What started as a display notch in iPhone X quickly became a design trend of 2018, with many companies adopting it as it was, while others shrank the design of the cut-out area and called it the dew-drop or water drop notch. Going into the 2019, Honor’s View 20 smartphone has given us an early look at what will most likely become the dominant design element of phones in 2019 – the punch-hole display.
Priced at Rs 37,999, the Honor View 20 is one of the first premium phones coming with a selfie camera cut-out that’s literally just the camera. Equivalent to the size a hole-punching device makes on a sheet of paper, the Honor View 20 has 25MP in-screen camera that completely eliminates the top bezel of the phone.
Design
Measuring 6.4-inches, the View 20 features IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 2310 x1080 pixels. The company has done a fantastic engineering work to create a 4.55mm circular cut-out on the LCD to conceal the camera. The punch hole in-screen camera is technically sound and not only doesn’t distracts or looks awkward but also makes the View 20 stand out from the crowd.
Overall, the View 20 looks appealing as compared to Honor View 10. The punch-hole is here to stay, and we might see it on other devices soon.
Performance
With 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, the View 20 is nearly same in power as the Huawei Mate 20. It comes with Kirin 980 chip and artificial intelligence features provided by the Dual NPU (Neural Processing Unit). There is also a 3D modelling feature that lets you scan an object, for instance a toy and bring it to life in augmented reality.
In addition to this, the View 20 comes with liquid cooling, triple-antenna Wi-Fi and dual-frequency GPS. According to Honor, the S-shaped heat pipe cools a wide area to ensure sustained peak performance.
The addition of third antenna of the Wi-Fi array helps maintain a strong signal while gaming online, irrespective of phone’s orientation. It activates dynamically when there is drop in the signal. The same goes for dual frequency GPS that utilises AI to choose the best satellites to broadcast the strongest signal at a particular moment.
During my time with the phone, the punch-hole never affected the screen’s performance. In fact, it made the whole experience rather more enjoyable for multimedia viewing. Holding the phone horizontally makes you get that full-screen look with a massive 91.8-percent screen-to-body ratio. Overall, the View 20 offers good viewing angles, rich colours and enough sharpness to satisfy most of your needs.
The 4,000mAh battery easily lasts for over a day, plus, it has fast charging too – 50 per cent in just 30 minutes.
Repositioning of the front camera may need some time to get accustomed to it. When we tried clicking pictures from the front camera, we had to adjust the grip to use and bring the subject in the centre, as the camera is located on the extreme left of your phone. You might require a couple of days to get the framing right, but it’s easy to get used to it. Overall, the 25MP in-screen camera works wonderfully and has various artificial intelligence features for different effects.
At the back, there is a single 48MP camera that uses Sony’s IMX586 sensor. Shots captured by the rear camera are brilliant and impressively detailed.
The camera seems capable of meeting most of the needs of mobile photographers. To create low-light photos, the Honor View 20 uses 4-into-1 pixel binning technology and Aritificial Intelligence Stabilisation. The low-light shots captured are good but not as great and detailed as captured by Huawei Mate 20 Pro or Google Pixel 3.
The Time of Flight (TOF) 3D camera feature helps you measure food calories by volume.
The dual NPU recognises most of the scenarios, such as food, flowers, house and beach, and optimises colours for best possible results.
The Honor View 20 has various 3D animated emojis which the company calls 3D Qmojis. These animated emojis feature all kinds of animal emoji and utilises AR to scan your face and record those animated 3D Qmoji videos in 720p resolution.
The 960fps slow motion feature really slows things down for a dramatic effect. For professionals, there is a manual mode that lets you adjust white balance, exposure and shutter speed. In terms of overall picture quality, the View 20’s cameras are good, but they don’t match up to OnePlus 6T, Pixel 3 or Galaxy S9 in terms of detail and image processing.
Conclusion
With the View 20, Honor has done a great job of finding a solution of putting the front camera in an almost bezel less device. In addition to this, with specs like 8GB of RAM, Kirin 980 processor and a 48MP rear camera, the View 20 has given 2019 a great start.
Pros
Punch-hole camera, display
Cons
no in-screen fingerprint sensor
