Less than a month ago, precisely timed with President Trump banning US companies from doing business with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant launched a salvo of three phones from the Battersea Evolution centre in London. Much of the US media was missing, but the event was thickly populated with tech journalists from Europe and Asia. We don’t have the top-ender of the new series of Huawei’s sub-brand, Honor. But we do have the Honor 20, which is the second of the devices launched there.

Shimmer in blue

Honor hasn’t skimped on the design with the Honor 20. We have the Sapphire Blue variant and can confidently say it’s a very attractive and even mesmerising looking gadget. The new design, for which Honor has many fancy sounding names, catches the light in a particular geometrical way that draws you to look at it again and again.

The other colour variant is Midnight Black. If you’re a half careful person, you can actually get away without using a case because it doesn’t seem to show up fingerprint smudges that easily and is easy enough to grip and hold on to because it’s not very broad and big. The problem is if you don’t use the case, provided in the box, you may end up scratching the camera lenses because they stick out fairly prominently — and you wouldn’t want that. The Honor logo shows up boldly but nicely on the bottom centre but the top is dominated by a row of cameras with the words ‘48 MP’ and ‘AI Vision’ written vertically close to them. The whole look is quite elegant other than being sleek and light — quite a party piece, in general. No ugly notches on the front either. There’s a very nice display and it’s mercifully flat with minimalistic bezels. On the top left is a tiny punch hole to house the front camera, implemented quite un-intrusively on this 6.2-inch display, a size which now seems to feel compact and reasonable.

The display is nice and bright and pleases you every time you pick up the device and see a new wallpaper, despite the fact that it’s a 1080x2340 ppi LCD and not an OLED. The screen also responds with fluidity and smoothness, powered as it is by Huawei’s own Kirin 980 chipset and 6 GB of RAM. On-board is 128 GB of storage. There’s no memory card slot or 3.5 mm headphone jack — and I think users should finally stop expecting one since more and more companies are beginning to drop it.

The Honor 20 has a fingerprint sensor on its side power button, not a bad place to have it, actually, and a lot faster than in-display sensors. It has a 3,750 mAh battery with a 22 W charger. Battery life is pretty good.

Overall, the hardware on this phone is pretty solid. The software, Magic UI, doesn’t do it for everyone.

It doesn’t come in the way and leaves navigation entirely smooth but it’s got a lot of elements and styles taken from places like the iPhone and doesn’t quite seem neat and well-finished. All that is, of course, fixed with a launcher if you find you can’t get accustomed to it.

Cameras

The Honor 20 has a nice versatile camera, one that is definitely a big draw for this smartphone. The main camera is 48 MP with a Sony IMX 586 sensor and an f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilisation. In good light, photos from this lens are nice and bright with good colour accuracy.

A slider in the camera app takes you to a 16 MP wide angle lens with a 117-degree field of view and an f/2.2 aperture. You also have a 2 MP mode to add that bit of background blur. A macro lens is a nice addition and focusses from just 4 cm away from a subject, giving good detail in optimal light but getting a little noisy in lower light. The front camera is 32 MP with an f/2.2 aperture.

This phone isn’t to be confused with the earlier Honor View 20, the first device to sport a punch hole for the camera to maximise the screen. That phone was a turning point for Honor phones, post which the recently-launched phones are all of much improved quality on all counts.

Whether you should buy an Honor phone or not is a tough question at this time. Of all things that have been predictable in the field of technology, the situation with the US and Huawei isn’t one of them.

For now, in India, customers will still find Honor phones readily available online though there may be understandable hesitation about buying them, especially as there are alternatives in plenty including the OnePlus 7 at the same price.

Price: ₹32,999

Pros: Very attractive design, good ergonomics, excellent camera, smooth performance

Cons: Interface still not to everyone’s liking, risky time to buy

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