Battery Life - Impressive

Battery life is a fundamental characteristic of a smartphone, and something that Huawei seems to want to pay special attention to due to the CEO’s obsession with being personally fed up with smartphones running out of power.

The P20 comes with a 3400mAh battery while the P20 Pro sports a 17.6% larger 4000mAh unit. Both represent an improvement in terms of capacity when compared to the P10 (3200mAh) and the P10 Plus (3750mAh).

Web Browsing Battery Life 2016 (WiFi)

In the web browsing test both P20’s perform extremely well, topping the charts. While not quite reaching the Mate 9’s figures (due to its very efficient LCD), the P20 Pro outpaces all other modern smartphones that we’ve tested, coming in at 12.20 hours. The P20 also isn’t far behind at 10.66 hours.

PCMark Work 2.0 - Battery Life

In PCMark, the P20 Pro showcased some record figures coming in at 12.3h, beating all previous flagship devices. The smaller P20 also fares very well – but the LCD screen is holding back the device as PCMark’s overall lower APL seems to favour the P20 Pro’s OLED display a lot.

This is also an interesting juxtaposition between the P20 Pro and say, the Galaxy S9+ with the Snapdragon 845. Both have similar AMOLED screens and sizes, but the P20 Pro comes in at a 51% longer runtime, even though its battery capacity is only 14% bigger.

Compared to last year’s P10 – both P20’s mark significant improvements.

In general this perfectly showcases the balance that companies have to make when deciding between performance and battery life. Although the Kirin 970’s isn’t the greatest performer in 2018, it’s able to remain outstandingly efficient. The fact that the P20’s have larger batteries while maintaining slim form factors is just a bonus on top what is fundamentally a requirement of having an efficient SoC and device platform.

Over my time with testing the device I did notice a catch in the battery life of the P20s – both seem to have less than impressive idle standby times, however given the overall outstanding on-screen battery results, this should be of no particular concern to everyday users.

Display Evaluation & Power Camera - Daylight Evaluation
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  • chrnochime - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link

    Widespread success in western market? Europe maybe but North America? I doubt it.
  • Retycint - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link

    Literally in the next paragraph, "put an end to Huawei’s ambitions in the US ... However, outside the US, Huawei products are as popular as ever"

    It would be good to remember that US is just one country out of 'Western countries", and in Europe Huawei is one of the top selling brands on par with Apple/Samsung.
  • Lord of the Bored - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link

    US is the only western country that matters, though.
  • beginner99 - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link

    Except that Europe has double the population from US...
  • mkaibear - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link

    >double the population from US...

    And a bigger economy. Admittedly the US GDP/capita is higher but...
  • dustwalker13 - Sunday, June 17, 2018 - link

    only if you take the whole EU as a unit including the comparatively poor eastern european countries.

    central europe has the us beat in terms of gdp/capita and the total economic power of the pop of the whole eu is significantly higher than the us.

    in the end though, neither the us nor eu are as big as the asian market at this point. i find the 'merica! guys almost funny. it is like watching an old society lady bitch about that progressive lord next door, imagining her opinion had any weight still, while in reality both are sitting in crumbling castles and the world has moved on years ago.
  • FunBunny2 - Monday, June 18, 2018 - link

    "only if you take the whole EU as a unit including the comparatively poor eastern european countries."

    well, as Crooked Hillary said (and it's true) her votes came from districts that produced 65% of GDP. The Evil One, of course, snuck in on the basis of the skewed Electoral College biased to the low information, low income, low education empty states. the poor will always be with you.
  • peevee - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    This is simply not true.
    Districts do not produce GDP, working people do.
    And most poor and stupid actually voted for Clinton:
    <$50,000 53% Clinton 41% Trump
    $50,000-$100,000 46% Clinton 49% Trump.
    $100,000 & over 47% 47%
    https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections...

    Keep telling yourself the lies though.
  • Round - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link

    This is supposed to be about a second rate phone from china and gullible buyers, not politics, but oh well...

    The only problem with Crooked Hillary (besides her not being in a CIA black-site prison for the rest of her unnatural life) and her comment/assessment, is that many highly-educated, high intelligent people decided that her brand of sociopathy was too much for them. Many hard working, also intelligent, people also found her lies too hard to swallow.

    While we have a crass and utter buffoon in office now, the myth that anyone smart enough to see Hillary for the conniving waste she is must be "low information, low income, low education" is only believed - and spewed ad nauseam - by the malignantly ignorant, non-thinking masses of clueless progressives. N.B. I an NOT talking about democrats (an endangered species), I'm only talking about the worst ignorant identity-politicing progressives.

    Perhaps learning what Hillary's globalism really means to Americans and the GDP/per capita income, instead of relying upon the dishonest pablum coming from the nuts and sociopaths on the left would be worth some time. Just a thought.....
  • peevee - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link

    "central europe has the us beat in terms of gdp/capita"

    False. Only tiny countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg (in the latter case because of out-of-country commuters - similar mistake like GDP per capita in the suburbia-dominated American cities incorrectly calculated by taking product produced by all people working in the cities, including commuters from suburbs (usually producing the most product by value), but dividing them only by the number of people living in the cities.
    Statistical slight of hand, one of the many employed by liars.

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