A subdivision of Huawei showed a new unique device: the only flagship smartphone that can become a competitor similar to Xiaomi.
With the advent of View 20, the Honor brand began to take the palm from OnePlus, becoming new: low price, incredibly powerful hardware, the use of promising new technologies such as the Infinity-O (several months earlier than the Samsung flagships, in which they were supposed to appear for the first time) .
One thing is worrying: the policy of producing “flagship killers” with a low price before others actually killed OnePlus in the eyes of longtime Android fans. Its place was taken by practical, proven Xiaomi and Asus.
Who will the new Honor end up with: among the real winners, or among the eternal store stands?
Stylish, but fragile and impractical
Thanks to the iPhone X, a new era of smartphones began: “bangs”, glass on both sides and minimal frames. Honor strives to become even more vibrant.
To this end, they hired the Italian design agency Moschino to develop a new flagship (or sub-flagship, if we consider the entire Huawei-Honor lineup).
Many Chinese companies developed the appearance of devices with invited specialists:
- ZTE created the Axon 7 in collaboration with BMW
- Huawei has already released a version of Porchse's Mate several times
- Xiaomi invited Philippe Starck to create Mix
However, all of the above (and not mentioned) designers had experience working with technology products. Therefore, it is very strange to realize that the new Honor was developed by a luxury fashion clothing and accessories brand.
There is no doubt that the Honor View 20 looks flawless: the light is refracted on the back cover, displaying a stylish pattern in the form of the letter “V” - “Victory”, “Victory”.
The technology used for manufacturing is similar to that used for gradient glass lids. As practice shows, in reality these are inferior to ordinary tempered plain and transparent glasses in terms of strength, since the glass has to be made into layers to play colors.
Is it possible to find a metal flagship in 2020? Of course not: glass changes more often and brings in more income.
The second problem with the rear panel glass is the complete lack of oleophobic coating. It will always be dirty (same thing with P20, Mate 20). This means that the smartphone will move into a case (which will also save you from scratches and cracks), and will lose all its beauty.
So why impose unnecessary expenses using something that will be hidden from the user?
A hole instead of an eyebrow? This is tough!
The View 20 screen can be called Honor's main achievement: the company became the first to implement a new type of screen in a smartphone ready for sale.
The developers themselves say that they used an “All-View” display. In fact, this type has already received the commonly used name Infinity-O : a full matrix with a small window for the camera directly on the matrix.
The window is created during the glass manufacturing process, so Gorilla Glass protection is exactly the same as that of regular smartphones. But this is according to the developers. In fact, the thin frame + proximity of the hole will become a weak point, and screens of this type will break much more often than usual.
If this doesn’t scare you, the buyer will receive an excellent 6.4- LTPS matrix with a resolution of 2340x1080 (FullHD+). If you don’t like the dot, you can remove it in the settings, just like hiding a unibrow.
And lose a huge part of the screen. Why then is this screen, expensive to manufacture and not yet tested in practice, better than a unibrow? And why isn’t it possible, like Meizu, to fit everything on a thin strip above the display?
Unlocking methods in Honor View 30 Pro
- Fingerprint scanner: yes
- Face recognition: yes
- Unlock via Bluetooth devices : yes
Fingerprint recognition works very quickly . The scanner takes on average only 0.2 seconds to unlock, which is an excellent indicator.
Of course, there is no infrared camera for facial recognition in a smartphone - it is usually installed in more expensive models. But thanks to the function of increasing the brightness and filling the screen with white, face unlocking is also quite fast - it takes 0.6 seconds.
There is also an unlocking function for devices connected via Bluetooth . Usually these are smart bracelets, swiping your finger over them unlocks the device and activates the screen.
Excess power that we pay for
Composition of Kirin 980
The Honor View 20 processor was inherited from the flagship Mate 20 devices - HiSilicon Kirin 980 of its own design with one of the most powerful graphics solutions Mali-G76 .
Kirin achieves excellent results. But it heats up like a battery, so liquid cooling was used in the smartphone. It barely works in Black Shark with a used processor, so Honor throttling cannot be avoided.
To be honest, there is another important aspect: the new processor costs like an airplane, but it is almost impossible to use all its performance. Let's compare Qualcomm: for all existing tasks, the 710 is more than enough. The top version only eats up the battery and burns your hands.
Kirin 980 performance
In addition to the fact that the platform easily catches up and overtakes existing Qualcomm SoCs, its strengths include the incredibly powerful built-in DSP chip for implementing AI algorithms (mainly for working with content) and a load prediction module .
These achievements have become a reality thanks to Huawei's developments in networking equipment, and were previously used for load balancing. Now they work with software, providing smoother operation and better battery life.
For the first time, the economy mode in a smartphone is implemented in hardware rather than software. With a 4,000 mAh battery, this approach can deliver results head and shoulders above the competition.
Kirin 980 AI algorithm capabilities
But if Qualcomm employs many independent developers, Huawei does not have this luxury. Their driver source code is closed, so in practice the results of the latest generation of Snapdragon will be better.
AI for video shooting works in real time for video. It’s very cool, because the hardware platform changes 4K video on the fly without an additional buffer or fundamental changes on the camera side, as is implemented in current Samsung flagships.
Performance and operating system Honor View 30 Pro
- Processor : 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 990 (2 cores Cortex-A76 2800 MHz, 2 cores Cortex-A76 2360 MHz, 4 cores Cortex-A55 1950 MHz)
- Graphics : Mali-G76 600 MHz
- RAM: 8 GB
- User memory: 256 GB
- Operating system: Android 10 with Magic UI 3.0.1 shell
- Sensors : accelerometer, light, proximity, magnetometer, pedometer, gyroscope, Hall sensor
A new smartphone needs a fresh operating system! Despite the ban on using Google services, Huawei can install the Android OS itself, so the smartphone uses the latest “ten”, and users have the right to expect that an update to at least version 11 will be available over time. The OS paired with the proprietary shell works quite quickly. Gesture control, image transfer to TV, game mode, and many other useful functions are supported, but automatic conversation recording was not added, although, as experience suggests, the Chinese version of the device probably has it.
Instead of services from Google - our own proprietary software. The Chinese tried to compensate for the ban on installing popular services by creating and developing their own applications, including a software store called AppGallery. However, in terms of the number of software, this store cannot compete with Google Play, and even if some games and applications require Google services, then third-party solutions will not help. Unfortunately, not all popular applications work, and the situation can change for the better or for the worse.
In synthetic tests, the device shows itself as a full-fledged flagship. For example, in Antutu version 8.2.9 it scores more than 494,000 points.
Processor performance decreases periodically. This happens even if you set the energy saving settings to the productive operating mode, whereas without this mode the situation worsens even more. Some games stutter occasionally, although not nearly as often as on the Mate 30 Pro.
On the left is a throttling test in normal mode, on the right is in performance mode
However, all games run at maximum settings. And apart from periodic infrequent frame drops, which are almost completely eliminated by setting the performance mode, then PUBG Mobile provides maximum graphics at 40 FPS, as, indeed, in Fortnite mobile, World of Tanks, Gods of Boom, as well as in other popular games you can count on maximum possibilities.
During the throttling test, the smartphone became noticeably hot. Even at a relatively low room temperature of 23 degrees Celsius, after 30 minutes of running the Trottling Test application, the smartphone body felt not just warm, but very warm - even closer to hot. But at the same time, I note that during heavy games the device is noticeably cooler, so in real use scenarios no discomfort should be felt.
Budget Xiaomi camera. In the camera phone
Will artificial intelligence help cameras? It could, but there are nuances. Surprisingly, the Honor flagship uses the same camera sensors as the budget Redmi Note 7: 1/2'' 48 MP Sony IMX586 There is also an additional camera with unknown parameters.
The dual module allows you to implement the “bokeh” effect and 3D contouring: in real time, the phone determines the contour of a person, and then you can do whatever you want with this contour.
Quite a promising technology has been implemented only for figure correction . So much work for some kind of “figure improver”?
Moreover, Honor View 20, not least thanks to this combination of cameras, has the ugliest kind of camera. And no gradient cover will fix this: game catches the eye instantly.
The sensor itself takes 12-megapixel photos using the same technology as Redmi Note 7, gluing adjacent pixels. A kind of hardware HDR to increase photosensitivity.
Thanks to this, photographs in difficult lighting turn out gorgeous. If you hold the smartphone tightly, there is still enough light, since the developers forgot to equip the Honor View 20 with optical stabilization . And why is it better than Redmi for 10 thousand rubles?
With the front camera everything is simpler: 25 MP, f/2.0 aperture. Where so much, why? True, there is autofocus, software “bokeh” and 2x zoom. The girls will be delighted, but for others it is a useless and rather expensive bonus.
Battery life on Honor View 30 Pro
- Battery capacity: 4100 mAh
- Fast wired charging: supported
- Fast wireless charging: supported
- Charger included: 40 W (10 V, 4 A)
A full charge of Honor View 30 Pro will last for at least one day of operation. Even at maximum brightness, the smartphone can easily last one working day, if you don’t get carried away with heavy games, because with PUBG Mobile running on maximum graphics, the device will last about 5 hours, again, if you set the brightness to maximum and enable performance mode. The playback time of HD video in the MX player is 8 hours 44 minutes at 100% brightness, while only 2-3% is spent in standby mode in one day. Among the small glitches, I’ll highlight that the device always turns off with two percent of the charge remaining.
The smartphone is fully charged quickly - in about 1 hour 16 minutes. Although the percentage indicator in the operating system displays the number 100 a little earlier - about an hour after charging starts. In just 30 minutes the device can charge 82%, which is an excellent indicator. The manufacturer, by the way, declared 40-watt charging, but the USB tester did not show more than 35 watts, and even with this power, the smartphone charges in less than 10 minutes, after which the performance gradually decreases.
Wireless charging up to 27 W is also supported, but the charger will have to be purchased separately. In some cases, reverse wireless charging will also be useful, with the help of which you can charge other devices from your smartphone - these can be both other smartphones and, for example, wireless headphones, which, of course, must support wireless charging.
The worst thing you could take from Apple is now from Honor
The main principle of the company: divide and conquer. This is expressed in the fact that each market will have its own version, with its own frequencies and language version of the firmware.
As you know, it is possible to flash a Chinese Honor/Huawei into a “Russian-speaking” one, but not in the most traditional ways: the firmware bootloader is closed and cannot be unlocked.
It is likely that in the near future, developers will introduce additional protection for system areas according to Google standards, which will make it impossible to obtain root rights.
For an Android smartphone, the lack of root with a rather intrusive proprietary firmware is death for an amateur.
However, Honor learned a lesson from the actions of the creators of the “flagship killers” and listened to users. That is why, in addition to the NFC required in Europe, the View 20 has a mini-jack for headphones.
A serious advantage, since no other flagship “Chinese” is equipped with it (except for ZTE Axon 9 , which is not interesting to you anyway).
