Huawei looks to take on the biggies with premium smartphone Honor View20

The Honor View20 was launched in China in December 2018 as Honor V20. It was launched in Paris last week and is now in India. 

In a room packed with fans, bloggers, and the media, Allen Wang, Vice President, Huawei India, announced the launch of the Honor View20. “We understand users’ sentiments and their requirement of smartphone that outperforms their expectations. Packed with eight worlds’ first-ever technological advancements, the Honor View20 bespeaks of our commitment to deliver premium and power packed smartphones.”

The Honor View20 will be available on Amazon.in and Hihonor.in starting January 30 and offline from the first week of February. The Huawei Group company has priced the phone at Rs 37,999 (6GB +128GB), and Rs 45,999 (8GB+256GB).

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The premium smartphone will essentially compete with the likes of OnePlus 6, Apple's iPhone, and Samsung's Galaxy series. However, smartphone enthusiasts at the launch event compared the phone with OnePlus 6/6T, which is priced at Rs 37,999 (6 GB + 128 GB), Rs 41,999, and Rs 45,999 for 8GB RAM and larger internal memory.

According to a Counterpoint Research report for Q3 2018, OnePlus was one of the fastest growing brands in the $400-$600 segment, and sales were driven by India, China and the UK. In India, OnePlus led the premium smartphone segment for the second successive quarter capturing 30 percent market share driven by OnePlus 6.

Question is - priced in the same range as OnePlus 6, does Honor View20 make the cut? 

View20 hopes to win the race with its camera which offers 'hole-punch' selfie camera design, which is similar to that of the Huawei Nova 4. Samsung's Galaxy A8s was the first phone with a display hole for a selfie camera. While the View20 sports a whopping 48-megapixel camera backed by a 3D time-of-flight sensor along with a 25-megapixel front camera. The OnePlus 6T has a 16-megapixel and a 20-megapixel camera on the back and a 16-megapixel front camera.

Also, the 3D 48-megapixel camera can collect information on the shape of objects based upon the time-of-flight light signals to enable depth sensing, skeletal tracking and real-time motion capture, effectively turning the smartphone into a motion-controlled gaming console to play 3D motion games.

The smartphone's AI capabilities allow it to identify over 100 kinds of food using the camera and provide calorie information. It can also identify over 300 famous landmarks and 100,000 paintings from around the world.

The smartphone maker claims Honor View20 also features technologies such as All-View Display, which allows the front camera to capture the maximum area, and A76-cortex based CPU for no-lags performance.

The size of both OnePlus6/6T and View20 is almost the same. While Honor View 20 has a 2310x1080 pixels LCD panel with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, the OnePlus 6T has 2340x1080 pixels Optic AMOLED display with almost same aspect ratio. However, the View 20’s punch-hole selfie or front camera, gives the phone a 91.8 percent screen-to-body ratio as compared to the 86 percent on the OnePlus 6T.

While other smartphones in the market have impressive features, Honor takes the cake with its camera, as no other smartphone maker currently offers a 48 megapixel camera, and 91.8 percent screen-to-body ratio.

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