The Honor View 20 is many things. Impressively specced, deceptively premium and great value for money, to name but a few highlights. Most of all, however, it's the shape of phones to come in 2019.
After the wholly predictable furore when Apple unveiled the iPhone X two years ago, “the notch” is already on its way out. Screen tech has evolved to the point where a small black bar across the top of your phone is no longer necessary, and Honor’s View 20 is the first major handset to employ a bullet punch-style hole for its selfie camera instead. It's good news for anyone who’d prefer some extra usable space from their display and an absolute travesty for melodramatic YouTubers with even less to complain about than ever before.
What does this mean for the Honor View 20? It's the first phone to use this innovation, but won't be the last given the most recent Samsung Galaxy S10 leaks and the nature of tech launches in general. It's the age-old dilemma of whether to buy now or wait until later. For the right buyer, this is a win-win scenario.
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Screen
By now you probably already know where you stand on the great notch debate. So let's skip that chat entirely and say the Honor View 20’s hole-punch display is a better solution to the problem of how to fit as much screen onto a phone as possible. A 25MP selfie camera sits neatly in the top left-hand corner of the screen, results in an 86 per cent screen-to-body ratio and allows you to squeeze more notifications onto that top strip of display.
Is it a game-changer for phone design? No. Is it a better work-around than the notch? Absolutely. It’s a cleaner, more alluring aesthetic, although you’ll quickly forget about it in everyday usage.
As for the actual screen itself? It’s alright. A generous 6.4-inch LCD with a 1080x2310 resolution, you’re getting a lot of screen for your cash here, but the actual quality on show is so-so. While there’s more than enough detail for pinging off WhatsApp missives, scrolling through your Instagram feed and even fine-tuning a Google Doc on the tube, the View 20 isn’t quite as impressive when playing video. Why? Honor’s usual preference for searing colour intensity over accuracy.
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By default, the display is set to ‘Vivid’, meaning the Emirates turf during Arsenal’s FA Cup fourth round face-off with Manchester United took on a garish sheen. Something that turning the colour temperature down to ‘Normal’ did little to solve. Just to be sure this wasn’t an issue with the BBC’s stream we stuck the Honor View 20 next to the now similarly priced iPhone 7 Plus and the difference was night and day in terms of both detail and accuracy.
While these quibbles seem more of a matter of calibration than the View 20’s new display tech, this phone’s solitary speaker at the base of its screen seems to be a direct consequence of such innovative design. Easily muffled by your palm, it’s not especially loud or clear in the first place either. Good for a run through YouTube’s latest viral sensations, but you’d be reluctant to binge your way through Netflix’s Sex Education under the same circumstances.
Design & Power
If this all seems overly harsh on the Honor View 20, then it’s not meant to be. This is a mid-range phone masquerading as a flagship one, and that will always mean compromises have to be made. Not that you’d know it from simply looking at this handset.
It's a handsome creation with the same metal frame and smudge-friendly glass back you've seen on countless other rivals. Only this time around that glass back has a reflective finish which reveals V-shaped neon highlights in the right conditions.
At 180g this phone feels pleasingly substantial, but it's not one of those Note-like creations that's vaguely cumbersome to use. Unlike many of those devices, the Honor View 20 retains a headphone jack for those who've not yet jumped on the Bluetooth bandwagon, and it has a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, too. For a slower but more forward-thinking in-screen scanner you'll have to plump for the excellent OnePlus 6T.
As much as it impresses on face value, the Honor View 20’s true strength lies in its blisteringly speedy internals. Frankly, you don't need a phone with Huawei’s ultrafast Kirin 980 processor and 8GB RAM to chomp through the likes of Citymapper and Deliveroo. Still, that's exactly what this phone will do while making light work of more intensive gaming downloads such as PUBG Mobile.
Most impressive of all, is the View 20’s battery life: this a phone with serious stamina. A 4,000mAh battery means you'll enjoy close to two working days use with this handset at first. And if you use it to stream a prohibitive amount of video for testing/procrastination-related purposes? Fast-charging ensures you can top things up to full again in little over an hour.
Camera & OS
If the Honor View 20’s powers of endurance are an unexpected delight, then its rear-facing camera is more of a mixed bag. As one of the first phones to employ Sony’s latest 48MP sensor with a f/1.8 aperture, we were expecting decent things from this snapper. Even though cramming such an enormous number of megapixels into your camera tech by no means equates to extraordinary photos. Remember, the Google Pixel 3 is the smartphone camera to beat with just a 12MP sensor to its name.
So what's the problem here? It’s Honor’s aggressive approach to image processing. While the idea of a supremely bright, colourful and sharp images sounds perfect on paper, what you get here often looks unnatural when shooting portraits of friends and family. Facial textures are so smooth and uniform that it occasionally looks as though skin tones are smeared on. Although some won't mind this Photoshopped effect, it had us scrambling around in the settings menu to try and tone it down.
Luckily, this aesthetic isn’t nearly so egregious when shooting landscape photos and general scenery. You can even switch camera modes from the phone’s standard 12MP setup – which employs a technique known as pixel binning to amalgamate four pixels into one used in the final photo – to a 48MP AI Ultra Clarity model that uses the sensor’s full roster of pixels. It’s best employed in good light with a still subject as you’re required to hold the phone steady for five seconds. Still, the results are worth your perseverance with an improved amount of detail.
Such is the nature of the View 20’s overbearing pictorial philosophy, our usual quibbles about Magic UI 2 operating system are rendered trivial in comparison. Running on top of Android Pie, it remains a tad overbearing and convoluted at times, but you'll quickly get used to its quirks. The general user experience is silky smooth when pottering between apps.
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Verdict
If Honor’s View 20 has set the bar for smartphones in 2019, then it’s done so at bronze medal standard. There'll be better handsets to see release this year, but not many. Especially at the £500 mark.
Curiously, the View 20’s greatest shortcomings stem from its most eye-catching features. Its hole-punch screen is impressive on first viewing, but streaming video on it not so much. Likewise, its ludicrously specced 48MP camera promises much and almost trips over the scale of its own ambition. But when it comes to the smartphone fundamentals, this device barely puts a foot wrong. From its rock-solid battery life to a design with considerable class and finesse, there's a hell of a lot to like here once you put the flaws in context.
If anything, the Honor View 20 is a victim of its first impressions. It's a great imitation of a flagship product. One that can't quite maintain the illusion when you get your hands on it. Credit where it's due, though, we can't help but appreciate such hustle.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
