Huawei P20 Review UK

Huawei P20 Review: Overview & Price

In this Huawei P20 review, we will be going over what makes this phone special, as well as showcasing the best Huawei P20 contract deals in the UK.

It seems like everyone is talking about the Huawei P20 Pro. The P20 has a similar design and is a fantastic phone for the price.

When compared to the likes of the Huawei P Smart, it is clear to see some fantastic upgrades and why this phone is in a different class.

The Huawei P20 battery life is impressive, lasting you around 2 days of average use, as well as offering quick charge features to help you grab a speedy 50% when needed.

The phone to buy outright is around £550 but it can be purchased on contract with companies for around £43 per month.

The P20 comes with charger, a cable, a headset jack adapter and sim ejector pin and even some retail stores will provide a case.

Immediately when picking up the phone you will feel it is smaller than the P20 Pro, which means is easier to hold in one hand.

Check out the best Huawei P20 deals in the UK…

Huawei P20 Review: Design & Display

The Huawei P20 looks amazing and has a 5.8inch full-view LCD screen which projects the photos of this phone very well.

The P20 supports HDR10 allowing it to stream HD footage from sources such as Amazon Prime or Netflix.

However, we found the LED display to be a little less clear than the OLED display in the iPhone X and Samsung S9.

Like the iPhone X, the phone does have a small notch at the top centre of the phone which is used to house the 24-megapixel shooter camera, this is very small and easy to get used to so don’t worry.

Of course, the phone is water and dust resistant! However, the IP rating is lower than the P20 Pro.

The Huawei P20 has an IP67 waterproof rating, so you won’t need to worry when using this device around the pool or in the tub.

It has been known to survive being submerged fully in water without any damage!

Huawei P20 Review: Performance

The phone has a very fast Touch ID and fingerprint scanner and like the iPhone X has Face ID which is flawless from what we have used personally.

It unlocks immediately without hesitation even when glancing at the phone for a second.

This makes it super convenient for saving passwords on the phone and extremely secure for online banking.

The phone has a nice big 128GB of internal storage and a whopping 6GB of RAM, this is ideal for storing lots of music and photos on the phone and not having to worry about storage space.

When testing the Huawei P20’s gaming performance, we found extremely fast, the sound quality is also amazing due to the fact it has a speaker on the top and the bottom of the phone.

We tested the Huawei P20’s performance on a couple of our favourite games, the first being PUBG.

The game ran smoothly without any big fps drops, even in high graphic settings.

There is no lag or stutter which means you can play games on the highest graphics for the best detail.

See Related:

*Huawei P30 Review*
*Huawei P20 Lite Review*
*Huawei Mate 20 Lite Review*
*Huawei P Smart 2019 Review*
*Huawei Mate 10 Pro Review*

Huawei has assured that the phone will run smoothly with no lag even after 2 years.

Which is amazing considering that most iPhones and other expensive handsets will start to go downhill after this period of time.

Another cool feature is HiAssistant which is a similar version of Bixby or Siri and is capable of identifying a product by tracking it down on the digital marketplace such as Amazon, although both are limited to China for now.

Huawei P20 Review: Camera

The P20 is a great mid-range phone for someone who is in the market looking for a fantastic spec without the hefty price tag (The full spec is listed below).

When it comes to the Huawei P20 camera, it’s pretty impressive!

The P20 has some great features to play around with that can result in some amazing shots, even without being a photographer.

The Huawei P20 boasts a 24-megapixel selfie camera in the P20 which means you will be able to take great quality shots and have multiple different options on the camera such as aperture, portrait and night mode.

In addition, the AI-powered app will automatically detect the scene and apply the best setting which is a really cool and effective feature.

Unlike the P20 Pro which has 3 cameras, the P20 has a dual-camera setup.

The second camera is a 12-megapixel monochrome camera, which is still really strong and helps when it comes to depth of the image.

However, people have argued that the AI tech in this device results in images looking a little too saturated, so you can turn the AI tech off in the settings.

We don’t think this is a bad thing as most of the pictures are going to end up on social media, and almost always over-edited.

However, you can adjust the colour balance to suit your personal preference.

The volume rocker and power button of this phone are made from what I would describe as cheap plastic, certainly, nothing to the standard of the iPhone X or Samsung S9.

Although this is a minor practical issue it does feel and sound unsatisfying. Otherwise, it is built the same quality as the P20 pro.

It is phenomenal for a smartphone and feels fantastic in your hand as it is constructed from a mixture of gorilla glass and aluminium.

Huawei has implemented some great features and customisation options for this phone.

One is that you can load and run 2 apps at the same time by drawing a line across the phone with your knuckle.

This can be strange at first but is great for listening to music and playing games at the same time.

Huawei uses an EMUI interface and uses Android 8.1 which means it includes some desirable aftermarket utilities such as IOS 3D-like touch tool, which means you can browse applications main features on the home screen.

Given how cheap the Huawei P20 can be attained on a contract deal now in the UK, we feel the camera is an extremely good value for money.

Huawei P20 Review: Battery Life

The Huawei P20 battery life is great! This is because it has a strong  3400mAh battery which will last for almost 2 days.

In addition, the phone has a fast-charging for getting a speedy top up when on the move.

Although there is no wireless charging which is a little frustrating for a phone of this calibre.

We found that the battery was actually really good but it does drain rather quickly when using the phone intensely and watching high-resolution videos.

The Huawei P20 battery life is one of the strong points of the phone, keeping you running for around 2 days, the phone has plenty of stamina and endurance.

Luckily if you are in need of saving a little juice on the phone you can head over to the settings tab where you can adjust the resolution to ‘Just HD’.

There is also a power-saving mode and an Ultra power saving mode for when you’re really struggling.

Huawei P20 Review: Summary

All in all, the phone is absolutely superb and we don’t feel like a customer you would be disappointed.

The value for money on this phone is fantastic, we would put it up there with the Samsung S9 and iPhone X but for a fraction of the price.

The features on the phone are incredible and the camera is unreal. The Huawei P20 camera is great and results in sharp images with lots of detail.

The Huawei P20 battery life is also a key feature of the phone, lasting you around 2 days of average use.

Huawei P20 128 GB 5.8-Inch FHD+ FullView Android 8.1 SIM-Free Smartphone, Single SIM, Black - UK Version 

This phone is easy to recommend for those who are wanting to switch from IOS and try something new, with a friendly UI and easy navigation, this phone is the ideal candidate for an IOS to Android switch.

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

Also, be sure to leave a comment and even check out more of our smartphone reviews!

Huawei P20 Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2018, March

Body:

• Dimension: 149.1 x 70.8 x 7.7mm (5.87 x 2.79 x 0.30 in)
• Weight: 165g (5.82 oz)
• Build: Front/back glass & aluminium frame
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-Sim) or Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
• Dust/splash resistant

Display:

• Type: LTPS IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
• Size: 5.8 inches, 84.9cm² (-80.4% screen to body ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 2240 pixels, 18:7:9 ratio (-429 ppi density)
• Multitouch: Yes
• EMUI 8.1

Platform:

•  OS: Android 8.1 (Oreo)
• Chipset: Hisilicon Kirin 970
• CPU: Octa-core (4×2.4 HGz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8GHz Cortex-A53)
• GPU: Mali-G72 MP12

Memory:

• Card slot: No
• Internal: 128GB, 4GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary: Dual – 12MP (f/1.8, 27mm, 1/2.3″) + 20MP (f1.6, 27mm), Leica optics, 2x lossless zoom, PDAF & laser AF, LED flash
• Features: Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama
• Video: 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps, 720p@960fps
• Secondary: 24MP, f/2.0, 1080p

Sound:

• Alert Types: Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: No
• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, -Type-C 3.5mm headphone jack adapter

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 4.2, A2DP, LE, EDR, aptX HD
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO
• NFC: Yes
• Radio: No
• USB: 3.1, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector.

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (front-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, colour spectrum
• Messaging: SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
• Browser: HTML5 (Safari)
• More: Fast charging battery, XviD/MP4/H.264/WMV player, Document viewer, Photo/video editor

Battery:

• Non-removable Li-Pro 3400 mAh battery

Misc:

• Colours: Twilight, Black, Midnight Blue, Pink Gold
• Price: As seen in blog post above

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS 3675 / Basemark OS 2.0: 3487, Basemark X: 37659
• Display: Contrast ratio 1445:1 (nominal), 3.683 (sunlight)
• Camera: Photo/Video
• Loudspeaker: Voice 66dB / Noise 69dB / Ring 90dB
• Audio Quality: Noise – 92.4dB / Crosstalk -92.7dB
• Battery life: Endurance rating 75h