica has in the creation of the P20 we will take a closer look in this prevue.

Waterproof, more economical screen

Huawei has given the P20 a fairly modern look with thin screen edges and a screen notch. That strongly reminds him of the iPhone X and that can be both a plus and a minus. At the bottom we still find a lot of space between the screen and the edge. Huawei has a good reason for that. Here is the home button with integrated fingerprint scanner. Having fingerprint recognition at the front is useful when the device is on a table; it is then immediately accessible without having to pick it up. The housing is this time water and dust resistant via an IP54 certification. However, this is considerably less than that of competitors. So don't completely immerse it in water. When it comes to the screen, Huawei uses a substantial 5.8-inch FullView screen with Full HD+ resolution. Interestingly, for each pixel, in addition to a red, green and blue subpixel, a white subpixel is also used. This so-called RGBW panel is therefore much brighter than some other phones and is therefore easy to read outdoors in sunlight. An additional advantage: it consumes less energy.

Smart and artificial camera

No matter how beautiful the Huawei P20 may look, it's all about its camera. Or cameras, we should say. On the back there is a 12 megapixel colour sensor and a 20 megapixel black and white sensor. Huawei does that to be able to take sharper pictures. Now it did the same last year and yet there is innovation in the camera system. For example, this year Huawei applies a much more light-sensitive camera lens with a maximum aperture of f/1.8 for the 12 megapixel sensor and no less than f/1.6 on the 20 megapixel sensor. That combined with the much larger pixel's of 1.55 micron the Huawei P20 has to stand his ground in the dark. Huawei has again had help from Leica's experts and the first results look promising. Even better results should be achieved by adding artificial intelligence. Something that especially benefits image stabilisation by shooting sharper photos and videos, even in the dark. Artificial intelligence also helps to determine the right settings. The P20 can automatically choose from 19 different preferred settings, each with its own exposure settings and colour balance. This should generally produce better photos in almost every situation.

Main Huawei P20 specifications

• Large 5.8 inch FullVision IPS FHD+ screen with notch
• Powerful octacore processor (Kirin 970) at up to 2.4GHz
• Large 4GB of RAM RAM memory
• 20 + 12 megapixel Leica camera with Artificial Intelligence
• Selfiecam 24,8 megapixel large with 3D Portrait Lighting function
• Fast mobile internet thanks to 4G (LTE)
• Supports dual nano SIM card
• Standard with a lot of 128GB of storage

Kirin 970; entirely on their own

Finally, we need to talk about the power source of the Huawei P20. The Kirin 970 chipset is a true miracle. With no less than 8 cores and 4 GB of RAM memory, there is no lack of processing power. The P20 can easily be used for artificial intelligence that requires a lot of calculations in the background. As already mentioned, these are mainly used with the camera app. Still, you don't have to worry that all that processing power comes at the expense of battery life. Thanks to various saving features, the 3400 mAh large battery doesn't have to be drained quickly. If it does, it is fortunately quickly rechargeable thanks to Huawei's own SuperCharge charger. Because Huawei has opted for USB-C, it doesn't matter how you plug that charger into the P20; there is no top or bottom.

Pro and cons Huawei P20

• Renewed and modern design
• Better photos & videos thanks to artificial intelligence
• Bright borderless screen
• Powerful processor gives new possibilities

• Not as waterproof as some competitors