Huawei P20 Pro review

Effemeride.com

5 min readMar 1, 2019

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Pros

Good triple camera
Nice display
Stylish and well built
Water resistant

Cons

No audio jack
Non expandable memory
No EIS/AIS for 4K videos
Selfie camera could be better

The P20 Pro (Check on Amazon) is a top of the range with a triple camera, an AMOLED display and more.

Package

In the package we find a SuperCharge 5V/4.5A power adapter (for really fast charging), a USB/USB-C cable, USB-C headphones and a USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack. The headphones are so and so.

Build and Ergonomics

The Huawei P20 Pro is very well build. The polished metal shell conveys an excellent feeling of solidity and its curvature makes it fit perfectly in hand. Despite the flat glass back it is not a particularly slippery smartphone. It weighs 180 grams, which is typical for this size of a device. Excellent the IP67 water and dust resistance certification. The placement of the fingerprint reader is also good.

Hardware

The Huawei P20 Pro focuses on an already well-groomed processor, the 2.4GHz octa core Kirin 970. It is paired with a Mali G72 MP12 GPU and 6GB of RAM. Benchmarks aren’t that great, but the user experience is that of a top of the range. This CPU also sports an NPU dedicated to artificial intelligence. The internal memory measures 128GB but unfortunately there is no longer the possibility to expand it. It still supports the use of two SIMs simultaneously.

Connectivity is also good: we have Wi-Fi ac dual band, excellent reception, LTE up to 1200Mbps, NFC, an infrared port and a USB-C output that allows you to connect your smartphone via adapter to a monitor or TV to be used in desktop mode. The fingerprint reader located on the front is very precise and unlocks the device almost instantly. Unfortunately, the FM radio and audio jack are missing. The stereo audio is not the most powerful but audio quality is more than decent.

Camera

The spec sheet of the triple camera array on the Huawei P20 Pro is undoubtedly impressive. A 40-megapixel ƒ/1.8 main camera is paired up with a secondary 20-megapixel ƒ/1.6 black and white sensor and an optically stabilized 3x ƒ/2.4 zoom sensor. These cameras work together in a variety of ways. The main camera captures a huge amount of detail thanks to its super resolution, while the secondary one captures more light and goes to enrich with details the main shot. The 3x telephoto lens is self-explanatory.

The software automatically recognizes certain scenes, such as landscapes, concerts, animals, food, flowers or portraits and automatically sets the most appropriate setting. The Portrait mode (which uses the dual camera for blurring effects), and above all the Night mode, all work perfectly. Night mode in particular allows you to take pictures in the dark that will leave you speechless. It’s a kind of photographic miracle put in place by the artificial intelligence.

The only condition in which we think the P20 Pro falls behind to other competitors is at dusk, when night mode is not that useful and the two main sensors capture a little less detail than the competition. Surely here it is the absence of optical stabilization that makes the difference.

The videos are good, you can shoot up to 1080p resolution at 30fps and the resulting footage will be incredibly stable, almost like using a gimbal, thanks to the phones electronic stabilization. At 4K and 30fps, the videos remain sharp and with great focus, with a little flicker as well. The new laser autofocus up to 2.4 meters and the color spectrum sensor perform really well. Recorded audio is also good.

The 24-megapixel front facing camera on the other hand, has a very high resolution but a somewhat undertone quality. Selfies are more than decent overall but the colors often appear a little dull.

Display

The Huawei P20 Pro is equipped with a 6.1 inch AMOLED screen with FullHD+ resolution (2240×1080 pixels). It is a great screen with well-balanced colors, a more than adequate resolution (considering that there is no way to exploit it natively for virtual reality) and excellent viewing angles. The brightness is very high. We very much appreciated the automatic adjustments according to ambient lighting. Finally, a word about the notch. It is very small, but still divides the screen into two parts. Being this a 19:9 format display the information still manages to fit perfectly. Thus its implementation is good and it is also possible to “hide” it via software with a black bar.

Software

The P20 Pro runs Android 8.1 Oreo and EMUI 8.1 out of the box. There are no new features to talk about but the device comes equipped with Huawei’s useful software such as Huawei Health for fitness, a phone manager and the infrared remote control.

The Huawei custom software has remained in our opinion the least updated to current aesthetic canons and the added themes do not seem to solve the thing. We do not state that EMUI is ugly, but at a time when most companies have adapted their user interface to something more modern (each in its own way) it seems as if Huawei is the one who did the least. Fortunately functionality remains excellent both in terms of speed and fluidity.

Autonomy

The Huawei P20 Pro battery is a 4000mAh cell that can last more than a day. Huawei’s fast charging is ahead of the curve, and it is a real shame that there is no wireless charging.

Price

The Huawei P20 Pro is sold for (Check on Amazon).

Final Verdict

The Huawei P20 Pro is a remarkable step forward compared to the previous generations. The 40-megapixel triple camera is a beast, and in hand we find ourselves a beautiful smartphone, well built, with good autonomy and a good display. The software, albeit with a dated interface, works really well and is buttery smooth.

Also read: Best Cell Phones

Originally published at effemeride.com on March 1, 2019.