Huawei P20 and P20 Pro: Triple camera setup and notched display

Huawei launched their 2018 installments of their P-line of smartphones yesterday and oh isn’t it a spectacular pair. The P20 and P20 Pro come in a bunch of new colors. They also deviate from the prevailing design of it’s predecessors, the P10 and P9 in favour of the ‘norm’ of 2018 flagship design. A taller and narrower display, minimal bezels and the iPhone X notch.

Display

Its probably time we accepted the notch because it is here to stay. Huawei is the latest phone-maker to hop onto the notch-life train with these two. Both the P20 and P20 Pro have a screen resolution of 2244×1080, the P20 spotting a 5.8 inch display and the bigger Pro clocking in at 6 inches. Both panels are OLED, and of course, the notch. The notch houses the front facing camera and the earpiece and is considerably smaller than that on competing phones.

Interestingly, Huawei has added a software feature that adds a black bar to flank the notch hence hiding it. It makes the top bezels look a lot thicker, but it is there so..

The two devises also spot fingerprint sensors embedded within the home button mounted on the devices’ chin.

Camera

For the past few generations, Huawei’s P-line of devices has been  camera-centric with partnership with Leica. The highlighting feature for these two devices still has got to be the cameras.

Both phones spot 24MP front facing camera with f/2.4 and Optical Image Stabilization. In an industry where most competitors have 8MP-13MP sensors in front, this is complete overkill. But that isn’t the headlining feature.

The P20 Pro spots not one, not two but THREE sensors at the back.

• 40MP RGB 1/1.7in type sensor, f/1.8
• 20MP monochrome, f/1.6
• 8MP 3x zoom,

Both models also have Laser Auto Focus and a colour temperature sensor so you always have the right white-balance in your shots. The P20 spots the more ‘normal’ dual camera setup, loosing the third eye, the 8MP zoom lens.

The Huawei P20 Pro is capable of shooting 960fps super slow-motion at 720p resolution, more like what Samsung did in their Galaxy S9.

AI

Huawei acknowledges that a lot of the camera’s skill boils down to AI. This has been a central theme of all smartphone launches in 2018 and has been used to great effect by the likes of Google with their own Pixel lineup. Huawei uses AI to recognize the scene being shot with a choice of 19 different types – from food, portrait, cat, landscape and so on.

Here is a more details Spec-sheet for the two devices.