Holding his own with stellar cameras

Photo of Kyle Chua / Rappler

MANILA, Philippines – When Huawei unveiled the latest entries of his P phone series in Paris , France last March, the high-end P20 Pro was the focus of attention being the first smartphone to come equipped with three rear cameras.

Despite not being as powerful or ambitious as his big brother, the P20 holds its own and should not be overlooked. It offers impressive design, stellar cameras, and a satisfactory battery life for a price now considered affordable for admiral vessels: P34,990

Unique Design

The P20 is a big step forward on the P10, which now looks like a pedestrian in comparison. This is most obvious with its thinner side edges and the addition of the infamous nick. Those who hate the hack would be happy to discover that it can be "turned off" by tipping a parameter that lets it blend seamlessly with a black bar on top of the phone. Although the design choice never bothered me personally, I appreciate having an option to hide it when I wanted it.

Huawei seems to sacrifice a bit of screen by positioning the fingerprint scanner at the bottom. of the phone which is now less common in the growing trend of shrink glbades. I could never get used to touching a scanner at the back to unlock my phone so no complaints here. There is a function of unlocking the face that offers another convenient way to unlock the phone, even in low-light areas. This feature works well depending on my time with it.

Photo by Kyle Chua / Rappler

Maybe my favorite design feature of the P20 is his eye. -control of color options for the glbad back. My review copy was the midnight blue version which has a nice and elegant shine, and is a real design win for the Chinese brand. The only drawback is that it captures fingerprints quite easily and can become very slippery sometimes.

The P20, however, does not have the Pro's OLED display. It has a 5.8-inch 18.7: 9 screen that is decent enough to watch videos and high definition photos. This is not quite without the bezel as with other flagships nowadays, but it has very good viewing angles and does the job.

The only thing I missed was a 3.5mm headphone jack. Considering that some competitions still include the port in their premium flagships, I see no reason why he was left out.

Stellar Cameras

Without a doubt, the most important selling point for the P20 is its Leica dual-camera system, which produces crisp images full of detail. For rear cameras, the P20 combines a 12 megapixel and f / 1.8 RGB sensor with a monochrome 20 megapixel f / 1.6 sensor. These two cameras work hand in hand to give better quality images with extra depth. Meanwhile, he has a 24-megapixel selfie camera, f / 2.0 aperture at the front.

Those less savvy with a camera would be happy to hear that the different camera settings coupled with Intelligent Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help improve and render photos most beautiful. For example, portrait mode automatically blurs the background and focuses on the human subject.

These settings can be enabled by scanning them in the camera application or letting the AI ​​recognize what the camera is doing to photograph. Speaking of AI, she recognizes a number of objects and scenes that smartphone users usually take pictures of, including food, greenery and people.

Best of all, the night mode images clear without the need for a tripod. What the AI ​​basically does is open the shutter for four full seconds, scroll through different exposures, and then bademble them into a single image.

Four seconds are now enough for the shutter to be opened by hand, since it tends to capture the most subtle hand movements that often result in blurry photos. But thanks to Huawei's image stabilization AI, images taken in dimly lit places are really enjoyable.

The only problem I have encountered with his camera is that the AI ​​sometimes oversaturates images. This is not a dealbreaker in any way that the recommended AI settings can easily be disabled by simply pressing the button. In addition, there is a professional shooting mode that allows manual configuration of settings.

Here are some of the pictures I took:

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Photo by Kyle Chua / Rappler

Photo by Kyle Chua / Rappler

Photo of Kyle Chua / Rappler

Photo of Kyle Chua / Rappler

Photo of Kyle Chua / Rappler [19659036] Photo by Kyle Chua / Rappler [19659005] Photo by Kyle Chua / Rappler

Photo by Kyle Chua / Rappler

Photo by Kyle Chua / Rappler

Other Features

The Huawei P20 houses a 3,400 mAh battery that can comfortably last close to the end of the day. one even in case of intensive use. There was always just enough juice for me to get through my day after using it to send emails, take pictures, and watch YouTube videos on a 4G connection. It also comes with Huawei's fast charging technology that should completely fill the P20 in about an hour

In terms of performance, Huawei's signature Kirin 970 combined with 4GB of RAM is enough powerful to keep applications and other functions working properly. I have never encountered stuttering or accident with the games and applications that I used during my brief stint with the revision copy

Overall, the Huawei P20 is a solid choice for people who love their smartphones. With P10,000 separating the P20 from the price of the P20 Pro, there is really no problem with the choice of the affordable but nearly as successful middle child of the series. – Rappler.com

(Complete Disclosure: Huawei lent a review unit for the purposes of this article.)