The first thing you'll notice about the Chinese budget brand Honor's new phone is a black hole in the screen hiding the selfie camera. With a dark background it almost disappears. — dpa
The first thing you'll notice about the Chinese budget brand Honor's new phone is a black hole in the screen hiding the selfie camera. Our test shows just how well this fancy new phone can can keep up with top-priced flagships from other companies.
The front-facing camera of a smartphone has to go somewhere but in an era of more and more bezel-less displays the camera is usually in the way wherever it's placed.
Huawei subsidiary Honor has gone down a new route with its latest model, the View 20, incorporating the camera into the upper lefthand corner of the screen. The 6.4-inch display thus occupies almost the entire front of the smartphone.
The camera in its punch hole is barely perceptible, probably less so than one placed in a notch in the display, another current trend seen on phones like the iPhone X. With a dark background it almost disappears. And what important content appears at the very top of the screen anyway?
In other respects, the Honor View 20 has everything you'd expect from a device in this class – Huawei's latest processor (the Kirin 980) plenty of RAM (6GB), at least 128 gigabytes of storage space and a decent sized battery (4000 mAh).
The camera with its two lenses and up to 48 megapixels delivers good pictures and videos while the AI provided by the Kirin processor recognises objects and lighting conditions, making adjustments accordingly.
The normal photo resolution is 12 megapixels with the 48 megapixels resolution preserved for a mode called AI Ultra Clarity – this takes several shots over five seconds and combines them to produce a very sharp image.
Then there's night mode which combines several shots and exposure times to create a well exposed photo. However, compared to Google's Pixel 3, which has a similar function, the pictures are less sharp and a bit over-bright.
The View 20 comes with Android 9 installed with Huawei's Magic UI overlaid on it. Among other things, that brings a new colour scheme, changed icons and a new font.
However, users will have to overcome a few hurdles before they can use the UI as the phone presses them to set up a Huawei account, use its cloud services and participate in a usability programme. And if that wasn't irritating enough, users are urged to install several recommended apps.
Also annoying are the pre-installed bloatware apps from the likes of Amazon and Facebook as well as the Top-Apps folder which collects user data and makes app recommendations.
In conclusion, the Honor View 20 looks elegant, has a great display, and pretty good cameras. In terms of performance, it can keep up with other current top models, but undercuts many of them in the price.
The 128-gigabyte model costs around US$650 (RM2,656), for the 256GB one you have to pay around US$735 (RM3,004). – dpa
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