Honor Launches The View20: A 48MP Camera Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 28, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Kirin 980
- Honor View20
Battery Life
Battery life of the View20 is something I knew would be good before I even had completed our battery suite run. The efficiency by the new Kirin 980 as shown in the Mate 20’s was just excellent, particularly in the LCD Mate 20. The View20 in this regard is very similar to the Mate 20: it sports a similar capacity 4000mAh battery, the same chipset, and also an LCD screen. The screen is probably the only differentiating factor between the two devices, as the RGBW panel of the Mate 20 might have a slight efficiency lead over the regular RGB panel of the View20.
In our web-browsing test, we confirm my suspicions as the View20 ends up with some excellent battery life results. Again as suggested, the Mate 20 still has a lead here in terms of absolute battery life, again likely due to its more efficient display panel.
In PCMark’s Work 2.0 battery life test with a more diverse APL and workloads, the View20 again scores absolutely excellently reaching top marks in battery life.
We have to remember that these results here are in fact performed with the performance mode enabled, and while I didn’t have time to repeat my tests for this review, running normal mode should see a slight improvement over this figures.
Overall, just excellent showings by the View20. Huawei & Honor’s absolute battery life has for the last few generations always been quite good, but sometimes it didn’t quite work out in performance. The new Kirin 980 is able to reach outstanding efficiency figures with both long battery life results all while being at the top of the performance charts. It’s rare for a device to be able to achieve this, and especially given that the View20 isn’t really priced at nearly as high as other high tier flagship phones.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
philehidiot - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
You'd be amazed when you go back to old phones with older sensors. I found a dick pic from about 4 or 5 years ago and you'd be amazed at how grainy and small it looked with the optical distortion. Only goes to show how much effort they've put into the lenses and how things incrementally improve over time.That's if you see grey hair as an improvement, that is.
phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link
Would be nice to have more than 3x optical zoom, too.Will be interesting to see results from the OPPO? phone with motors and extra horizontal lenses too see how their 10x zoom results look.
phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link
motors == mirrorsStormyParis - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
Very interesting and insightful, thank you.I'm wondering how all those fancy AI-, Night-, ... modes deal with moving objects since they all seem based on some kind of HDR.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
They take up to 4 seconds to capture so they're no good with moving objects.eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
@Andrei: Thanks for this review. Did I get it correct - the 40 MP are more virtual than actual? I am curious how the Sony "40 MP" sensor compares to the very large 40 MP sensor in the Nokia Pureview 808. That sensor was a beast, and didn't just have 40 actual Megapixels, but also on-chip 4-in-1 binning. Any comments? Whatever happened to that sensor?Lastly, for any manufacturer who might read this: As somebody who really looks for a good camera in my phones, I for one don't mind a notable hump for the camera if (IF) you make it worth it in the photo and video quality.
eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
Okay, I think I answered my own question: yes, the Sony chip is a "virtual" 40 MP, but that comes at a cost, mainly in form of really small imaging pixel size. I also took another look at the 41 megapixel Pureview sensor that Nokia's 808 featured: pixel size: 1.4 µm; 7728x5368 actual (not virtual) pixels, and a sensor size of 10.67 × 8.00 mm. When it came out, it monstered pretty much any compact fixed lens camera with better details and overall picture quality. I would love to see something similar in a smartphone with modern tech (Snapdragon 855 or Kirin 980), Android 9+, and BSI instead of FSI. For that, I take the big hump any day. Anybody else who'd be interested in that kind of kit?serendip - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
I still have an 808 that gets used on sunny days. That said, my cheap Xiaomi phones have much better overall photo quality with Google Camera's HDR. The 808 has lovely detail rendering, almost like a Micro 4/3 sensor, but dynamic range is lacking and noise is terrible.Now someone needs to take that big sensor and marry it with a fast GPU and IP. Microsoft tried this with the Lumia 1020 but the SoC in that was too slow. A new Snapdragon 855 should be perfect for this.
tuxRoller - Friday, February 1, 2019 - link
Here's a comparison with the lumiawww.androidauthority.com/huawei-mate-20-pro-vs-nokia-1020-924642/
jjj - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
Would be nice if you could also camera review the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7, just to see the differences between this and a 150$ phone.