Honor Launches The View20: A 48MP Camera Review

End Remarks & Conclusion

In many ways, the View20 represents an interesting alternative to Huawei’s most recent available offerings. The phone gets a lot of firsts in terms of features, but also clearly showcases that it isn’t quite the best that the company has to offer with some issues in regards to the overall polish of the product.

The new screen and the company’s first use of a hole-in-display front camera setup is one of the key aspects of the device. The new design works well in my opinion and Honor’s camera hole size and positioning do offer a viable alternative to a display notch. Obviously I still wish the hole would be ever so slightly smaller and take up even less space, however I think it’s a great first step for what we’ll come to see a lot more often in 2019.

What is most disappointing about the View20 screen is the display panel itself. Here the off-axis viewing angles aren’t as competitive and it’s visible that the component is more deserving of a “mid-tier” classification rather that of a higher quality LCD. Huawei’s Mate 20 for example offers a much better quality display panel in this regard, and obviously the phone can’t compete with OLED alternatives such as that of the OnePlus 6/6T. Display calibration, while I haven’t directly covered in the review, isn’t an issue for the View20 as Honor offers accurate display mode settings and also has fine-tuning options to set colour temperature to your preference.

While the LCD’s viewing angles aren’t top-notch, efficiency is very good. The combination of a large battery, the excellent Kirin 980 chipset, as well as an efficient display panel put the View20 at the top of the battery charts among some of the best performing devices out there.

While battery performance is top-notch, it doesn’t come with any compromises as performance of the View20 is also an absolute non-issue, all thanks to the Kirin 980 chipset. The View20 performs as good as the recent Mate 20’s – and actually improves 3D performance as the new heatpipe system allows for sustained performance at or near the peak performance of the GPU, reaching about the similar sustained performance levels as that of the very best Snapdragon 845 devices last year.

Finally, the camera of the View20 had a lot of promise, but in the end it continues the dual-edged nature of these high MP camera sensors. Much like the P20 Pro and Mate 20 Pro’s 40MP sensors, the new 48MP unit of the View20 can achieve some fantastic pictures in terms of detail. However most of the time and in the vast majority of situations, this will also result in a drop of dynamic range that will be noticeable, and most of the time it won’t be worth it compared to the regular pixel-binning mode at 12MP resolution. In this mode, the View20 showcases fantastic exposure results and dynamic range among the top performers in the current smartphone space, but it’s not quite the best in terms of detail retention.

The inclusion of the new 48MP AI Ultra Clear mode really complicates things, this does have tangible advantages over the 48MP mode, however the implementation sometimes just seems buggy, and I’m not sure if this is by design or simply because of immature software. What is really unfortunate is that this again adds a capture mode that adds to the confusion as to when to use what mode in order to get the best results. I really wish Huawei and Honor would streamline the capture experience in this regard as less versed users will have to learn how the camera behaves before being able to get the most out of it.

The TOF sensor at the moment is in practical terms essentially useless – Honor just doesn’t deliver sufficient use-cases for it and the one game that supports it makes it no more than a gimmick. In the future this could be alleviated via software, but as of right now, you might just as well ignore that it’s there, and just treat the View20 as a single-camera phone.

Should I Buy It?

Overall, the View20 is an odd device in terms of its target market. Honor’s marketing materials position the device against the highest flagships, such as the iPhone XS, Galaxy Note9, or OnePlus 6T. The one weak point where the View20 can’t compete with these devices is in screen quality. Even the OnePlus 6T which comes at a similar price range as the 569€ base price of the View20 outdoes it in the screen department, and here I don’t see the hole-in-display camera as some sort of competitive advantage that would give the phone any kind of higher worth price wise.

Camera on the View20 is pretty good – even though I’m torn on these high-MP sensors, in the regular 12MP mode the View20 is plenty competitive with the best devices out there both in daylight and in low-light. Just make sure you know exactly in what capture mode you’re supposed to be in.

What puts the View20 ahead of the competition and really makes it an outstanding worth for its money is the performance and battery life. Here the View20 is clearly punching far above its weight and the inclusion of the Kirin 980 in this lower price tier gives the device a marked advantage.

Overall I don’t think users will be disappointed with the View20 – given its performance, expected battery life, as well as camera performance, even though it’s not a perfect device and has a lot of rough edges or missing some features, for the price it does offer excellent package that is hard to argue against.