The Huawei P20 Pro is the company’s latest flagship smartphone that comes packed with a top-of-the-line processor, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage and a 4,000mAh battery. But that is not what makes this phone stand out from the crowd! It’s the fantastic Leica triple-camera system that is sure to hold photography enthusiasts captive…but more on that later.
The Huawei P20 Pro is designed and built to amaze. Its front and rear panels are built with strengthened glass with an aluminium frame that holds everything together. The result is a beautifully crafted body that is slim and stylish with almost no bezel at all. Despite its 6.1-inch OLED screen size, the phone is comfortable to hold and easy to navigate. This year’s most talked about notch finds its place at the top of the screen but if you so prefer, you can obscure the notch entirely with a black bar leaving you with a standard 18:9 display.
The volume and power buttons sit on the right of the handset frame with a set of stereo speakers at the bottom end of the P20 Pro with a USB-C slot in the middle. The 3.5mm headphone jack is however absent. While this is no deal-breaker, it is just something we missed. The pack-in earbuds and the loud, built-in speaker that delivers rich audio output, easily make up for this omission. The P20 Pro is rated IP67 for water- and dust-resistance and is available with a generous 128GB of internal storage so the absence of an extendable memory slot is hardly worth mentioning.
Low light image – Indoors
Coming to the star of the show, the P20 Pro’s tri-camera. Huawei has brought together a 40-megapixel RGB camera, a 20-megapixel monochrome camera and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera to give you a photography experience to remember. With this phone even amateurs can click beautiful and crisp pictures in the auto mode itself without getting into the nitty-gritty aspects of ISOs and the likes. The f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilization on the 40MP camera allow for good light exposure giving you sharp, bright photographs both indoors and out. Its colour-temperature sensor ensures colour accuracy even in low light conditions.
Low light image – Outdoors
With its hybrid zoom feature, the three cameras come together and pick data from the 40MP main and 8MP telephoto cameras for near-perfect long range shooting. Another spectacular feature is the night mode that takes multiple exposures in about four seconds to combine the best of each shot and create one single perfect photo. The front facing camera has a high-resolution 24MP sensor and lives up to expectations, holding up well even in low light conditions. The Huawei P20 Pro shoots decent videos up to 4K resolution, however, at 4K res there’s no image stabilisation.
If you thought we were done with the P20 Pro’s exceptional camera features you are in for a surprise. The P20 Pro ‘smarts’ further with its AI engine that offers frame-by-frame optimisation in auto mode. The smartphone’s Master AI identifies different scenarios and adjusts the camera’s settings accordingly ensuring detailed and crisp pictures in both daylight and low light scenarios. The Master AI does falter on a few occasions when it changes to portrait mode even in low light or when the picture looks even better than the real thing. But this auto-manipulation usually works in the camera’s favour and works perfectly in most cases, so you will find yourself using it more often than not.
The phone has a good battery life and it lasted 2 full days on a single charge with normal usage. If you use the camera a lot or play high power games, this may come down to a day or a day-and-a-half which is still a lot.
All in all, the Huawei P20 Pro stands in a league of its own. The P20 Pro is a fantastic smartphone with a stunning design and build quality. It has a great battery life and its triple camera makes it the best option for photographers – amateurs and professionals alike. The Huawei P20 Pro not only sports all the features of a great smartphone, it simply takes photography to the absolute next level and that’s what makes it one of the best choices for your next smartphone.
Price: AED 2,999
