Review: HONOR View20

[jonsie]

HONOR VIEW20  Review

In The Box

The phone comes with very little in the box,

• The handset itself
• A USB-C Cable
• The Warranty booklet
• The Quick-start booklet
• A rear silicon cover that helps grip the phone
• (Note : If you were to buy the phone elsewhere there would be a 40W charger in the box. This has obviously been removed by O2 under their Green policy)

First impressions were good, a well made handset by HUAWEI, quite light and quite thin. It felt very comfortable to hold with a very nice 6.4 inch screen. I love the color.

The phone specs and price/plans are available here on the O2 website .

Just a few basics:

The phone I have is in Phantom Blue, 128GB storage, Dual-Sim and is the first big name with a punch-hole camera and a Sony 48 megapixel rear camera.

The battery life is amazing, two days without charging from the 4000mAh battery. Fully charged from flat is 100 minutes and will get to 60% in 30 minutes. There is no wireless charging however.

For those of us who have wired earphones there is thankfully a standard headphone jack Speakers are top and bottom and produce decent sound at a decent sound level when listening without headphones. Call quality is excellent wth 4G and wifi calling with my preferred network on the phone.

Display

Not quite matching the top end phones in terms of the vibrant coloured OLED displays of the top end phones but honestly, it's not far off. Along with the small punch hole camera the rest of the top bar is taken up with notifications and network signal indicators along with a battery level percentage indicator. The narrow bottom bar has the traditional arrow keys. You get the full 6.4 inch display when streaming videos or gaming. Screen cast works very well to both PC and TV.

Processor

The Honor View20 has the same processor as Huawei’s current Huawei Mate 20Pro, the Kirin 980 and not that I'm a Gamer but its easily capable of running most games. The front camera notch can be hidden in the phone settings but it's hardly noticeable streaming Youtube videos.

Operating System

After charging, the phone was quite easy to set up once you had acquainted yourself with the minor differences of Huawei’s own version (Magic UI) of Android 9 Pie. This looks very similar to EMUI which is common on previous Honor models.

To be honest, once set up, which can be done easily by signing in  with your Google account and restoring from a backup, you won't notice any differences at all unless you are really into looking for any. With my usage I can't tell any difference to a true Android device. All the same apps run and operate the same. Updates via the Play store are automatic too.

If you are really pedantic you can download another launcher such as Nova to give you more tweaks but it really isn't necessary. As you can see from the screenshot below, I have customised the phone using the built-in launcher to my personal preferences.

Using The Phone

So, using the phone. The 6gb ram and powerful processor makes this the fastest phone I have had the pleasure to own. Quick means lightening quick and apps are so much quicker to load. Updating apps is also very quick.

The phone has a glass back with a metal frame which gives the phone a quality feel. The back itself incorporates a lovely chevron effect within the glass but is fairly slippery so I would recommend a case. I purchased one from Amazon, a wallet-type which protects against dropping and damage. For people who like to show the phone, there is a silicon back case in the box.

Security

• The phone has a very responsive finger print scanner on the rear centre of the phone. It's very easy to set up and use this method of security if you wish.
• Alternatively, it has facial recognition which works well even in low light.
• There is also, for those who prefer, the pin number way of securing the display which will automatically allow you to unlock the phone should either of the above fail.

Camera

I could wax lyrical about the camera but I would be out of my depth. Suffice to say, the 48 megapixel rear camera + 3D sensor is brilliant. The default is to take 12 megapixel shots and you have to go into the camera settings if you want to take the higher resolution snaps. I don't change it with being a point and shoot guy, then looking at the results. The front facing camera takes high resolution 25 megapixel shots. I've found out to my horror that it shows every little wrinkle and grey hair! Thank the Lord for the beauty effects....! At the time of writing I haven't been anywhere picturesque but I have taken some photos which are below (no selfies though!!)

As you can see, it was a sunny day at my local....

In my opinion, this phone is a great mid-price range handset with the look and feel of a premium phone. You get a lot for your money.

Now for the disadvantages.

No wireless charging and the phone specs do not include any sort of waterproofing.

Until the end of August, updates and security patches will come through as normal I’ve had three updates up to present, the latest being the security patch for June.

After that date we can only speculate as to the trade war between China and the USA. Hopefully commonsense will prevail and Huawei phones will be fully supported by Google.

We are to understand that existing handsets will not be affected but that has to be tested at the time of writing.

Conclusion

The biggest (to me) downside is the ridiculous trade-in price that you will get from the recycle companies. This phone is priced at £529 to buy on P&G from O2. O2 Recycle will offer you £60 for the phone should you wish to trade in. That is one hell of a drop in value and one can only hope that should USA-China relations improve, so will recycle value. That is the big drawback of buying Huawei-Honor phones at the moment. That said, it’s a great phone and I would highly recommend the Honor View20 under normal circumstances and at half the price of the overrated iPhones, it may well be worth buying if you are one to hang onto your phones that bit longer.