Honor View 20 Hands-On: Will The Hole-Punch Display Be Better?

After Apple launching the iPhone X with a notched display, Android phone makers have also opted for a notch on their phones’ display to get a better screen-to-body ratio. This notch trend is so popular that even Google tailored its latest Android 9.0 Pie to support notched display design.

Honor View 20: Design and Camera

However, despite the notch design being embraced on most of the smartphones, many consumers find the notched display to be rather annoying. Many smartphones released this year have also been featured a similar design and very hard to distinguished between one and the other. And now, Honor has tried a new design on the Honor V20 or also known as Honor View 20 that can set the phone apart from other rivals. To be more specific, the new design will allow the camera to sit in a small hole in the display.

The Honor View 20 is the first phone of Honor to sport a Full-View display, featuring a hidden 25MP selfie camera in a 4.5mm hole in the top left corner on the front. The Honor View 20’s screen comprises 18 layers, and 2 bottom layers will be drilled to make a space for the selfie camera. Doing that will help maintain both the glass’ structural integrity and enough transparent layers to protect the camera sensor.

Honor explains the reason why the company chose to place the camera in the top left corner, and it is because some important info like battery percentage and time are mostly displayed in the top right corner of the screen. Honor even wanted to make sure that their customers would be satisfied by creating a poll asking them to choose where they would want the hole to be. And as expected, there were a massive number of people voted for the top left corner.

Honor is actually making quite a big deal over the fact that it opted for the 4.5mm instead of a 6mm one like on its competitors. During my limited time with it, it felt like the hole was quite unnoticeable, but I could only experience it with some simple tasks. The hole would be more intrusive when playing games or watching videos.

The cut-out for the front camera is not the unique feature of this handset. The new Honor device is also the first one to come packed with the new Sony IMX 586 sensor which enables the 48-megapixel camera that Honor stuffed into this sensor. We didn’t have the chance to try out its camera. Next to the 48-megapixel camera, Honor adds a 3D depth sensor for creating virtual versions of objects and depth detection.

Honor also integrated another WiFi antenna near the volume button so users might get much better reception when they use the phone in landscape mode though we are not sure if the difference is significant or not. However, overkill is surely not a bad thing.

Honor also put a lot of commitment to ensure its phones to have a unique look, and I would say that the company actually did a great job on this handset. The Honor new phone has a unique identity provided by the V-shape reflection on its back. With the unique design, the Honor View 20 is quite different from all other smartphones I would say. The variant we got our hands on was in black, but there should be more colour variants coming soon.

Honor View 20: Specifications, Battery And Features

Honor clearly launched the Honor View 20 in the flagship smartphone segment as it packs the best Huawei’s chipset, the HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC which is considered as the top SoCs available for Android-powered devices. Only a few smartphones available out there come with this SoC. And it will not have lots of competition until Qualcomm launches its next flagship processor, the Snapdragon 855, in early 2019.

The Honor View 20 comes with 6GB/8GB RAM as well as 128GB/256GB storage which is on par with most of the other smartphones in the same segment. Its storage is also expandable up to 256GB storage via microSD slot, which is not that common in recent flagships anymore. I really don’t get the reason why phone makers have been ignored this option on their flagships and used it on their mid-range smartphones instead over the past few years, so we are glad that Honor is recognising this feature’s popularity.

The Nano-Memory storage technology of Huawei isn’t present in the Honor View 20, making the Huawei’s flagship, Mate 20 Pro, the only smartphone to have it. Nano Memory is smaller than the traditional microSD while still offering similar storage capacities. The Nano-Memory card and the Nano-SIM card has the same size, so they are interchangeable, and users can insert in either slot in the hybrid SIM tray of the Mate 20 Pro.

The Honor View 20 comes packed with a 4,000 mAh battery and support for 4.5V/5A Fast Charge tech of Huawei. This tech may not be as good as the 40W Super Charge technology on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, but Honor does claim that the Fast Charge tech can enable the phone to charge from 0 to 55 percent in just 30 minutes.

The expandable storage is not the only uncommon feature on flagship-level that is present in the Honor View 20. Honor also decided to keep the headphone jack on this new device. We are also glad to see to see a feature that is now mostly present in the mid-range smartphones. Honor also explains why they decided to keep the headphone jack, and it is because their research showed that it was still pretty popular.

Honor View 20: Price

Besides the standard Honor View 20, the Chinese phone maker also announced a special edition of the Honor View 20 and it is called Honor X Moschino. This model is packed with 8GB RAM and 256GB internal storage for 3,999 CNY (around Rs. 41,000).

Honor already launched the View 20 in China under the name of Honor V20 on 26 December at a price of 2,999 CNY (around Rs. 30,700) for the base variant with 6GB RAM/128GB storage and 3,499 CNY (around Rs. 35,800) for the 8GB RAM/128GB storage option. Honor is set to launch the Honor View 20 in the global market on 21 January 2019 in an event in Paris, and the pricing and availability of the phone will also be announced at the event.