Honor View 20

Starting with the calling card of the Honor View 20 – the punch-hole on the display – it's clear why this could be one of the biggest trends in smartphones in 2019. While the conventional display notch seems like a necessary evil when it comes to offering high screen-to-body ratios in phones, the punch-hole seems to be most logical solution for achieving full-screen fronts, at least till the time phonemakers come up with something else. The slider mechanism seen on some phones does have the 'cool' quotient, but it may be too far fetched to expect that on anything apart from premium flagship phones at the moment. So before proceeding any further, let's figure out how it's like to use a phone which has a hole to house the selfie shooter. To be honest, the punch-hole does catch your attention initially, but otherwise, using the phone isn't weird in any manner. With a diameter of just 4.5mm, the hole resides on the top-left corner without obstructing anything, except for shifting the notification icons for network, Wi-Fi, etc. on the status bar slightly towards the right. If you look really closely however, the punch-hole area does result in screen bleeding, but it's only noticeable from close quarters.

Now coming to another highlight of the View 20... the 48MP camera on its back. For the past couple of years, it seemed that the megapixel wars were over, and we were seeing other innovations in terms of larger sensors, wider apertures, and of course, multiple shooters. So what does the 48MP shooter enable that we couldn't have achieved otherwise? Well, I'd urge you to read this explainer article. Zooming in (pun intended) on the sensor being used on the phone: it's a Sony IMX 586 unit that measures 1/2-inch, has a pixel size of 0.8µm and an aperture opening of f/1.8. Interestingly, it's paired with a TOF sensor (for measuring the distance between the shooter and the subject), which helps in accurate depth mapping, helping in portrait shots as well as 3D gaming.

There's no doubt that Huawei's Kirin 980 is one of the most powerful SoCs around, and the same can be found inside the Honor View 20. With the 7nm octa-core chipset, the handset delivers flawless performance, irrespective of whatever you might be doing. Couple that with 6-gigs of RAM, and phone literally flies through anything thrown at it. During the course of two weeks of using the View 20, there wasn't even a single instance where it showed any traces of lag.

As you can make out, the Honor View 20 has been impressive in most aspects so far, and the battery department is no different. With a 4,000mAh pack, the device is able to offer long battery life. On an average, I got anywhere between five to six hours of screen-on time with my usage comprising staying connected to the internet via Wi-Fi / 4G at all times, streaming videos off YouTube or Netflix, playing games and even using the phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot intermittently.