If you like new Huawei P20-series phones but can’t decide if the P20 or P20 Pro is best for you, this article may give you an answer. If you want to learn more about each device, check out our Huawei P20 review and the Huawei P20 Pro review.

First of all, the price. The P20 is cheaper as it retails for about 650 EUR, at least in Europe. The Pro model costs about 850 EUR, making it a much more expensive device. Check out the video description for product links if you are interested.

The first major difference is the camera setup.

The P20 Pro uses one of the most compelling camera systems on the market. It uses 3 cameras with a powerful 40MP shooter leading the way.

The P20 has a more conventional dual camera setup that uses Leica optics, just like the P20 Pro.

In practice, I found daylight image quality to be very similar. However, the P20 Pro excels in low light. In fact, the Pro model is one of the best smartphones when it comes to night photography. Other aspects like selfie image and video quality are nearly identical. Make sure to check out both the P20 and the P20 Pro reviews where I cover cameras in detail and follow me TechLineHD on Facebook for full resolution camera samples.

Both phones follow a similar design language but the P20 Pro is simply a more beautiful device to look at. The twilight gradient color finish makes it one of the most beautiful phones out there. However, the P20 is smaller, lighter and therefore, it’s easier to manage this phone in one hand.

Even though the display on the P20 is slightly smaller than on the P20 Pro, it sports the same resolution. The phone uses LCD panel instead of OLED but I found the quality of screen to be very good. However, the screen on the P20 Pro is better. The colors look more vibrant and punchier, and the contrast level is better.

Here a few more aspects why the P20 Pro is better than the P20: it has a better sounding dual stereo loudspeaker system whereas the P20 has only one speaker on the bottom. Also, the P20 Pro has a higher water and dust resistance rating of IP67 instead of IP53 and some extra features like an IR blaster. Finally, the P20 Pro has 6GB of RAM instead of 4 found on the P20. On the other hand, day to day and gaming performance are identical on each phone.

Battery life is definitely one of the strong sides of the new P20 series phones. Even though the P20 has a smaller power bank than the P20 Pro, it has a less power hungry display to power up. On average, I was able to achieve about 7 hours of screen-on time on each phone, which is a very impressive result.

All in all, the Huawei P20 Pro is easily a better phone but it costs about $200 more than the P20, which is also a solid flagship phone. If you want an absolutely premium phone, go with the P20 Pro. If money is more important to you, the P20 has most of the essential flagship features of the P20 Pro, for $200 less.

This was just a short comparison and if you want to learn more about each phone, make sure to check out detailed dedicated reviews where we cover all the pros and cons of each device.

Which phone would you choose?

The post Huawei P20 vs Huawei P20 Pro – Which Huawei is Best for You? appeared first on Gizmochina.

It seems that everyone’s talking about the Huawei P20 Pro but the regular P20 is also a flagship phone that was recently announced. It has a similar design with a notch display, all new dual Leica camera setup, and great specs. As always, if you want to learn all the pros and cons of this device, read out full Huawei P20 review.

VIDEO REVIEW

UNBOXING

The P20 ships just with a cable, a charger, a pair of earphones, a headset jack adapter and SIM ejector pin.

Finally, retail units will have a case but I’m not sure if it will look the same as the one I have, which is really nice.

DESIGN and DISPLAY

Once you pick the P20 up, you are definitely going to feel that it is a smaller phone than the P20 Pro and that’s a good thing – it’s easier to manage the device in one hand.

I have a pink gold color option that has a gradient finish. That means that the phone changes the looks in different lighting. In practice, I love the way the P20 looks and feels. The build quality is nothing short of a true flagship thanks to the metal frame and slightly curved glass backplate.

Even though the display on the P20 is slightly smaller than the one found on the P20 Pro, it sports the same resolution. The phone uses LCD panel instead of OLED but I found the quality of screen to be very good.

Inside the notch, you can find a beefy 24MP selfie shooter. Just a bit more info about the notch: you can hide it if you don’t like it.

There is a loudspeaker on the bottom of the device. It may not sound as great as the dual stereo system on the P20 Pro but it is also pretty good. 

One major difference between the Huawei P20 Pro and the P20 – camera setup. The P20 does not have 3 cameras but it ships with a brand new dual Leica system that is capable of taking very good images too. The device ships with a 12MP RGB sensor and 20MP monochrome lens.  I will talk about cameras in detail a bit later in this review.

Another difference – the P20 has a lower IP53 water and dust resistance rating. Honestly, I forgot about it when I was reviewing this phone and I kept the phone underwater for quite some time. Good news is that the phone survived and works as new. However, I don’t recommend you submerging your P20 underwater like I did.

Other features are pretty much identical to the P20 Pro: you get a super fast and reliable fingerprint scanner and Face ID that usually works very well and it allows you to unlock the phone very fast. You also get a nice LED notification light but the phone does not have a headset jack, so you would need to listen to music using the supplied adapter. Sound quality is really good, just like on the P20 Pro.

HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

The Huawei P20 ships with almost the same specs as the P20 Pro but it has just 4GB of RAM instead of six (Kirin 970 chipset and 128GB of non-expandable storage).

In practice, I didn’t really notice that the P20 has less RAM than the P20 Pro. I usually start testing phones with playing 3D games to make the processor and GPU work. The overall gaming experience is great as games usually load fast, there is no stutter or lag even if you play the most demanding titles. The performance is great, identical to the P20 Pro.

USER INTERFACE

Just like the Huawei P20 Pro, the P20 runs on Android 8.1 but it looks a lot different than stock Google’s user interface.

As I said in the P20 Pro review that I suggest you check out, I got used to using Huawei phones that run on the EMUI. Yes, it’s different but it has grown on me and I mostly like it for its speed and flexibility. I’ve used the P20 for more than 2 weeks and I’m yet to see the phone lag or stutter. Huawei assures that the phone will remain fast even after 2 years since the AI-powered Kirin 970 chipset has integrated neural processing unit that helps allocate resources to the specific task every time you use the phone. Well, so far so good.

I also like the extra features and customization options Huawei implemented. I can’t say that I need all of them but I found some features to be very useful. It may feel weird at first but I love running two apps side by side by drawing a line in the middle of the screen using a knuckle. That’s just one of many features Huawei gives you with this phone.

CAMERAS

I found the camera app to be really fast and easy to use. My favorite shooting modes include a pro, portrait, aperture and a night mode. One thing that bothers me is that you need to switch the resolution to 10MP if you want to use optical zoom. It’s really annoying and I wish resolution could switch automatically.

Speaking of that zoom, pictures look really nice and sharp.

Daylight image quality is very good thanks to no small part of an AI-powered camera app that detects the scene and applied the best camera settings automatically. As I said in the full P20 Pro review, some images may look oversaturated and punchier than usual but I don’t think it’s a bad thing since most of the images you take are probably going to end up on social media anyway, and they will look nice out of the box. To be honest, it’s hard to see a difference between the quality of daylight pictures of the P20 and the P20 Pro. Both phones can take wonderful photos.

Portrait and aperture modes are used to take pictures with bokeh effect and I think that the overall image quality is pretty good. The objects are sharp and nicely separated from the background with just minimal artifacts.

Low-light is where the P20 shines. Well, if you use the auto-mode, the pictures could have less noise and grain but a dedicated night mode does all the magic. You can take long exposure shots without using a tripod thanks to AI-powered OIS system. While the quality of pictures is slightly worse than on the P20 Pro, it’s still very good and among the best in the game.

Selfies look really nice even though the beauty mode is pretty aggressive.

4k video is very sharp, detailed, continuous auto-focus is reliable and super fast but… video stabilization does not work in 4K mode and you end up with shaky footage. That’s really frustrating but hopefully, this can be improved with the future software updates since the hardware is there. 

If you don’t need 4K, 1080p video looks much better in terms of smoothness. The footage is very stable and it looks nice but obviously, you are losing the sharpness of 4K. It’s worth mentioning that quality of the video is very similar or even identical to the Huawei P20 Pro’s quality.

1080p selfie video looks pretty nice as there is plenty of detail and sharpness, and the sound recording quality is good.

You can also record short clips at 960fps in 720p and the quality is quite decent.

Download full resolution camera samples

CONNECTIVITY

The P20 is equipped with great mics and earpiece that assure good call quality. I also found signal reception to be very good and other connectivity options like Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS work fine. Finally, there are plenty of sensors to choose from, just like on the Huawei P20 Pro.

BATTERY LIFE

Battery life is definitely one of the strong sides of the P20. Even though it has a smaller power bank than the P20 Pro, it has a less power hungry display to power up. On average, I was able to achieve about 7 hours of screen-on time, which is a very impressive result. Finally, you can charge the device in just about 1,5h using the supplied Huawei’s fast charger.

CONCLUSIONS

The Huawei P20 shapes up to be a solid all-around smartphone that costs less than the P20 Pro and other flagships out there. It’s smaller and lighter than the P20 Pro, yet it sports the same good build and very similar design. I also like the P20 for it’s nice and sharp display, great overall performance, very good cameras and solid battery life.

However, the P20 shares similar issues to the P20 Pro: 4K video lacks image stabilization, there is no headset jack, no microSD card slot, and no wireless charging.

At the end of the day, the P20 is still a very good smartphone, despite a few flaws. In fact, it is a legit flagship phone that costs less than the P20 Pro but it has most its essential features that are packed into a premium metal and glass body. With a notch.

The post Huawei P20 Review – A Solid Flagship Smartphone appeared first on Gizmochina.

It seems that every year the Chinese tech giant Huawei releases a new phone, there is a lot of hype. It’s the same thing this year with the P20 Pro and to be honest, this is one of the most exciting phones of 2018 yet mainly because of that triple Leica camera setup, really nice design and flagship-grade specs. At the first glance, this is a superb smartphone but as most of the devices, it also has a few caveats to consider. This phone has a premium price tag of about $900 or 850EUR. Learn more about the device at our detailed Huawei P20 Pro review.

VIDEO REVIEW

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6WuUGzllW8[/embedyt]

UNBOXING

The P20 Pro ships just with a cable, a charger, a pair of earphones, a headset jack adapter and SIM ejector pin. Huawei didn’t include the case this time around, which is a bit disappointing.

DESIGN and DISPLAY

I don’t want to sound subjective at the very beginning of this review but the Huawei P20 Pro is one of the best looking phones out there. The Twilight gradient color is just beautiful and the phone changes the looks in different lighting. That’s why the phone may look a bit different in some parts of this review.

The overall build quality is excellent too thanks to a nice metal frame and premium-feeling buttons. I found the phone to sit comfortably in the hand thanks to nicely curved glass backplate. I was also impressed by the fact that Huawei managed to cram in a huge battery (4000mAh) into such a thin profile of the P20 Pro.

A triple camera setup looks really impressive on paper. It consists of one 40MP RGB sensor, 8MP telephoto shooter, and 20MP monochrome lens.

Here is more information about the cameras: the P20 Pro uses a 223% larger sensor than the competition, it has 5x hybrid zoom, 4 in 1 hybrid focus system, 4D predictive focus, it can achieve ISO levels up to 102400, and it can record 960fps slow-motion at 720p. Also, AI-powered Kirin processor makes the best out of this powerful hardware configuration. In other words, AI helps apply the best camera settings to take a nice-looking picture automatically.

Huawei also added a laser receiver to achieve fast auto-focusing speeds and a flash with the color temperature sensor that is used for white balance adjustment.

Huawei didn’t skimp on selfie shooter either as the P20 Pro uses a beefy 24MP camera. All the specs and numbers sound really impressive but we’ll see if the camera is truly great a bit later in this review.

Now, let’s talk about the display. Yes, it has the infamous notch but Huawei gives you an option to hide it. Honestly, I like the notch. At first, I was really skeptical about it and you may know that already if you follow me on Twitter but in practice, it looks quite nice to me. As for the display quality, it’s among the best on the market. Well, it may lack punchiness and vibrant colors of Samsung’s screens, but this is still one of the best displays on the market. It’s sharp, clear and easily visible even under direct sunlight.

After using the P20 Pro for a while, I have to say that the fingerprint scanner on the front is more convenient to me. I just love the fact that I don’t need to pick up the phone from the table to unlock it. Speaking of that scanner, it’s just blazing fast, super accurate and it unlocks the phone straight from the standby mode.

I was also really impressed by the face unlock feature. It’s ridiculously fast and accurate and it works well in any light and even if you wear glasses. All you have to do is press the power button before using this feature.

Other features you need to know: the phone has a nice LED notification light, IR blaster, dual SIM card slot but no microSD card support.

You should also know that there is no headset jack but the sound quality using a supplied adapter is excellent.  Also, the P20 Pro has hi-fi wireless audio system that assures great sound quality via the Bluetooth.

There is a dual stereo speaker setup that is really good too. I like that the sound is deep, punchy and loudspeakers can get pretty loud. Finally, the Huawei P20 Pro is IP67-certified for water and dust resistance.

HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

In terms of hardware, the P20 Pro is a beast. It ships with the latest home-brewed Kirin 970 processor and other powerful components (6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage) that in conjunction with the AI, assure excellent all-around performance.

That can be seen when playing the latest 3D games. All the titles I played run absolutely fine, no skipped frames, no stutter, and the P20 Pro does not get hot while gaming either. Flagship-grade performance.

USER INTERFACE

In terms of user interface, I can just repeat myself – performance is excellent thanks to no small part of Kirin AI chipset with integrated NPU unit that helps allocate resources to the specific task. As usual, I’ve installed a lot of apps, use many different social media apps, Google accounts etc but I’m yet to see the phone lag or stutter. This phone is almost stock Android fast, which is really impressive.

EMUI 8.1 is based on Android 8.1 and I know that many people still can’t get used to cartoonish and a bit different than stock Android look. Honestly, if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said the same thing. However, I got used to the Huawei’s user interface and even though it’s still not my favorite, I kind of like it.

The very first thing you want to do is bring back the app tray. Other stuff you can do: customize the phone in many different ways. As usual, you can choose from plenty of themes, change transition effects, adjust quite a few display settings, use one-hand mode and so on. There are quite a few ways to navigate through the UI. You can simply use navigation bar and swap the buttons of it. You can also use a navigation dock that I didn’t really it like because I found on-screen and off-screen navigation systems more comfortable to use. You can control your phone using just the home button which is pretty convenient and that’s probably my most favorite way of navigating through the UI. Finally, we have classic Huawei smart assistance features which are useful and work fine but it’s still a bit weird since Huawei thinks that using your knuckle is the most natural way of interacting with your phone.

CAMERAS

Just before we start talking about optics, we suggest you download full resolution camera samples since pictures on the website are resized to reduce page loading times.

Download full resolution camera samples

I found the stock camera app to be responsive and it can take pictures very fast. Also, you understand why Huawei keeps talking about the AI-assisted camera. Every time you take a picture using the auto-mode, AI recognizes the scene and adjusts the settings automatically. There are plenty of shooting modes to choose from but my favorites include a pro mode that allows you to adjust a lot of different settings.

The portrait mode now allows you to choose from different lighting effects and it works both with the main and selfie cameras. Photos usually look quite nice as the subject is separated accurately from the background. However, you can’t completely turn the beauty mode off but that’s not an issue for me, I think I need this mode. Also, I got a few soft-looking shots with both main and selfie camera but keep in mind that all portrait pictures were taken by myself.

Daylight image quality is usually very good thanks to 40MP sensor. There is plenty of detail and sharpness, and you have a lot of megapixels to play with. However, AI tends to adjust image settings in the way that pictures look nice on social media out of the box. Therefore, you may get oversaturated pictures with high contrast, especially if you tend to shoot a lot of landscapes.

If you want to use 5x hybrid zoom, you need to switch to 10MP resolution manually, which is quite frustrating. On a positive note, you can zoom in a lot and images remain nice and sharp, and you can clearly see details even at the maximum zoom level. However, I don’t understand why the first zoom option is 3 times. If I want to use just 2x zoom I need to pinch to zoom manually, which again, takes more time than just tapping on the zoom button. If we compare the quality of 40MP and 10MP pictures, we can definitely see that there is more detail, which is useful if you like zooming in or cropping the images.

Wide aperture mode allows you to photograph objects with a shallow depth of field effect and I found the overall image quality using this mode to be pretty good.

You can also take very nice black and white pictures but in general, I prefer color photography.

Finally, night image quality. If you use auto-mode, you can take nice pictures but I found the Samsung Galaxy S9 to be slightly better in some of the shots. However, if you use night mode, you can take long-exposure shots without the need of a tripod. Then, night image quality is one of the best on any smartphone. Really impressive results thanks to that AI image stabilization and large sensor.

Selfie camera usually takes pretty nice and detailed pictures that will definitely do the trick for social media.

4k video is very sharp, detailed, continuous auto-focus is reliable and super fast but… video stabilization does not work in 4K mode and you end up with shaky footage. That’s really frustrating but hopefully, this can be improved with the future software updates since the hardware is there. I even enabled stabilization feature on the third party camera app called Open camera but the footage still came out shaky.

If you don’t need 4K, 1080p video looks much better in terms of smoothness. The footage is very stable but obviously, you are losing the sharpness of 4K.

1080p selfie video looks pretty nice as there is plenty of detail and sharpness, and the sound recording quality is good.

You can also record short clips at 960fps in 720p and the quality is quite decent.

Download full resolution camera samples

CONNECTIVITY

In terms of connectivity, I found the P20 Pro to be good and reliable in all aspects. Call quality is excellent and signal reception is actually better than most of the phones I’ve tested in the recent memory. Also, I found GPS to be very accurate, Wifi is fast and Bluetooth works fine. Finally, there are quite a few sensors on board, like on most of the flagships.

BATTERY LIFE

Battery life has been great. Firstly, I’m very impressed with excellent standby time as the phone drains almost no battery despite the fact that I used the P20 Pro with 2 SIM cards and reception in my apartment is kind of poor.

Also, I could use the phone for an entire day or even a few days, depending on the usage. That results in an average screen-on time of about 6 or even 7 hours while using the phone quite intensively. That is a very good result.

The supplied Huawei’s fast charger can fully charge the phone in just about 1,5 h. Unfortunately, there is no wireless charging, which is kind of disappointing.

CONCLUSIONS

The Huawei P20 Pro shapes up to be a solid flagship smartphone and there are many reasons to love it. In fact, this is easily the best phone Huawei has ever made. I like its design, excellent build quality, nice and sharp display, very good and innovative camera setup, great overall performance and solid battery life. I also like that the fingerprint scanner is on the front, Face ID works very well, there is a dual SIM card slot, IP67 certification and some other extras like the IR blaster and great stereo speaker system.

Now the cons. My biggest frustration is that there is no stabilization in 4K video mode. That’s important to me as I’m a huge video guy. You should also know that there is no microSD card slot, no headset jack, and no wireless charging. Finally, camera app needs a little bit of polishing and I think it will be improved over the time since the phone is still running on an early software build.

At the end of the day, can I recommend the Huawei P20 Pro? Absolutely yes. Obviously, there are some shortcomings to consider like on each and every phone but given the overall package the P20 Pro offers, this device can be easily called one of the best flagships of 2018 yet and definitely the best phone Huawei has ever made.

The post Huawei P20 Pro Review – The Best Huawei Smartphone Yet appeared first on Gizmochina.

Huawei just launched the P20 series phones and the smartphone fans are most interested in the more powerful P20 Pro that we covered a few moments ago. However, the P20 is also a true flagship device that has many of the Pro’s features at a lower price of about 650 EUR. Learn more in our Huawei P20 hands-on review.

The P20 looks and feels very similar in the hand as it is made of metal and glass, it has a notch display and the build quality is excellent. However, differences start with the display. The P20 sports a 5.8″ LCD panel (1080 x 2244 pixels) whereas the P20 Pro has a 6.1″ OLED panel with the same resolution. In practice, the P20’s display looks almost as good as the one found on the P20 Pro.

We have a Pink Gold color option but there will also be a Twilight, Black, Midnight Blue models.

The P20 has 2 sensors instead of a triple camera setup found on the P20 Pro. The phone uses a dual camera system that consists of one 12 MP snapper with f/1.8 aperture lens and another 20 MP shooter with f/1.6 lens. The main camera has OIS, 1/2.3″ sensor size and it uses 1.55 µm pixels.

As for hardware, the P20 has the same Kirin 970 chipset as the P20 Pro, 128GB of internal storage (no microSD card slot) but it has only 4GB of RAM in comparison to 6GB found on the P20 Pro.

I was also impressed by the fact that Huawei managed to cram in a huge 3500mAh battery into such a thin profile of the P20 (149.1 x 70.8 x 7.7 mm).

Other things you need to know about the design: there is no headset jack,  the P20 has a lower IP53 certification in comparison to IP67-certified P20 Pro.  In addition, the P20 has hi-fi wireless audio system that assures great sound quality via the Bluetooth. Finally, the P20 does not have the IR blaster like the P20 Pro.

The P20 has the same software as the P20 Pro. The EMUI 8.1 is based on Android 8.1, which is said to be a more capable platform for the AI.

As usual, there are plenty of features and customization options in the UI Huawei phone have been famous for. My first impressions – the phone is really fast and smooth thanks to the powerful chipset and neural processing unit that helps allocate resources to the specific task. I also found the fingerprint scanner to really fast but I was most impressed with the face unlock feature. I used it in low light but it still unlocks the phone very fast but keep in mind that you still need to press the power button first in order to use it.

My first impressions about the phone – the P20 shapes up to be a solid flagship device. Just as the P20 Pro, it looks and feels premium, the display is really nice and sharp, the overall performance seems to be great and we can’t wait to test other key features of the phone: cameras, battery life and more. Make sure to stay tuned to Gizmochina for our detailed Huawei P20 review.

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