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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damianrobertjones - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link
After reading this review I'll simply keep the Mate 10 Pro and carry on. I was truly hopeful to finally have a Nokia 1020 killer but... it's not to be. Now THAT was an amazing camera (Especially with the grip).Years fly by and all we're seeing is small little jumps in camera tech while the 1020 had it all.
s.yu - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link
I don't think it's a matter of making jumps or steps but rather Huawei intentionally made a jump backwards. They have at least half of the original Pureview imaging team yet the rendering bears no resemblance to the 1020 nor the 808. They were probably explicitly ordered to bump up saturation to 11, and sharpening, NR to 13. The quad-bayer also does more damage than good, they could have gone for a 40MP bayer proper and ended up with much fewer false interpolation color and smearing. Now P20Pro RAW is gigantic (close to 80MB, larger than my a7RII's output) yet good as useless as it doesn't stand to clarity boost and sharpening (current algorithms are simply ineffective in extracting data from that interpolation pattern) and probably won't merge well in LR mobile's HDR RAW mode either.Speaking of which, LR mobile's HDR RAW is a real revolution. Although an exposure takes about half a minute to process (on the slow side, but its nothing if you got your shot) and may be more prone to shaking (as all auto HDR are), it yields DNG files from my Note 8 with DR in the range of APS-C sensors so far with imperceptible loss in sharpness from the merge. It hardly solves low light performance(shutter speed is automatically determined and doesn't seem to go very low) but it does help bring back highlight DR in low light, and in daylight it often substitutes a professional compact like a Coolpix A or Ricoh GR.
peevee - Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - link
A73/A53 are so last year...p51d007 - Friday, June 22, 2018 - link
Shame...I started out with a Huawei Mate2 years ago, then upgraded to the Mate 8, then the 9 after someone bought my 8.Sadly, due to the U.S. government telling retailers, carriers "you better not", the 9 might be my last Huawei phone. If I can't get the software to run it in the U.S. without jumping through hoops, support and what not, I'll have to start looking elsewhere.
Shame...I've loved every one of them! Very stable, LONG battery life and good value.
pruthviraj - Saturday, June 23, 2018 - link
i am waiting and i want to <a href=”http://newslm.com/buy-redmi-note-6-pro-online-at-t...”>Buy Redmi Note 6 Pro</a>djayjp - Saturday, June 23, 2018 - link
Btw, author, OIS has nothing do with exposure lolalbert89 - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Oh yeah, that's that Chinese Co's that was fined by the U.S for breaking trade embargo's and stealing technology. I don't care how popular they were over seas. They arnt going to get my business and many people feel the same way. Do you wanna reward the Chinese communist party for stealing ? You either stand for something or nothing at all.max123 - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - link
Now that we know <a href="https://youmobile.com.pk/phone/1061/huawei-y3-2017... Huawei Y3 2018 and Huawei Y3 2017</a>(Y5 Lite 2017) are basically the same phones with different software, we think that it’s likely the outgoing 2017 edition could also get Android Go features via an update.
max123 - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - link
<a href="https://youmobile.com.pk/phone/1065/huawei-p20-pro... Huawei P20 Pro is one of the primary cell phones</a> we have seen with three separation camera focal points on the back. The best one is a 8 megapixel zooming focal point, the center one is a 40 megapixel RGB focal point, and the last one (set apart independent from anyone else) is a 20 megapixel mono focal point.Freedom11 - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Thank you for a brilliant review. I am between the P20 and P20 Pro. My question is whether the differences between the P20 Pro and the P20 is worth the price difference. I would truly appreciate if someone could summarise the advantages of the Pro over the standard P20. From reading the review, I see the main advantage in being the 5x zoom and the very, very dark lighting situations, which I guess both would be used more rarely. But even so the P20 performs very well in night shots! Thank you very much!!