The HONOR 20 series had its global launch recently in London, England. While we had the HONOR 20 a little before the event, we also spent some time with the HONOR 20 Pro to get a feel of what the phones are like.
At a glance, you’d be forgiven if you mistook either of them for the HONOR View20. This is because both the HONOR 20 and 20 Pro also come with a punch hole cutout on the top left corner. And it’s not just the front either – the two series look pretty much identical on all sides save the right side and the back.
And on that note, the right side is, in my personal opinion, simply ergonomic design genius. In fact it boggles the mind as to why Sony and Razer are seemingly the only other phone makers to adopt this. I’m talking of course about the side-mounted power button / fingerprint sensor hybrid.
HONOR has also tweaked the design a little. This is done by making the indent for the button more noticeable, especially by touch. The button itself is also textured, so that you’ll be able to tell by touch alone where the button is, even if you manage to not notice the concave around the button. The button also protrudes a little, so it’s basically impossible to miss it.
Above the power button / fingerprint sensor hybrid is the volume rocker. This leaves the only the SIM tray on the left. At the bottom, you’ll find the USB-C charging port and the speaker grille. The top side has an IR blaster, but nothing else. Unfortunately, this means that the 3.5mm audio jack is absent.
This leaves the back entirely to the quad camera setup. And unlike the typical setup that has all the sensors in a single bump, the HONOR 20 And HONOR 20 Pro actually has one next to the bump instead.
Then we have the LED flash. The HONOR 20 Pro has it outside of the bump, while the HONOR 20 has it in. It’s one of the easiest ways to tell the two devices apart.
Another simple way to tell the difference between the two is by running the camera app. This is because the HONOR 20 Pro has a camera with 3x optical zoom, and the app provides a shortcut for it. On the other hand, the HONOR 20 doesn’t have optical zoom, but it still comes with a 2x zoom shortcut
As for the camera’s user experience, most of the shooting modes are easy to access. Chances are you’ll spend most of your time shooting in the 48MP mode. Unfortunately, you’ll have to manually get out of this mode if you want to access the wide angle and zooming modes.
Between the two phones, the HONOR 20 and HONOR 20 Pro are actually very similar. The only immediately obvious difference between them is the main camera setup, which is also the main focus for both phones. But when it comes to the actual camera performance, we’ll have to take both these phones for a more in-depth review to find out.
