Honor 20i First Impression: Premium Design And Capable Triple Rear Cameras

Looks Good; Feels Premium To Hold

Honor 20i comes in three different color options- Phantom Red, Phantom Blue, and Midnight Black Color option. Midnight Black and the Phantom Blue color options. The company has introduced the Phantom Blue and the Midnight Black color option of the device and is yet to bring the Phantom Red option.

The rear panel comes with a gradient design which is common in the smartphones available today. We got the Phantom Blue color variant and it has purplish tint at the bottom which adds to its appeal. Though the gradient design looks good, it attracts fingerprints almost instantly once you pick it up.

So, you will need to clean the surface quite often. The device is a bit slippery, so, we suggest you use a case for protection against accidental drops. Thankfully, the retail box ships with a transparent TPU case.

The triple-lens primary camera setup is stacked vertically on the top-left corner of the rear panel accompanied by an LED flash. The fingerprint reader is also mounted at the rear with an optimum positioning for easy unlock. Completing the look is the Honor logo inscribed at the bottom.

The right panel of the smartphone houses the power and the volume keys. The keys are swift and take command easily. There is no key or port at the left edge. The hybrid microSD card slot is placed on the top, whereas, the bottom panel has a 3.5mm audio jack, a microUSB port, and the speaker grille. Overall, Honor has done a pretty good job in terms of design. The device not only looks good but is also slim and feels premium to hold.

Crisp Display With Narrow Bezels

The Honor 20i sports a 6.21-inch full HD+ display panel with a waterdrop style notch on top for the selfie camera. The earpiece is neatly tucked between the notch and the top bezel. The IPS LCD panel offers a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels which is optimum for high-resolution media. With a screen-to-body ratio of 90 percent, the display offers good viewing angles.

The display is bright and colorful and performs no less than the AMOLED panels. The videos streamed online on YouTube and other platforms are also good and you can stream videos at 1080p. The sunlight visibility also seems legit and the content is readable under direct sunlight.

You also get the option to tweak the color temperature and hide the notch in the Settings menu. We will be testing the display performance thoroughly and will share the feedback in our detailed review.

Triple-Rear Cameras For Rs.14,999 Is A Sweet Deal

Honor is one of those brands which offers a good camera setup for the affordable price tag. The company's previous budget smartphones such as Honor 9N, Honor 8X and others are such examples.

The latest budget entrant follows the same footprints and packs an impressive triple lens rear camera setup. The camera lenses at the back panel comprising of a 24MP primary lens paired with an 8MP ultra-wide lens and an additional 2MP lens for depth mapping. Up front, you get a 32MP snapper for selfies and video chats.

The camera UI is neat and you can easily toggle between Aperture, Night, Portrait, and Advanced settings. Apart from the Pro, Panorama, and the HDR mode; the camera also supports Time Lapse, AR lens, and other features. However, there is no slow motion recording feature available.

Both the front and the rear cameras capture good quality images and should please the shutterbugs. We tested the camera for a while and the results are satisfactory. The rear camera captures good quality of images with ample sharpness and detailing. The images are crisp with good edge detection. The bokeh effect also looks good; so does the HDR mode. The selfie camera also captures good selfies.

Hardware, Software, And Battery:

The unit runs on an in-house Kirin 710 octa-core processor based on 12nm architecture. This is a premium mid-range chipset which powers some popular smartphones such as Huawei P30 Lite, Honor 10 Lite, and Huawei Nova 3i among others.

The processor is accompanied by 4GB RAM and massive 128GB storage space. Using the hybrid SD card slot, you can expand the storage to up to 512GB. So, no space crunch issue should affect you.

In the software department, the Honor 20i runs on Android Pie OS with EMUI 9.0.1 interface. There is a Digital Balance feature which is Honor's version of Digital Wellbeing. This feature allows you to limit your time screen so that you do not spend too long using the device.

The device performs well with basic tasks. Activities like calling, web surfing, and light gaming. There was no lag while opening multiple apps together and the app launch is also smooth. We still need to test the handset extensively with high-end gaming and more. It would be interesting to see how well it performs with graphic-intensive games such as PUBG and Asphalt 9, etc.

The handset is fuelled by a 3,400mAh non-removable battery which comes with 10W fast charging support. The battery is slightly smaller compared to the 4,000mAh units found on the competitions.

We expect the device to give a backup close to one day with light/moderate usage and a single charge. However, we will be able to give feedback on the charging speed and backup after thorough testing.

Verdict

Honor is one of the major players in the budget smartphone segment in India besides Xiaomi and Realme. The affordable smartphones by the company have been widely popular amongst the Indian masses. The Honor 20i is another example of the company's capable mid-range smartphone.

You get a triple-lens setup for around 15K price tag making it one of the few devices to offer this setup at this price range. It's not just the camera, you get a high-resolution display with a waterdrop notch and a premium mid-range processor that allows the device to perform well in every aspect.

The capable hardware with a reasonable price tag makes the Honor 20i a good option to buy. The smartphone will no doubt be giving a tough competition to the Redmi Note 7 Pro and the Realme 3 Pro smartphones which have been grabbing all the attention in the budget segment.