Honor 20 and Honor 20 Pro go official with quad cams, flagship Kirin 980 chipset

2023-02-20

Huawei has established a name for itself in mobile photography, now sub-brand Honor wants to make its mark. The Honor 20 duo brings a unique dedicated macro camera and the main camera on the Pro model has the brightest aperture on a phone ever.

Honor 20 Pro

The Honor 20 Pro main camera has the fastest aperture of any phone ever – f/1.4. It guides 60% more light than an f/1.8 aperture towards the 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor (1/2”, 0.8µm pixels). This camera has both optical and electronic image stabilization.

The Pro has an 8MP telephoto camera with 3x optical and 5x hybrid zoom (digital zoom goes up to 30x). This camera also has OIS, which is vital for shooting faraway objects or low-light portraits. If instead you want to capture something up close, there’s the dedicated macro camera, the first we’ve seen on a phone.

It has a 2MP sensor and is optimized to capture images from just 4cm away (around 1.5in). Finally, there’s the 16MP ultra wide-angle cam, which has 117° field of view.

On the front, a 32MP selfie camera lives inside a punch hole in the 6.26” display – an LCD panel with 1080p+ resolution (19.5:9 aspect ratio). The fingerprint reader is mounted on the side of the phone, offering an alternative to the in-display or rear-mounted readers. Face unlock is also supported.

The Honor 20 Pro is powered by the flagship Kirin 980 chipset and boasts 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage. The chipset feature a graphene cooling sheet, which has a thermal conductivity 1.5x better than copper.

Thanks to the powerful dual NPU and ISP, the AIS Super Night Mode can quickly capture several images at a time, discard the blurry ones and combine the remaining shots into one high-quality image even in low light. The 48MP AI Ultra Clarity Mode does the same in daylight.

The phone packs a 4,000mAh battery with 22.5 SuperCharge. A flat battery will hit 50% charge in 30 minutes.

The Honor 20 Pro is coming soon at a price of €600. Check out our hands on review for more details on the phone.

Honor 20

The major difference here is the camera. You still get the 48MP Sony sensor, but the lens has a slower f/1.8 aperture and no optical stabilization. The 2MP macro and the 16MP ultra wide-angle cameras are still on board, however the tele cam is replaced by a depth sensor.

The Honor 20 has the same screen, 6.26” 1080p+, with a 32MP selfie camera inside a punch hole. The FP reader is again located on the side.

The Kirin 980 chipset is hooked up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB storage on this model (also, there’s no graphene sheet). Like the Pro, the GPU Turbo 3.0 software promises smoother gameplay on some of the most popular games out there.

The Honor 20 is is slimmer than the Pro – 7.87mm vs. 8.44mm – and it has a slightly smaller battery, 3,750mAh. The 22.5W SuperCharge will help you fill it up quickly (50% in 30 minutes).

Both Honor 20 phones feature 9.1 surround sound virtualization that promises a cinema-like experience. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack, though.

The Honor 20 will cost €500 in Europe and £400 in the UK. There it will come with a free Honor Watch Magic (worth £180). It will be available soon from Carphone Warehouse, O2, Three, Amazon and Argos.