Huawei P20 Pro Review
Huawei has built expertise from being a component and assembly supplier to becoming one of the top global smartphone manufacturers. It also holds several leadership positions in international industrial standards organizations to shape future information technology policy.
The brand’s technical prowess has helped it gain footholds in markets ignored by premium brands such as hybrid-fiber-optic-adapters-couplers Apple and Samsung. It has also focused on diversity in its senior management ranks, bringing in high-profile Western executives.
P20 Pro
The P20 Pro is a flagship smartphone with the usual hardware, but the camera setup is what sets it apart. Huawei opted for an f/1.8 sensor with a large pixel size to allow the phone to capture more light and produce better low-light photos, even in challenging conditions. It also added a second lens with a telephoto angle for close-ups.
The two cameras are complemented by software features that help with composition and autofocus. The phone can identify objects in a scene and blur them out for a professional-looking background, while a selfie mode automatically frames and composes a picture for you. The camera also offers a 960fps slow motion option and various portrait lighting effects.
Huawei is letting users customize the look of the phones with multiple color options. The P20 Pro is offered in a variety of gradient finishes, including the ‘twilight’ model seen here that shifts between green to blue as the light changes. Other colors include Pink Gold, standard Blank, and Midnight Blue. It’s worth noting that special colors aren’t normally something you can expect to see with most smartphones, and a transparent flexi-case would instantly take away any effect the color may have.
Like most other recent flagships, the P20 Pro ditches a headphone jack. This is a shame, but it helps with battery life and design. The phone has a USB Type-C port on the bottom, while the top is home to a secondary microphone and a pair of speaker grilles (we assume for stereo audio). The fingerprint sensor on the back doubles as a navigation button with gestures. A single tap takes you back a screen, and pressing and holding launches the home screen. Swiping left or right moves between open apps.
Huawei has made a good showing with the camera, but it still needs to work on its image processing in good light. Images seem a little oversharpened and noisy, though the dynamic range is great. The company should also focus on its facial retouching, as it can make people look a little unnatural.
P50
With the success of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and this new Huawei offering, it’s safe to say clamshell foldable phones are back in fashion. The P50 Pocket is a beautiful example of the format, packing an impressive display and an outstanding camera set into its petite package. This is a phone that will slip into every pocket and look great doing so.
The 6.6″ HDR10+ OLED is one of the highlights of the P50 Pro and Huawei has made some improvements over its previous model. It now supports a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate, 10-bit colors and 300Hz touch sampling. Peak screen brightness is listed as 600 nits and it has true DCI-P3 color support (although that’s not necessarily a good thing for everyone).
On the back of the phone you’ll find the main camera set. There’s a 50MP primary camera, a 40MP monochrome sensor alongside it and a 13MP ultra-wide camera for additional perspectives. The telephoto lens can do some serious zooming, offering up to 3.5x optical lossless zoom and 4x digital zoom.
This is a flagship-level phone and Huawei is positioning it as the best choice for those who love to take photos. Its camera has a very natural and pleasing look to it, even in the most odva-outdoor-cable-assembly challenging scenes. There is a lot of detail in shots and the colors tend to be a little warmer than you might expect.
Another key feature is the in-screen fingerprint sensor, which is quick and accurate. It also works with facial recognition to unlock the phone. It’s not as fast and reliable as Samsung’s but it does the job well enough.
The biggest challenge for the Huawei brand is its lack of visibility in mature markets like the U.S. That’s largely been the result of a smear campaign from the government over Chinese state influence and security concerns. The company has tried to counter that by promoting its products in other markets and working with local distributors to promote them.
The P50 Pro will be available in China starting on August 12th with pricing ranging from 5,988 to 9,273 yuan ($817 to $927). Like most recent Huawei phones, it won’t come with Google Mobile Services, but that’s probably not a big surprise since the Chinese company is working on its own Android replacement called HarmonyOS. Nevertheless, it does a fairly decent job of keeping the OS up to date with security patches. It does so by using a custom app store and by providing updates via the web, although it doesn’t always keep up with patches in a timely manner.