Review of Huawei Honor (U8860) smartphone

Until recently, it was unclear whether HONOR 20 PRO would appear in Russian retail or not. But about a month ago, various advertisements began to appear about the start of sales of this flagship smartphone, and all fears immediately disappeared. In this article we will look at a new product from the HONOR brand and compare the HONOR 20 PRO just with the HONOR 20.

DELIVERY SET

The smartphone comes in a standard box. On the front side there is a glossy image of the smartphone in color.

The delivery set is as follows:

• Smartphone.
• USB Type C to 3.5 mm jack adapter.
• Documentation.
• Power adapter.
• USB-USB Type C cable (100 cm).
• Clip for opening the SIM card tray.
• Protective film (on the screen).

Case and headset not included.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Case material – glass/metal.
Screen size – 6.26 inches.
Screen resolution – 2340×1080 pixels.
Pixel density — 412 PPI.
Screen manufacturing technology – IPS.
Operating system – Android OS 9.0.
Processor model – HiSilicon Kirin 980 – 8 cores.
Video processor – Mali G76 MP10.
RAM – 8 GB.
Built-in memory – 256 GB.
Bluetooth version – 5.0.
Main camera (MP) – 48 16 8 2.
Front camera (MP) – 32 MP.
Battery capacity — 4000 mAh.
GPS/A-GPS/GLONASS
LTE support – yes.
NFC support — yes.
Charging connector — USB Type C.
Support for two SIM cards – yes.
73.97×154.25×8.34 mm.
Weight — 182 g

Differences in technical terms between HONOR 20 and HONOR 20 PRO.

HONOR 20:

1. RAM – 6GB.
2. Permanent memory – 128GB.
3. Battery – 3750 mAh.
4. Lens for measuring depth of field.

HONOR 20 PRO:

1. RAM – 8GB.
2. Permanent memory – 256GB.
3. Battery – 4000 mAh.

In other technical terms, the smartphones are the same. It is worth considering that the physical dimensions have changed quite a bit and the case from HONOR 20 will not fit on the HONOR 20 PRO.] In other technical terms, the smartphones are the same. It is worth considering that the physical dimensions have changed quite a bit and the case from HONOR 20 will not fit on the HONOR 20 PRO.

APPEARANCE

USING THIS LINK YOU CAN WATCH A VIDEO REVIEW:

At retail, the smartphone is offered for 35 thousand rubles; in general, this is a fairly attractive price for a flagship smartphone from the Honor brand. Moreover, Honor 20 Pro looks damn beautiful and attractive.

Available in two colors.

The display occupies 91.7% of the front panel. This screen is called All-View. From the front side, Honor 20 is no different from Honor 20 Pro.

The body of the smartphone is made of metal, the back side is made of glass.

The body of the smartphone turned out to be a little slippery. So I advise you to immediately pick up a protective case, but to be honest, you don’t want to hide such beauty.

The dimensions of the smartphone allow it to be used with one hand. In the era of large smartphones, Honor 20 Pro can be called quite compact.

The thickness of the smartphone was kept at just over 8 mm.

The main camera block is neatly located in the upper left corner. These are three modules and the fourth module is located on the side of the main one.

The module itself protrudes slightly above the body. The flash is located under the macrobjective. At the bottom is the manufacturer’s logo.

At the top end there is a microphone and an IR sensor. It’s a convenient thing; you can control all the household appliances in the house with one smartphone.

On the right side you can find a recessed power/lock button and a volume key. The power button itself has a fingerprint scanner built into it. It is most convenient to assign the thumb on the right hand and the index finger on the left to the scanner.

At the bottom: a second microphone, a speaker for calls, a USB Type-C connector. To connect a classic headset, they suggest using the included USB Type-C to 3.5 mm (mini-jack) adapter.


On the left side there is a tray for two nano SIM cards. There is no slot for a memory card, but I think that 256GB of main memory will be quite enough.


The front camera was placed directly on the screen in the upper right corner.

But if you don’t like this solution, then through the screen settings the camera module can be hidden with a black stripe.

You can use special wallpaper that disguises the front camera.

The earpiece is located at the junction of the screen and the top end. A status indicator was also placed under the speaker. The proximity sensor and automatic brightness control are located in the top frame of the screen.

Touch control buttons are located on the screen.

The build quality of the case is excellent, but there is a small issue. If you press exactly in the middle on the back side, you will notice how the lid is pressed a little. A smartphone with a frameless screen is simply great for absorbing various content.


SCREEN

Honor 20 Pro has a 6.26-inch diagonal IPS matrix with a resolution of 2340 × 1080 pixels (19.5:9 format). Pixel density – 412 ppi. It’s strange that the top model didn’t have an OLED matrix. Viewing angles are maximum, colors are not distorted. Multi-touch for 10 simultaneous touches. The response of the touch layer is fast and accurate.

The uniformity of the matrix illumination can be assessed in this image.

The maximum brightness is 442 cd/m2. In just Honor 20, the brightness was 425 cd/m2. In the PRO version the screen is a little brighter, which is quite good, since I personally did not have enough maximum brightness in the simple version. The contrast ratio is 1022:1, which is again slightly higher than in Honor 20.
In the screen settings, you can enable eye protection mode, select the resolution (HD or Full HD), change the font size, color rendering or color temperature.



Let’s look at the screen settings in more detail using the ColorMunki Display calibrator from X-Rite.
Gamma curves show the scatter relative to the reference (white line) curve.

The color channels are also not entirely stable. There is a lack of red color saturation.

The color temperature is greatly elevated relative to the 6500k standard. The colors on the screen will have a cool tint. In the screen settings you can set the “warm” display mode.

According to the sRGB standard, we see a fairly significant deviation from the reference triangle. The colors will lack saturation.

The points of the gray wedge lie far beyond the border of the circle DeltaE>10. In our case, spurious shades will be present.



The screen calibration of Honor 20 Pro and just Honor 20 is the same.

CAMERA

Honor 20 Pro is a smartphone with 4 main camera modules.

The first 16MP module for wide-angle shooting. The second module is the main one at 48MP. The third 8MP module is a telephoto lens. The fourth module is 2MP for macro photography.

The following shooting modes are available: augmented reality, night, portrait, photo, pro, panorama, aperture, light, HDR, time lapse, live photo, filter, watermark, documents, super macro, slow motion. The camera settings are not difficult to master.

The main module is a 48MP Sony IMX586 QuaD Bayer sensor. The sensor dimensions are 1/2, the size of an individual pixel is 0.8 microns. Lens aperture — F/1.4, focal length — 26 mm. There is an optical stabilizer and phase detection autofocus. Autofocus itself is only available on the main module, and it works accurately and quickly. The default picture is taken with a resolution of 12 megapixels, but you can use 48 megapixels.

Next, let’s look at the difference in shooting between 48 and 12 megapixels. In both cases, an Artificial Intelligence system will be used.

48MP AI:

12MP AI:

The second module is a 16MP wide-angle module with a 1/3.1 sensor and F/2.2 aperture optics. Focal length – 13 mm.

The 8MP telephoto lens allows you to take photos with 3x optical zoom. Wide angle available. A 5x hybrid zoom is also available without loss of image quality. Digital zoom is limited to 30x.

The third module is responsible for macro photography. This is a 2 megapixel module with F/2.4 aperture, allowing you to shoot from a distance of 4 cm from the subject. Focus is fixed. In general, with some skill you can take a good shot.

There is also a night mode, the smartphone takes several pictures with different exposures and combines them into one frame. In any case, even if there is at least a small light source in the frame, the picture will turn out to be very light.

NIGHT MODE OFF:

NIGHT MODE ON:

The portrait shooting mode is implemented using software methods and it works just fine.

A couple of photographs to evaluate the operation of the Artificial Intelligence system.

AI OFF:

AI ON:

Honor 20 can shoot 4k videos at 30fps. Digital stabilization is available when shooting at maximum resolution. You can zoom the image directly during shooting and a wide-angle mode. There are video shooting modes with various filters and background blur. Slow motion is available at up to 960 fps at 720p resolution and 120 fps at Full HD resolution.

The front camera has a record resolution of 32MP, aperture F/2.0. The photos from the front camera are simply excellent. Background blur is available using software methods. It’s just that at night the front camera can no longer capture a frame.

The front module can record video in FullHD format at 30 frames per second. It is noteworthy that when shooting, the frame rate does not drop from both the main and front modules.

USING THIS LINK YOU CAN DOWNLOAD ORIGINAL PHOTOS AND VIDEOS FROM SMARTPHONE CAMERAS:

https://yadi.sk/d/dtL0cXiyRgLFkQ

To sum it up, the camera on the Honor 20 Pro is very good. F/1.4 aperture, 5x optical zoom and incredible night photography quality make this smartphone simply indispensable for lovers of mobile photography. By the way, in the DxOMark test the cameras scored an impressive 111 points, which puts it in 5th place in the world.

SOFTWARE MAGIC UI 2.1.0

Honor 20 Pro is equipped with Android OS version 9.0 Pie with the proprietary Magic UI 2.1.0 shell.

In fact, this is the same EMUI, which differs from the usual shell for Huawei/Honor smartphones only in the presence of several proprietary services. In general, the shell is very pleasant, both in design and in smooth operation. All icons have regular geometric shapes.

This is what the smartphone menu looks like when you turn it on for the first time. A large number of pre-installed applications immediately catches your eye, however, all third-party applications can be completely removed.

A separate menu with applications is enabled in the settings. Menu navigation is only vertical.

There is a built-in compass, you can check the operation of the gyroscope. Touch control buttons can be replaced with gestures or one navigation control button.

If you use a case with a window, then in the settings you need to activate the mode for displaying information in the case window. Using voice commands, you can accept or reject a call, find a phone, call a contact from a list, etc.

If you bring your smartphone to your ear during a call, an automatic connection will occur.

Various actions with your smartphone allow you to activate the screen or turn off the melody during an incoming call. Gestures on the smartphone screen allow you to take a screenshot, start recording from the smartphone screen, etc.

There is a one-handed control mode, if for some reason the screen on this smartphone seems large to you. By pressing the power button 5 times, you can assign an SMS message or call a preset number.

In the battery settings, you can select energy-saving modes or, conversely, activate maximum performance. The status indicator can be activated in the settings, so it will blink with various notifications.

You can add/remove a notification flag to any shortcut. You can assign your own melody and vibration style to each of the two SIM cards. A simple smartphone interface mode is available, suitable for the elderly and visually impaired.

Various themes and wallpapers are available to customize your Honor 20 Pro. The grid of shortcuts on the desktop can be customized. You can also choose the animation of the transition between desktops to your liking.

IN WORK

The Kirin 980 processor is responsible for the performance of the smartphone. This processor is the first mobile processor that was built using 7nm technology. The Kirin 980 includes eight cores: two high-performance Cortex-A76, two energy-efficient Cortex-A76 and four low-power Cortex-A55. The Mali-G76 MP10 video accelerator is responsible for the graphics in the Kirin 980. In addition, this accelerator uses technology to automatically increase the frequency when starting games. The new processor also includes an LTE Cat modem. 21 with a maximum transfer speed of 1.4 Gbps and supports Wi-Fi up to 1.732 Gbps.

Results in synthetic tests:

This screenshot shows the maximum heating of the CPU and battery.

RAM 8 GB. This volume is sufficient for any task. Permanent built-in memory 256 GB. But there is no support for memory cards. This screenshot shows what sensors are installed in the smartphone.

Honor 20 Pro cannot demonstrate anything outstanding in terms of sound quality; the speaker is in mono format. Speaker volume for calls is slightly above average. The lack of a 3.5mm jack (mini-jack) may also scare off some buyers. aptX and aptX HD audio profiles are supported. The volume of the conversational speaker is sufficient; there were no problems with speech reception and transmission.

The front camera can act as a user ID. Face unlocking is quick. But the most important thing is that the unlocking also works in complete darkness; the screen illuminates your face at the moment the camera is triggered. Up to 5 positions can be assigned to the fingerprint scanner. The sensitivity of the scanner is very high and responds to the slightest touch.

I was simply pleased with the excellent job of navigation. All modern geolocation standards are supported. The data came from 48 satellites. The smartphone has an NFC module. You can not only connect wireless gadgets, but also pay in the store. For full functionality, you need to download the Google Pay application.

Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac connection operates at speeds up to 1.7 Gbps. There is Bluetooth 5.0. The USB-OTG function in the smartphone is supported. You can install two nano SIM cards. Both will work with LTE networks.

AUTONOMOUS OPERATION

Honor 20 Pro is equipped with a 4000 mAh battery. The USB Type-C connector is used for charging. There is a Huawei Super Charge fast charging system (4.5V/4A). You can charge your smartphone to 50% in 35 minutes. It will take 1 hour to fully charge. 40 min.

Discharge in PC Mark from 100% to 20% at minimum screen brightness and HD resolution.

Next, we set the FH resolution and set the screen brightness to maximum.

• 1. Various games — 6 hours 20 minutes.
• 2. Playing movies (HD resolution, average screen brightness) – 15 hours.
• 3. Maximum load: full screen brightness, constant 4G connection, geolocation, social. networks, etc. — 7 o’clock.
• 4. Work only in telephone mode – 3/4 days.

WITHDRAWAL

Honor 20 Pro is a real flagship for 35 thousand rubles. I must say that this is a rather attractive price, considering that flagships from third-party manufacturers start at 50 thousand rubles. In the segment up to 35 thousand rubles, this smartphone is simply the best camera on the market at the moment. Excellent shooting quality and 5x optical zoom, all this encourages you to abandon bulky cameras.

PROS:

1. Reasonable price.
2. Compact sizes.
3. Fast charging.
4. Stable work.
5. Excellent cameras in their price segment.
6. High performance.
7. Good call quality.
8. Notification indicator.
9. Appearance.

MAY NOT BE SUITABLE:

1. There is no memory card slot.
2. No 3.5mm jack.

Design/practicality — 8

Screen — 7

Main camera — 10

Front camera — 10

Sound — 6 Performance — 8

Smoothness and stability — 10

Price — 9 GPS operation — 10

Communication quality — 10

RESULT: 88% awesomeness!