Huawei P20 Pro Hands-on: Hi-Resolution Monster

Huawei P20 Pro Hands-on: Hi-Resolution Monster

We take a quick look at the P20 Pro!

Today Huawei launched their P20 series of phones in Paris, France, which includes the P20 Pro and the regular P20. Obviously, everyone’s attention will be directed towards the P20 Pro thanks to its unheard-of triple camera setup, a first for the industry.

If there’s any brand that has enough cajones to try something as drastic as a third camera module it’s Huawei. While they’re not the first company to put dual cameras on their phones, they were the at the forefront of the new tech, banking on the feature heavily for their P9 series. Despite the market’s initial resistance to the idea, dual-cameras have seemingly become one of the must-have features for flagship devices nowadays regardless of brand – even staunch rival Samsung caved with their Galaxy Note 8.

Huawei P20 Pro specs

  • HiSilicon Kirin 970 octa-core processor
  • 6GB of RAM
  • 6.1-inch Full HD+ OLED display, 18.7:9 Aspect ratio, Natural Tone
  • 128GB internal storage
  • 40-megapixel f/1.8 primary Leica rear camera with 1/1.7-inch sensor, Huawei AIS, Master AI, 5X hybrid zoom, up to ISO 102400 sensitivity
  • 20-megapixel f/1.6 monochrome Leica rear camera with Huawei AIS, Master AI
  • 8-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto Leica rear camera with 3X optical zoom with Huawei AIS, Master AI
  • 24-megapixel front camera with LED flash, 3D facial enhancement
  • Dual SIM
  • WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, Fingerprint scanner, fast charge, IP67 rating
  • 4000mAh battery
  • Android 8.1 Oreo (EMUI 8.1)

Initial impressions: exquisite build, hi-resolution sensor, and AI chops make the P20 Pro an awesome flagship

If you’ve been following the leaks, there’s nothing about the P20 Pro’s design that’ll shock you. The phone is made from a lovely combination of glass and metal, curved rear and rounded corners. The phone feels hefty and solid to the touch and looks the part of a flagship phone from any angle. While the P20 Pro and the regular P20 look similar (aside from the obvious third camera module) the P20 Pro has an exclusive iridescent color option that’s really something else entirely.

The phone’s three cameras is tucked neatly on the upper left side of the phone, arranged vertically. The first camera is an 8-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto Leica lens with 3x optical zoom, while the second is the massive 40-megapixel color Leica sensor. The third module is the 20-megapixel f/1.6 monochrome Leica sensor. All three work in tandem to deliver the P20 Pro’s photography chops.

Up front, you’ll see the 6.1-inch, full HD+ OLED display with a 19:9 aspect ratio and a notch that holds the front-facing camera and the other sensors. Down below you’ll see the fingerprint reader.

While the display of the phone looks great, it’s unclear why Huawei opted to go with a full HD panel rather than a QHD that’s the standard for flagships nowadays. While it’s the same strategy that the company employed with the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, we’re a little put off by the full HD display considering you’ll be paying serious coin for it.

A bigger point of contention for us is the notch in the display. Companies usually utilize a notch on their phones to squeeze in as much screen real-estate possible into a device while retaining the requisite selfie camera and front sensors. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the P20 Pro, in fact, there’s more than enough bezel space on the front of the phone to retain the fingerprint scanner.  A better solution would have been to move the fingerprint scanner to the rear and simply place the sensors in the top bezel. Thankfully you can turn off that notch if you wished.

Let’s talk about those cameras: the P20 Pro has three in total: a primary 40-megapixel Leica shooter, a secondary 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and a telephoto 8-megapixel lens that has 3x optical zoom tech. The primary camera is the biggest we’ve seen in a phone in a while and harkens back to the days of Nokia’s 808 PureView and Lumia 1020.

Thanks to software magic, the 40-megapixel shooter is able to work in tandem with the 8-megapixel 3x optical zoom camera to deliver 5x hybrid zoom images. While digital zoom won’t ever be as good as optical zoom, the 40-megapixel camera pushes enough pixels and data to deliver 5x zoom images that look like they were taken with a 5x optical zoom lens. Just like the competition, Huawei’s P20 Pro can also take super slow-mo video – 960 frames, in fact. Huawei’s claim of trying to replicate DSLR-like performance in a phone camera is rhetoric we’ve heard from other companies before, but they’re the only ones that are close to actually backing up their claim with real-world performance. The camera sensor of the P20 Pro is the biggest we’ve ever seen on a smartphone before. Huawei pegs it at 1/1.7-inches, making it bigger than the one in the Galaxy S9 Plus. It’s actually as big as the one in Pentax’s Q7, the world’s smallest interchangeable lens camera.

As for camera samples, here are a few shots we took using the P20 Pro:

As for the P20 Pro’s Zoom capabilities, here’s a quick comparision:

The company has also made bigger strides in AI-assisted photography. Aside from being able to determine what exactly you’re trying to shoot and adjusting the camera’s settings to match, the phone’s AI capabilities also allow it to use predictive shooting and AI stabilization when shooting at night, specifically with long exposures. Huawei claims that the P20 Pro can compensate for your hand movements when shooting in low light for exposures as long as 6 seconds, which means you no longer have to use a tripod when shooting at night.

Huawei’s large 24-megapixel front-facing camera also benefits from AI smarts and can apply studio lighting effects after your selfie.

As for the other specs, the P20 Pro is powered by the same chipset that made the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro tick last year: it has the company’s Kirin 970 processor that has AI capabilities baked in, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Our Mate 10 Pro is still going strong and is still as fast as the day we took it out of the box, which speaks volumes about what you can expect from the P20 Pro once you continually use it as your daily driver.

Despite being thinner than the S9 Plus, the P20 Pro also has a massive 4000mAh battery. That, combined with the low power draw of the full HD OLED display and the supposed AI smarts that keep power consumption low, then you can see how far that 4000mAh battery will last you.

It’s clear that Huawei is holding nothing back with the new phone. The P20 Pro is a stunning showcase of just how far we’ve come in mobile photography. Fast, powerful and packing performance that rivals DSLRs, the Huawei P20 Pro might just fulfill its ambition of replacing the DSLR.

Check out our other articles on the P20 Pro:

Huawei Nova 2 Lite Review: A New Sub-10K Star?

Huawei P20 and P20 Pro Dominate At DxOMark Mobile Rankings

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