Honor 20 First Impressions: Should You Invest Rs. 33,000 On This Honor Smartphone?

Name: Honor 20 First Impressions: Should You Invest Rs. 33,000 On This Honor Smartphone?
Item: Honor 20 First Impressions: Should You Invest Rs. 33,000 On This Honor Smartphone?
Rating: 3.0
Author: Rohit Arora

By Rohit Arora

| Updated: Wednesday, July 10, 2019, 8:59 [IST]

{Update: Referring to Honor's latest official announcement, the company's recently launched Honor 20 Series smartphones will receive the Android Q update from Google. Honor mentioned, "The most popular devices of HONOR, including the recently launched HONOR 20 series, will be able to access Android Q update".}

Amidst the ongoing Huawei-US dispute, the company's sub brand Honor has announced three new smartphones in the Indian market. The new Honor smartphones- Honor 20i, Honor 20 and Honor 20 Pro have been announced at a price-point of Rs. 14,999, Rs. 32,999 and Rs. 39,999 respectively. The pricing makes it quite clear that Honor wants to pitch a product in every price segment to grab a bigger market share in the Indian market.

However, the recent Huawei-US ban dispute has raised a lot of questions about the company's future in the market. There's a lot of uncertainty around Huawei and Honor's products after the end of support from Google and other big American companies. Honor is not shying away from speaking on the issue.

The company recently issued some statements to clear the doubts. Honor claims to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Honor smartphone and tablet products, covering those that have been sold and the ones that are still in stock globally.

The company also mentioned that the current Honor smartphone users, and buyers who plan to purchase the Honor 20 series devices will get full support of all the services from Search engine giant Google. Google Play Store, Google Maps, Gmail amongst many other Google backed apps and services will run without any hindrance. However, the official statements do not mention anything about the future Android OS updates from Google.

We will update this space as soon as we get the required information and clarity on the critical matter. Meanwhile, let's focus on the newly launched Honor 20 as it brings along a promising spec-sheet at a very aggressive price-point.

6.26" 2340p x 1080p display with 412 PPI

Starting with the display, the first thing you will notice about the screen on Honor 20 is the punch-hole cutout. Positioned at the top-left corner, this punch hole houses a massive 32MP selfie camera. The screen on Honor 20 measures 6.26-inches and offers a screen resolution of 2340p x 1080 pixels. Like any other Honor phone, the display on Honor 20 is fairly crisp and very touch responsive. The FHD+ screen with 412ppi ensures immersive video playback and gaming experience.

The brightness levels are also adequate. You can read texts and comfortably use the phone outdoors for other day-to-day tasks. Honor's UI offers two different color modes within display settings that can be tweaked as per liking. It is quite strange that this premium mid-range smartphones comes sans Gorilla Glass protection. Honor says that the phone is equipped with an in-house protective layer for protection against scratches. We haven't gauged the durability of the Honor's in-house screen-protection and the company hasn't specified anything concrete.

48MP Quad-Lens Camera Setup

The major highlight feature of Honor 20 is its 4-lens camera setup at the rear panel. There's a quad-lens rear camera and a 32MP selfie camera at front taking the lens count to five on the smartphone. Th rear camera configuration includes- 48 MP, f/1.8, wide-angle lens with PDAF support, 16 MP, f/2.2 ultrawide angle lens, 2 MP, f/2.4 dedicated macro camera and a 2 MP, f/2.4, depth sensor. All serves different purposes.

Detailed 48MP Image Sample

The 48MP lens does a good job in taking detailed shots. The ultrawide-angle lens gives a whole new perspective to your photography skills. The 2MP macro lens is decent enough to capture some good shots (provided that light conditions are favorable), and the depth sensor can take some really pleasing portraits. Honor's camera app is pretty feature-rich and offers a variety of modes and filters to help you experiment with photography. We will spend some more time with Honor 20 to test out its camera's full potential. Stay tuned for our review of the smartphone.

2018’s Flagship Kirin 980 Chipset, 6GB RAM And 128GB ROM

Huawei introduced the flagship chipset- Kirin 980 in the late 2018. The 64-bit ARM-based CPU is literally a powerhouse. As I have intensively used the flagship P30 Pro and Mate 20 Pro from Huawei that uses the same chipset, I can say that Kirin 980 is still the most-widely available and snappiest chipset in the town. It really makes Honor 20 fluid and responsive. Apps load in a jiffy and UI navigation is buttery smooth. Combined with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, Honor 20 can easily handle power-intensive tasks without any performance slow-down.

Conventional Side-Mounted Fingerprint Scanne

In place of an in-screen fingerprint scanner, Honor is offering a conventional fingerprint scanner which is snappy and very accurate. It is placed at my favorite spot to unlock any handset, i.e. top right edge of the device where your right thumb and left index finger falls naturally while holding the device.

Magic UI 2.1.0 Based on Android Pie

As far as software is concerned, Honor 20 runs on the company's Magic UI 2.1, which is an updated version of the well-known EMUI. The UI is pretty feature-rich and offers a number of useful software add-ons. If you are a fan of Stock Android, you may find the Magic UI a bit too much for your liking. While it is full of bloatwares and looks hardly like an Android UI, it is pretty good, snappy and serves all the purposes of being a good mobile OS. Once again, we are not sure whether this device will get future OS updates from Google. We can only recommend you to wait for an official word from Honor on the same.

Substantially Sized 3,750 mAH Battery Unit

Even though Honor 20 falls short of battery power when compared with the competition, the 3,750 mAH battery managed to last one-full day on a heavy usage. The battery also gets support for 22.5W fast charging. We are yet to push the handset to its limits to test the full potential of its battery cell.

Verdict

Update

Honor 20 was launched in the times when the parent company Huawei was dealing with the critical issue of ban from Google and other important US brands. Now with some clarity on the upcoming software updates, we can say that Honor 20 is a well-rounded offering with flagship specs and a very capable and feature-rich camera. Honor 20 will receive the Android Q update from Google; however, we cannot say the same for Android R update with the same confidence.

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