Honor View20

"The View20 is the first phone in the Indian smartphone market that brings forth a punch-hole display design, which holds a minor circular cut-out for the front camera"

Jumping into the unboxing experience, the retail box for the phone is fairly uncluttered and comes with a SIM-ejector tool, a TPU case, wall charger and a USB type-C cable, along with the HONOR View20, of course.

Coming to the handset itself, the glass back on the HONOR View20 comes with an attractive laser-etched ‘V’ shape that appears to be moving when you see the phone from different angles. Unfortunately, with the glass finish, the phone also acts as a fingerprint magnet.

You’ll find the company’s branding in the bottom half of the rear panel and the fingerprint sensor is placed in the middle. Thankfully, we did not have to stretch our index finger much to find the biometric sensor at the back. There are two cut-outs for camera modules, which are assisted by an LED flash. I personally think that HONOR could have avoided the ‘AI VISION’ tag present on the right of the camera module but as the font size of the inscription isn’t that large, it’s borderline passable.

There’s a volume rocker on the right side of the handset, placed above the textured power button. The SIM card slot is present on the left side of the HONOR View20. For charging, there is a USB type-C charging point on the bottom, alongside speaker grille.

The good news is that you can find the 3.5mm headphone socket at the top of the phone, which is sitting right next to the IR blaster and proximity sensor.

We cannot delay discussing the most interesting aspect of the HONOR View20 any further. The phone ships with a punch-hole display which dominates the entire fascia and features a circular cut-out on the top-left side to house the front camera. The natural curiosity that any user would have is whether this cut-out design looks and feels impressive or obtrusive.

Although a good implementation of this design might change our perspective later, the cut-out design is a bit of hit-and-miss over here. The noticeable display bleeding just around the cut-out is a letdown when you look up close. However, while watching videos, you won’t notice this bleeding and as the 6.4-inch FHD+ IPS LCD panel on the HONOR View20 is pleasantly vibrant, the phone ends up providing a good window for your entertainment needs.

In our limited time with the HONOR’s latest, we could only manage to use it indoors but from the initial looks of it, the maximum brightness might be an issue under harsh sunlight.

In terms of the optics, the 48MP primary sensor is placed beside a TOF 3D stereo camera in the rear-facing module. Again, within the limitations of our testing, we found that the phone managed to capture some really sharp and detailed images, even indoors.

On the software side, the HONOR View20 runs Android 9.0 Pie-based Magic UI 2 out of the box. In our brief usage, the UI does feel a little bit on the heavier side with many tools pre-installed and proprietary company software. However, the Kirin 980 chipset, assisted by 6GB RAM, managed to breeze through the platform in our testing time with the phone. We did not face any lag issues navigating through the UI and everything felt buttery smooth.

To get the rest of the specifications out of the way, the HONOR View20 comes with a capacious 4,000mAh battery, 128GB of storage, and a Mali-G76 MP10 GPU. As the company has not announced its pricing, we will have to wait and watch the segment that the HONOR View20 will be competing in.

Source: https://www.hihonor.com/in/blog/honor-view20-unboxing-and-first-impressions/

The HONOR View20 is the company's latest flagship phone set to launch in India on January 29 touting a punch-hole display, 48MP camera and Kirin 980 chipset.

• The HONOR View20 is set to launch in India on January 29

• It is the first phone with a hole in the display

• It is also HONOR's first phone with a 48MP sensor

It is quite typical for HONOR to be among the first brands to launch a new smartphone in India. Last year in January, HONOR launched the HONOR 9 Lite and HONOR View10. The company will now launch their successors this month, called the HONOR 10 Lite and HONOR View20. We went hands-on with the HONOR 10 Lite last week, and this week we take a look at the HONOR View20, which is arguably HONOR's most ambitious flagship smartphone to date.

The HONOR View20 sees a major bump in design and hardware compared to its predecessor. It brings a number of firsts for the company including a punch-hole display which is all set to become the big trend this year, a 48MP rear camera and a Kirin 980 chipset with Dual NPU, among other things. There's plenty of interesting things on offer here, so we take a quick look at what consumers can expect. Here's our initial impressions of the HONOR View20 before it launches in India on November 29.

HONOR View20 is definitely a "take notice" smartphone, more so than HONOR View10. It ditches the metal unibody design and goes for a glass and metal combination instead. There is a 3D curved glass on the back that seamlessly meets the aluminium frame. The glass is glossy, but unlike any other glass-backed phone we have seen. This is because HONOR has incorporated a V-shaped pattern on the rear panel through a nano-coating process that runs down the back when you look at it at certain angles. The unit I received was Blue, which looks a little too loud for my taste, but there's no doubt it's an attractive and unique look that should take take your fancy.

HONOR's new flagship feels pretty substantial in the hand. It is on the heavier side of things, but the weight is pretty balanced and the device as whole feels pretty solid. The volume and power buttons on the right side have a pleasant clicky sound to them. Notably, HONOR View20 retains the headphone jack which can be seen on the top. The bottom side of the frame sees a Type-C port and a single speaker grille.

The biggest talking point about HONOR View20 is the cutout on the top left corner of the display which houses a single selfie camera. HONOR is calling this the AllView display. HONOR View20 is actually the world's first smartphone to sport a hole in the display - it was announced on December 10 in Hong Kong. The circular cutout is about 4.5mm in diameter. A lot of mainstream brands will be employing this sort of hole in the display this year, be it on the right corner or the left corner. This is supposed to be the next best option for removing the notch, if companies are unwilling to go with a slider mechanism.

The big question will be whether the hole in the display is actually better than a notch. Over the past one year, my eyes have gotten used to notches, both wide and waterdrop notches. So, the cutout does take a while to get used to. In my brief interaction with the phone, the hole does stick out like a sore thumb on a white background. But it is much easier to ignore if the background is dark. The notifications will be stacked next to the cutout, so it looks fairly optimised at first glance. I will have more to say about the punch-hole and just how distracting it is after playing a few games, watching some videos and operating some popular apps like WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.

Apart from the cutout and a very thin chin bezel, HONOR View20 is pretty much all display. You get a 6.4-inch FHD+ (2310x1080) display with a screen-to-body ratio that's over 90 per cent and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. This is a pretty immersive screen on first look with deep and vibrant colours that could trick you into believing its an OLED display, when it is actually an LCD panel. The display has a pixel density of 398ppi and brightness levels look decent. This is a tall screen that will make one-handed use challenging.

Under-the-hood, the HONOR View20 gets a flagship Kirin 980 chipset . This is paired with 6GB of RAM as the base variant, which is plenty of memory to help with your multitasking needs. And if that's not enough, HONOR may just launch an 8GB RAM variant of HONOR View20 as well. As expected, HONOR View20 flies out of the box. Browsing through the UI, opening and loading apps and the animations were snappy. There was no lag or stuttering at all, but we can only know this for sure after putting HONOR View20 through intensive workload.

HONOR View20 also keeps things pretty traditional as it goes with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor which is absolutely snappy, rather than an in-display sensor. It also gets an equally fast facial recognition feature as well.

Now, HONOR View20 does run Android Pie out-of-the-box. This is layered with Magic UI on top as HONOR moves away from EMUI. Like EMUI, Magic UI is still pretty heavily layered so there is very little of Android Pie that is actually visible. Magic UI looks pretty similar to EMUI 9, but HONOR expects it to gradually change in the future. App icons look more uniform now and there's generally a lot more colour to be found. The Settings menu is fairly populated. You have the option to hide the camera cutout under the Notch option in Display. This will create a black bar across the top of the display so that you don't visibly see the cutout. There is also have Digital Balance which is essentially the Pie-based feature called Digital Wellbeing.

As for the cameras, the HONOR View20 is the company's first phone to come with a 48MP rear camera sensor. That's a lot of megapixels in a smartphone, promising to deliver ultra crisp pictures. This is a Sony IMX586 sensor with a pixel size of 0.8 microns. Through pixel binning technology, the pixel size can get up to 1.6 microns. So you have the option to shoot in 48MP resolution or 12MP which uses pixel binning to offer detail and clarity. I captured a few pictures indoors and in daylight and the results with the 12MP resolution were quite pleasing. There is also a secondary ToF (Time of Flight) camera that is used for depth sensing.

The front camera which rests beneath the cutout is a 25MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture. The few selfies I captured in daylight looked crisp, but I will have more to say about the cameras and how they perform in various lighting conditions.

The HONOR View20 also gets a beefy 4,000mAh battery, which should be enough to take you through the day and then some. The EMUI software also offers two battery saving features that will help you get the most out of the battery. The phone supports Huawei's SuperCharge fast charging and you get a 40W charger with the box.

The HONOR View20 is clearly a few steps up from its predecessor and there is a lot that is new and unique here to tickle your fancy. This is the first time we are checking out a phone with a hole in the display so it will be interesting to see whether this is the way to go to remove the notch. The phone looks quite attractive and a rumoured price tag of around Rs 35,000 should set this up nicely. Stay tuned for our full review of the HONOR View20 after the phone goes official on January 29.

Source: indiatoday.in