The Huawei P20 and Huawei P20 Pro were launched yesterday at a special event organized by Huawei in Paris, France. The new flagships sport the trending top-notch screens, stereo speakers and lots of camera improvements including the World’s first new Leica Triple Camera on the P20 Pro.
The Huawei P20 is like the “Lite” version of the devices, with a much smaller screen. The Huawei P20 boasts of a 5.8″ LCD bezel-less screen with a notch at the top, and a resolution of 1080 x 2244 pixels. Sporting the same PenTile RGBW glass on the screen, the same as on the Mate 10. There’s an always-on fingerprint reader sitting at the below the scenes and doubling as a multi-purpose control key.
Internally, the P20 houses the Kirin 970 chipset with an octa-core processor clocking at 2.4 GHz, Mali-G72MP12 graphics processor, and 4GB of RAM. There is 64GB storage that can be expanded with a memory card in the second SIM as it’s got a hybrid slot. The chip also has Huawei’s dedicated NPU for machine learning acceleration as well.
For photography, the P20 comes with an upgraded Leica Dual Rear 12MP + 20MP Camera with a new larger 1/2.3″ sensor size, f/1.6 aperture lens and 1.55µm pixel size for the first. While the 20MP monochrome shooter boasts of the same features on the Mate 10, with f/1.6 aperture lens. The camera comes with all sorts of autofocus assistance (PDAF, laser, contrast, and depth detection) and a dual-tone LED flash as well.
One of the highlights of the smartphones is their camera. With the P20, you can do portraits, various background and lighting effects, 2x lossless zoom and capture 720p@960fps slow-mode videos. The Leica cameras also boast various AI advancements as well.
The 24MP selfie camera has f/2.0 aperture lens with bokeh and studio-lightning effects and supports Face Unlock. The P20 is powered by a 3400mAh battery with a support for Huawei’s Super Charge and wireless charging as well.The P20 design is unique than the P9 and P10 smartphones, coming with a rather trendy dual-glass body reinforced with a metal frame.
The P20 is IP53 certified, offering dust and splash resistance only. It was launched in Twilight with a very catchy gradient, which will be available in all markets. Black, Midnight Blue, Pink Gold and Champagne Gold are other colours available as well, but some of those will be region dependent obviously.
The Huawei P20 Pro is the much powerful version of the series, housing the world’s first Leica Triple Camera. The P20 Pro sports a slightly bigger 6.1″ screen with the same 18.7:9 aspect ratio and notch obviously. Its resolution is identical to the P20 of 1080 x 2244 pixels resolution. The screen is an OLED panel, while the fingerprint sensor is also at the front as usual and doubles with the home button.
Internally, the devices are pretty similar except the P20 Pro has a bigger 6GB of RAM for fast and smooth multitasking. The Leica Triple Camera is certainly the highlight here. The separated sensor from the photo above is a 20MP monochrome camera with f/1.6 aperture lens. The the two main cameras are a 40MP large 1/1.7″colour sensor with f/1.8 aperture lens and OIS, and an 8MP shooter with f/2.4 telephoto lens.
The camera has the same multiple autofocus features, there is a dual-tone LED flash as well. The shooters can do 3x optical zoom and 5x hybrid zoom. Other highlights include the breathtaking maximum ISO of 102,400. Boasting of an instant autofocus on anything that’s as close as 3 meters and screen off-to-shoot time of 0.3s.
Finally, this triple-cam is capable of 720p@960fps slow-mo videos and relies on AI for lots of new features and effects. Just as the P20, the P20 Pro also comes with a 24MP front snapper with f/2.0 aperture lens that can do a variety of background and lighting effects, including supports to Face Unlock with 2D mapping.
Powering the Huawei P20 Pro up is bigger 4,000 mAh battery that supports Super Charge via a proprietary 22.5W plug (58% in 30 mins) and wireless charging as well. The device is IP67 certified offering dust and water resistance for up to 30 minutes.
Huawei P20 and P20 Pro run on Android 8.1 with the new EMUI 8.1 skin. The new user interface comes with a new feature that lets you darken the two top status bar and make the screen behave like it had no notch. According to Huawei, its Face Unlock is 2x faster compared to the iPhone X. The P20 and P20 Pro will instantly light up their screens if you are in a dark room for the feature to work
Pricing and Availability
The Huawei P20 is available immediately and costs €649, while the P20 Pro will hit stores on April 6 and will set you back €899.
