After so much of leaks, speculations and rumours, Huawei has finally launched the P20 and P20 Pro on Tuesday at an event in Paris, France. The Chinese maker said that its new P-Series smartphones feature AI-powered camera, with ‘co-engineered’ by Leica. Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu at the event said it skipped the P11 and jumped straight to P20 as the latest models had major improvements over the previous generation. Mr. Yu also revealed a new logo for the company.
Mr. Yu at the event also spoke about the design of the new Huawei P20 and P20 Pro devices, claiming they have ‘seamless surfaces’ to touch, and highly symmetrical form factor to see. Both devices will be available in four colour variants – Graphite Black, Midnight Blue, Pink Gold (gradient colours), and Twilight (gradient colours). Each comes with different, colour-matched themes.
Huawei P20, P20 Pro price
The Huawei P20 is priced at EUR 649 (approx. Rs. 52,200), while the P20 Pro price has been set at EUR 899 (approx. Rs. 72,300). Both P20 smartphones are said to be immediately available globally.
Huawei P20, P20 Pro specifications and features
Both the dual-SIM smartphones run on EMUI 8.1 skin based on Android 8.1 Oreo. They also support Google ARCore and a deeply customised Google Assistant. Both P20 devices are powered by the octa-core Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC (four Cortex-A73 cores clocked at 2.36GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.6GHz) with a dedicated NPU (neural processing unit). The company also claimed NPU acceleration for Android Messages, the new Google-made RCS-based default messaging app on the Huawei phones. The Huawei P20 comes with 4GB of RAM, while the P20 Pro has 6GB of RAM. Both of them have 128GB of onboard storage. Both P20 devices come with a 360-degree Face Unlock feature and Huawei claimed that it will unlock the smartphones in as little as 0.6 seconds.
The Chinese telecommunication giant also launched the Share 2.0 feature for easy sharing between phones and even PCs with up to 96 Mbps transfer speeds over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. A new feature introduced is the Huawei Health app, which features TruScreen heart rate monitoring, TruSleep technology, and secured fitness data cloud storage. The Huawei PC Mode is somewhat similar to the Samsung DeX, and lets users connect their P20 smartphones to a monitor to replicate a PC-style experience. Not only this, the P20 and P20 Pro come with wireless Hi-Fi audio, with HWA (Hi-Res Wireless Audio), providing 990 Kbps bandwidth over Bluetooth. Huawei has partnered with audio device companies such as Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, and Onkyo to build the HWA ecosystem. Both smartphones also feature stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos and Dolby AC-4 audio.
The Huawei P20 sports a 5.8-inch full-HD+ (1080×2244 pixels) RGBW FullView display, with the W standing for White, and meant to provide better sunlight legibility. The display has a max brightness of 770 nits, which Huawei claims is 23 percent brighter than Apple’s iPhone X. The company also said that the P20 contains the same size display as the Samsung Galaxy S9 and the iPhone X. The device also houses a home button that supports ‘edgeless fingerprint’.
The Huawei P20 Pro sports a 6.1-inch full-HD+ (1080×2240 pixels) OLED FullView display. Huawei says the P20 has an IP53 and not the 68 rating for dust and water resistance. It is armed by a 3400mAh battery, despite of the fact that it is just 7.65mm thick. Huawei claimed up to 75 hours of continuous music playback. The Huawei P20 Pro on the other hand has an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance, and is armed by a 4000mAh battery despite being just 7.8mm thick, providing up to 89 hours of music playback. Both devices support Huawei SuperCharge fast charging technology that is said to charge the device 58 percent in just 30 minutes.
The Huawei P20 has dual rear camera setup at the rear with large 1.55-micron pixels, featuring a 12MP RGB 1/2.3-inch sensor with an f/1.8 aperture and a 20MP monochrome sensor with an f/1.6 aperture. On the front, the Huawei P20 sports a 24.8MP snapper. The P20 also comes with a 3D portrait lighting effect. Huawei cites DxOMark to say the P20 has the best smartphone camera yet, with an overall score of 102, a photo score of 107, and a video score of 94, beating out the iPhone X and the Samsung Galaxy S9. Shortly after, Mr. Yu revealed the P20 Pro has even better scores than the P20, with an overall score of 109, a photo score of 114, and a video score of 98.
Coming to the highlight of the event, the triple rear camera setup of the Huawei P20 Pro. The topmost lens has an 8-megapixel sensor with 3x optical zoom due to its Leica telephoto lens (VARIO-SUMMILUX-H 1:1.6-2.4/27-80ASPH). The second, bears a 40-megapixel RGB 1/1.7-inch sensor, while the third has a 20MP monochrome sensor. Between the lenses there’s a laser transmitter and receiver, for quicker autofocus, as well as a Leica colour temperature sensor. The camera has a light sensitivity up to ISO 102400 – the same as the Canon 5D Mark IV. The company also teases about the most powerful zoom on a smartphone, as apart from 3x optical zoom, the P20 Pro offers 5x lossless hybrid zoom, and 10x digital zoom.
