Honor View 20: Everything you need to know

Honor has announced the View 20 smartphone at an event in Paris on January 22 in Paris, France, following the device’s launch in China at the end of 2018. The exciting new phone signals a new era of design and device identity for Honor, and we’ve already been impressed with the phone, having been invited to see the phone and learn about the technology before the Chinese release.

You can find out what we think of the Honor View 20 here.

Price and availability

The Paris launch signals the Honor View 20’s international launch. It will cost 500 British pounds for the 6GB/128GB model, and 580 pounds for the 8GB/256GB model, including the Moschino edition.

These prices convert over to $650 and $750 respectively, but no announcement has been made for a U.S. launch. The Honor View 20 will be ready for purchase on January 22 in the U.K., parts of Europe, India, and a variety of other countries. In the U.K. the phone will be sold through hihonor.com, Carphone Warehouse, Argos, Amazon, Mobile Phones Direct, Very, JLP, AO, Go Mobile, Tesco Mobile, and Buy Mobiles. It’ll also be sold on the O2 network from 33 British pounds per month.

In China, the Honor View 20 was released on December 28, and cost the local equivalent of between $435 and $510. A special Moschino Edition is also available for $580.

Moschino special edition

Honor has also collaborated with fashion brand Moschino to create the Honor View 20 Moschino Edition. The Moschino View 20 is technically identical to the 8GB/256GB phone, but comes with a special case and inside a specially designed box.

Wallpapers featuring the Moschino bear and the double question mark logo are pre-installed. Both Honor and Moschino indicated this is the beginning of a long relationship, and it’s likely we will see a greater range of Moschino-inspired Honor products in the future.

Design and screen

The Honor View 20 follows the Honor View 10, and while we liked the previous model, the latest phone elevates the range’s design and features to a new level. The body is made from metal with a special nano-lithography treatment on the back, adding a distinctive, reflective V-shape under the surface. The phone comes in midnight black, phantom red, or phantom blue.

Honor debuts its All-View Display on the View 20, which replaces a traditional, wide central notch with a hole-punch camera on the far left. The small 4.5mm hole contains a 25-megapixel camera, and Honor says performance will not be affected by the new screen design. The All-View Display is technically very interesting, and we spoke to Honor at length about how it works and why it was chosen. The LCD screen measures 6.4 inches and has a 2,310 x 1,080-pixel resolution, giving the phone a 91.8-percent screen-to-body ratio.

The hole-punch display is a novel way to reduce bezels on smartphones and Honor is by no means the only company tinkering with this new display tech. In fact, it looks like Samsung may use a similar display for some of its 2019 phones including the Samsung Galaxy A8S and potentially the Galaxy S10, too.

Camera

On the back is a single camera lens — Sony’s new 48-megapixel IMX586. It’s joined by a time-of-flight (TOF) sensor, rather than other camera lenses, to measure distances and create bokeh shots. Honor says the View 20’s camera will be able to deliver photos with masses of detail even when zoomed in. Together with the artificial intelligence (A.I.), the camera will take multiple pictures and collate them for a single, hybrid high-definition image. It will also use 4-into-1 pixel binning technology for low-light images.

Specification

The Kirin 980 processor powers the View 20 with the option of 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, or 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The View 20 also has triple-antenna Wi-Fi for an improved signal when gaming or watching movies, plus Link Turbo, which uses A.I. to assess the best network connection between Wi-Fi and cellular, based on the signal, usage, and network conditions, and switch seamlessly between them.

A 4000mAh battery is inside, charged with Honor’s proprietary fast charging system. Honor uses Android 9 Pie, with its own Magic UI interface over the top. Other incidental specifications include a 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth 5.0, USB Type-C charging, and a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone.

Updated on January 22, 2018: Added prices from the Paris international launch and more on the Moschino version.