Honor View 20: The mobile with a hole and without damage
Headphone jack, large battery, fast processor, good camera and above all: no notch and no bar. That's the View 20 from Honor. The phone has been available for three months. Read here to find out whether it performs well in the long-term test.
Normally, we test new smartphones for a month or maybe two. I spent more time with the Honor View 20. I tested the notchless and bezel-less phone in everyday use for three months. The View 20 performed well. Despite carrying it around in my handbag since February, accidentally dropping it on Zurich's pavement and drowning it in mineral water, the View 20 looks almost flawless.
Things are looking a little difficult for Huawei and its subsidiary Honor at the moment. It remains to be seen whether the sabre-rattling between the USA and China really has consequences or whether it's all just hot air.
What strikes me more about the View 20 than the hole in the display is its size: With a screen diagonal of 6.4 inches, the View 20 is quite large. Nevertheless, it sits comfortably in the hand. Only one-handed operation no longer really works for me.
The display with the hole
Manufacturers come up with a lot of ideas to accommodate front cameras and sensors. Various forms of notches are followed by slide mobiles or the Galaxy A80 with its rotating camera. The solution with the Honor View 20 is to place the camera as a hole in the display. I think the All View Display, as Honor calls the perforated display, is one of the best solutions. In everyday life, I hardly notice the small hole in the top left corner, even when watching videos. In contrast to notches, which are usually right in the centre.
Only one thing bothers me. The Honor View 20 comes with a film already stuck on. This film is not glued on evenly around the hole - people who have ever had a crooked film on a phone know the problem.
Honour has managed to make the edges around the display quite narrow. Only the bottom edge is slightly thicker at 3 millimetres, while the top and sides are just under 2 millimetres thin. Although Honor uses an LCD rather than an OLED, I find the display beautiful and bright enough. The colours are somewhat oversaturated, which is typical for Honor - I've got used to it over time. If you don't like it, you can adjust the display colours in the settings.
As usual with Honor, you won't find an always-on display. Another thing I don't find so well solved: The notification light is at the very top of the edge, next to the speakers. It is also located under the plastic cover of the speakers. Depending on the viewing angle, you can't see the light at all. In other words, if the View 20 is lying on the table, you will miss all messages - unless, of course, you have the notification sounds on.
And it's fast
The Honor View 20 is equipped with a Kirin 980 system-on-a-chip. The same SoC can also be found in Huawei's top models, the Mate 20 Pro and the P30 Pro. Accordingly, the View 20 performs quickly and smoothly, apps are always open immediately, multitasking works perfectly and I haven't had a single crash in the entire three months. Although the Honor View 20 "only" has 6 GB of RAM compared to Huawei's P30 Pro (the P30 Pro has 8 GB), it was never too slow for me. And the View 20 never got hot either.
Some apps were not displayed correctly at the beginning because of the camera hole. All the apps I use now display correctly. Depending on the format, you can even watch YouTube videos completely borderless. Netflixing on the train is also great. However, the display is quite reflective, especially in sunshine.
Netflix and other videos can be streamed in HD or 4K quality with the View 20, and the phone is Widevine L1 certified according to the DRM app.
The View 20 runs Android 9 Pie. The interface is not called EMUI, but Magic. Apart from the new name, however, nothing is new - the system works in the same way as EMUI and looks identical. The Android security patch was released on 1 March at the time of my test.
In addition to the fast and reliable fingerprint on the back, you can also unlock the View 20 using facial recognition. Although the face scan does not work as perfectly as on the iPhone XS, which is twice as expensive, it is generally quite reliable. However, it remains locked in the dark or if you hold the phone too crookedly in front of your face. Unlike the iPhone, facial recognition does not work with sunglasses, a helmet or a cap either.
Thin despite a fat battery
The View 20 measures 8.1 millimetres at its thickest point. That's not much. Especially when you consider that Honor has installed a 4000 mAh battery. It lasts me two days. That's a lot. Otherwise, I have to charge almost all my phones every evening. A good battery is worth a lot. After all, what good is the best mobile if it becomes a landline phone because you have to charge it all the time?
If the View 20 battery does run out, it charges quickly despite its size. It can be recharged to around 40 per cent in 20 minutes using the quick charger supplied. A full charge takes just under one and a half hours. However, wireless charging is not possible. This didn't bother me, especially because the battery is charged quickly anyway.
The View 20 has a jack connection for wired headphones. This is also a highlight for me, as you will search in vain for these connections on so many new smartphones. However, the memory of the View 20 is not expandable. As with all Honor mobiles, you won't find a headset in the scope of delivery, but you will find a transparent cover. I fitted this straight away, as the back looks nice but is about as slippery as if someone had soaped it up. With the transparent cover, the fingerprints aren't quite as bad either.
According to Honor, the back is made of glass. Whether this is really the case, I dare to doubt, for me it feels more like plastic. On the other hand, the back shines beautifully and the structures that Honor has incorporated in nanolithography style look very chic. Depending on the incidence of light, you have a completely different back. Boring is different.
The cameras: don't quite deliver what they promise
Honor advertises that the View 20 has a 48-megapixel camera. In principle, this is true. However, the 48 megapixels are only used as standard to generate a 12-megapixel image. Honour's camera combines four sensor pixels to create one super pixel and calls this pixel binning. In theory, this should result in less noise and better light capture. LG also uses this technology in some phones.
You can also - with some restrictions - take photos with 48 megapixel resolution. To do this, you must first adjust the resolution in the top left of the settings menu. There you have two options for 48 megapixels: without AI and with Honors AI Ultra Clarity. With Ultra Clarity, the phone usually takes the picture for 4 seconds. If you can't hold your mobile still for this long, or if your subject runs away from you, you can also interrupt the recording beforehand. To do this, you have to press the shutter button again. However, pressing it twice caused me to take a lot of blurred pictures.
The 48 megapixel option without AI caused a lot of blurred images for me. The camera works best if you let the software do the maths. If a shot with Ultra Clarity is successful, it is sharp down to the smallest detail.
You will get the best pictures if you shoot at 12 megapixel resolution. With the 48-megapixel camera, Honor is leading us users down the wrong path. But that doesn't mean that the camera is bad. The number of pixels is not the decisive factor for cameras anyway.
As with the Huawei phones, a TOF (time of flight) sensor is built in to measure the distance to the object. This basically works quite well, but it can still happen that hair or spectacle frames disappear in the blur in portraits. At least you can correct some incorrectly focussed areas directly on the mobile phone.
The pinhole selfie camera has 25 megapixels. That sounds like a lot. In good light, you can take decent selfies with it. But as soon as it's a little too bright or too dark, the camera has a hard time. The pictures are then immediately overexposed or far too dark. As usual, Honour's beauty modes are also on board, with which you can blur yourself beyond recognition. In selfie mode, you do get a portrait programme, but this is only there to place you in strange lighting situations. Unfortunately, you won't find an aperture mode for a nice depth of field for your selfies.
Honor has once again not installed an optical image stabiliser in the View 20. You will quickly notice this if you take photos in less favourable lighting conditions or with the 48 megapixel resolution. The images are noisier and blur faster. In good lighting conditions and with the necessary patience, however, you will get beautiful pictures.
Conclusion: A solid phone
All in all, I really like the View 20. It's fast and has a lot of power. The camera could be better, but as a mobile phone camera it is still absolutely acceptable. Compared to its predecessor, the View 10, Honor has improved a lot. Some things are still missing, such as the optical image stabiliser or IP certification. But for the price, you only have to accept a few compromises with the View 20 and you get a lot.
The View 20 from Honor is a solid mobile phone in the mid-range price segment. And with the punch-hole display, you have a good notch alternative. <p
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Testing devices and gadgets is my thing. Some experiments lead to interesting insights, others to demolished phones. I’m hooked on series and can’t imagine life without Netflix. In summer, you’ll find me soaking up the sun by the lake or at a music festival.
