The Huawei P20 & P20 Pro Review: Great Battery Life & Even Better Night Vision
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 15, 2018 11:00 AM ESTBattery 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).
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.
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.
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levizx - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
* doesn'tThere, fixed it for you.
close - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
Take it easy guys, Lord of the Bored is just trolling. A lighthearted chuckle is always good :).JackieKu - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
Welcome return to smartphone review! I don't particularly interest in Huawei's device due to its ecosystem (of SoC), but a full review is still very welcome.psychobriggsy - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
18.66:9... i.e., 56:27Lord of the Bored - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
2.074:1, you mean?levizx - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
What a moron! It's 611:300. And who wants those ridiculous numbers? Anybody can tell which of 18.5:9 and 18.66:9 is wider in under 0.5s, almost nobody can say the same for 56:27 611:300 and 37:18.eastcoast_pete - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
One question I would have liked addressed in this review: what is Huawei's official position on providing security and other OS updates for their phones and for how long do they guarantee the release of timely updates. I had an older Huawei Mate phone, and their utter lack of support (OS or even just security updates) obsoleted that phone in under 2 years. As long as Huawei has this abandonware approach to these, quite pricey, phones, count me out.Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
Huawei's update record have not been good, in fact, it's been pretty atrocious, so it's a good point to make. I'll ping them for an official stance on this.greenbat - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
On the mate 10 pro I get a monthly firmware upgrade. The security updates are 1 month behind googles. And new features are added by huawei face unlock was recently added, night shot will be added in next firmware upgrade. And also in the near future Gturbo (faster gpu), cloud computing, and android 8.1 upgrade are expected. Finally android 9 is in testing phase. So far I am happy with the updates.Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
I haven't received any update yet on the M10. The P10 still sits on a February 2017 firmware. But maybe that's something limited to my review devices.