Huawei P20 Lite Review UK

Huawei P20 Lite Review: Overview & Price

So you’re interested in the Huawei P20 Lite? Well, you have come to the right place! In this review we will be going over what makes this phone special, from its design, performance and battery life.

The Huawei P20 Lite is the cheaper alternative to the Huawei P20.

As well as giving you all of the necessary information to make an informed purchase decision, we even showcase the best Huawei P20 Lite contract deals too.

The P20 Lite was released in March 2018 and it one of the best budget smartphones of the year to date.

The Huawei P20 Lite specs are impressive as is the design, it even looks very similar to the iPhone X, and has a lot of similar design features, including the notch at the top of the screen which contains the front camera, speaker and a light sensor.

Now if you are a little OCD like us, then you can always hide the notch in the settings, so it was no big deal for us when reviewing this device.

We had two whole weeks to conduct this Huawei P20 Lite review, so let’s dive in and see what we found out…

Check out the best Huawei P20 Lite deals here in the UK…

Huawei P20 Lite Review: Design & Display

The Huawei P20 Lite design is made primarily from glass, so you will find that your fingerprints stick to this device like glue, so we recommend investing in a case if you purchase this phone.

On the back of the phone, you will find the fingerprint scanner which is surprisingly fast and allows your device to be secure when using online banking or keeping passwords stored on the phone.

The P20 Lite is available in four colours: Midnight Black, Klein Blue, Sakura Pink and Platinum Gold all of which are very nice and premium.

We were lucky enough to get a hold of the Midnight Black colour to carry out this Huawei P20 Lite review, and we have to say it looks stunning!

The first thing we noticed about the P20 Lite when holding it, is that it is very light and only weighs 145g which is a lot lighter than most phones.

We also noticed that when typing on the phone there is a lot of vibration as the vibration motors on cheaper smartphones aren’t the best and you have to go to keyboard settings to switch the vibration off.

The phone does have a 3.5mm headphone jack and it is placed at the bottom of the phone next to the USB-C port and the speaker, the speaker isn’t great although it is pretty loud and does sound similar to the speaker on the P20.

The Huawei P20 Lite has a stunning 5.84inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 2280 x 1080 pixels which means it has bright, vibrant colours.

You can also adjust the colour temperature in the settings if you like.

Unfortunately, the phone is not water or dust resistant, so be sure not to drop it in any water as it may become damaged.

We love the fact it has an ambient light sensor that can adjust the brightness of the screen automatically so using it outside isn’t an issue, although if you’re using this phone in the dark, you may want to dim down the brightness as it may singe your eyelids off (joking).

Another cool feature of the phone is that it has a notification LED so that you know at a glance when you have a notification and when to check your phone, we found this very handy when having my phone on silent and sat at a worktop, as we always knew when twitter was popping off.

Huawei P20 Lite Review: Performance

When it comes to the Huawei P20 Lite specs, we have to say we were impressed!

With the Kirin 659 processor and a chip that can be found in the Honor 9 Lite or the Huawei Nova 2, which is not too different from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 more commonly in mid-range smartphones.

The phone comes standard with 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM which we found surprising as this is a decent amount of both for the price tag of the phone.

However, if that is not enough you can always up the storage (up to 256GB) using a microSD card.

When using the phone for Instagram and Youtube we found that the phone ran smoothly and did not notice any lag, even when running multiple apps at the same time the phone still handles it very well and does not overheat.

The Huawei P20 Lite is a solid device for gaming too, we played our favourite game Runescape for long periods without any crazy fps drops or latency.

The specs are not going to blow your socks off but they are a lot better than expected, especially given the price of this phone.

We played ‘RuneScape’ which is one of our favourite MMORPG games and found that the phone did not give us much lag even when playing in higher graphics.

However, if it is a gaming phone you want then you may want to look at the likes of the Honor Play.

See Related:

*Huawei Mate 20 Lite Review*
*Huawei P20 Review*
*Huawei P20 Pro Review*
*Huawei P30 Pro Review*
*Huawei P30 Review*

The Huawei P20 Lite is powerful enough for most casual users and we did not encounter any performance issues with it whatsoever, however, if you are an intense gamer or like to really push your phone to the limits then the P20 or P20 Pro might be the better option for you.

That being said one of the first things we noticed when getting a hold of the phone for our Huawei P20 Lite review is how easily the phone breezes through the UI.

We were pleasantly surprised to find little to no lag, even when using the phone intensely.

The price of this phone is actually very fair, but we found when using it and digging deeper into the Huawei P20 Lite specs, it seems to be very similar to the Honor 9 Lite which is a much cheaper phone with similar specs.

Given how cheap the Huawei P20 Lite can be attained on a contract deal here in the UK, it really makes this phone fantastic value for money for anyone looking for great specs and camera.

Huawei P20 Lite Review: Camera

The Huawei P20 lite camera is impressive, it has a dual-lens setup with a 16MP sensor, with an aperture of f/2.2 and another 2MP with an aperture of f/2.4.

This lens is only useful for the bokeh effect in portrait mode and it works well to capture some superb selfies.

When shooting in daylight you get nice shots with bright colours, but when zooming in we noticed that it lacked detail and images became a little noisy.

In low light situations, the camera struggles to capture details or colour, the front camera takes surprisingly good selfies although the background seems overexposed.

The phone also has a facial recognition feature which unlocks your phone extremely fast just like the P20 and P20 pro, until now this was only found on premium phones with a much higher price tag, but we are glad to see it on this mid-range device.

Huawei phones do not use stock Android and have added an interface layer called EMUI 8.0 skin which takes a little getting used to, the skin houses a lot of settings that you can adjust, you can alter the home screen and have different themes for your smartphone.

The skin is pretty fun to get used to as it does have a lot of customisations to choose from such as themes, different apps aside from googles and fun settings to play around with.

Throughout this Huawei P20 Lite review, we found the camera aspect of the phone to be most impressive, for such a budget phone taking great quality pictures was extremely easy.

Huawei P20 Lite Review: Battery Life

When it comes to the Huawei P20 Lite battery life, it’s pretty impressive! The P20 Lite has a 3000mAh battery and it comes with a fast-charging cable which is very unpredictable in my experience and sometimes it charged fast and sometimes it did not.

That being said we found that the Huawei P20 Lite would charge from 0-100% in around 2 hours, not bad for this 2018 device.

For videos, the P20 Lite can record in 1080p@30fps, footage comes out decent but unfortunately, there is no OIS, so make sure you have a tripod at the ready or a super steady hand!

Huawei P20 Lite Review: Summary

All in all the P20 Lite has a nice design and is a great phone for the price, it has some great features such as a good camera (in good lighting) and facial recognition which is very convenient.

The Huawei P20 Lite specs are impressive, with great battery life lasting the average user for just under 2 days, this, of course, depends on the individual using the phone but generally, 1.5 days of usage is standard on this phone.

Although for the price there are phones out there which would give you better value for money.

HUAWEI P20 Lite 64 GB 5.8-Inch FHD+ FullView Android SIM-Free Smartphone with 16MP Dual Camera, Dual SIM, Midnight Black, UK Version, Amazon Exclusive 

We hope you enjoyed our Huawei P20 Lite review, and feel free to check out the best Huawei P20 Lite contract deals in the UK at the top of the post!

We would definitely recommend checking out our Huawei Mate 20 Lite smartphone review and the Huawei P20 Pro or Huawei P20 before making a purchase.

*Now with the release of the Huawei P30 Lite, we would also check this out too, as it offers lots of new features and is a very similar price*

Huawei P20 Lite: Full Specification –

Launch: 2018, March

Body:

• Dimension: 148.6 x 71.2 x 7.4mm (5.85 x 2.80 x 0.29 inches)
• Weight: 145 (5.11oz)
• Build: Front glass, aluminium frame, plastic back
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand by)

Display:

• Type: LTPS IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 5.84 inches, 85.1cm² (-80.5% screen to body ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 2280 pixels, 19:9 ratio (-432 PPI density)
• Multitouch: Yes
• EMUI 8.

Platform:

•  OS: Android 8.0 (Oreo)
• Chipset: HiSilicon Kirin 659
• CPU: Octa-core (4×2.36 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53)
• GPU: Mali-T830 MP2

Memory:

• Card slot: MicroSD, upto 256GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
• Internal: 32/64GB, 4GB RAM or 128GB (China, Malaysia)

Camera:

• Primary: Dual: 16MP (f/2.2, PDAF) + 2MP (no AF, depth sensor), LED flash
• Features: Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama
• Video: 1080p@30fps
• Secondary: 16MP (f/2.0), 1080p
  24MP (f/2.0), 1080p – AL00 (India); TL00 (China)

Sound:

• Alert Types: Vibration; MP, WAV ringtones
• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: Yes
  – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n (LX2/LX3) or a/b/g/n/ac (LX1/LX2J), WiFi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 4,2, A2DP, LE, EDR, aptX HD
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
• NFC: Yes (LX1 only)
• Radio: FM Radio
• USB: 2.0, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector, USB On-The-Go

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (rear mounted), accelerometer, gyro (except LX2, AL00), proximity, compass
• Messaging: SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
• Browser: HTML5
• More:  – Fast battery charging 9v/2A
  – XviD/MP4/H.264/WMV player
  -MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/Flac player
  – Document viewer
  -Photo/video editor

Battery:

• Non-removeable Li-Pro 3000 mAh battery

Misc:

• Colors: Klein Blue, Sakura Pink, Midnight Black
• Price: As seen in blog post above

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS: 1556 / Basemark 2.0: 1455 / Basemark X: 9090
• Display: Contrast ratio: 1785:1 (nominal), 2.952 (sunlight)
• Camera: Photo / Video
• Loudspeaker: Voice 66dB / Noise 71dB / Ring 84dB
• Audio Quality: Noise -87.9dB / Crosstalk -82.1dB
• Battery life: Endurance rating 77h