Honor 20i first impressions: Impressive design, versatile cameras, and more

Chinese smartphone giant Huawei’s sub-brand Honor will launch the Honor 20-series in India on June 11. The series includes the Honor 20 Pro, Honor 20 and the Honor 20i. Of the three, the Honor 20i, with design and features inspired by its premium siblings, is going to be the most affordable in the series. Here are the phone’s first impressions:

Design

The Honor 20i is an impressive device with a curved gradient glass-like design on the back, a thin chassis made of plastic of the same colour as the back cover, and curved glass on the front covering a waterdrop notch on the screen. The phone has a lightweight build, which is comfortable to hold and operate for extended hours.

Though the phone’s overall design is fresh, its plastic frame and polycarbonate cover on the back seem frail. Besides attracting fingerprints, the body seems to get scratched easily. The glass covering the screen seems to have some sort of protection; it withstands regular day abuses without any damage to the screen.

Camera

The Honor 20i has a versatile triple-camera module on the back, featuring a 24-megapixel primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide and a 2MP depth sensor. On the front, it has a 32MP selfie camera. The rear-camera module seems to be a good one. It has a portrait mode, night mode, aperture mode and a pro mode that provides manual control over granular settings, such as ISO, shutter speed, exposure value and focus.

The phone’s front camera also looks like a performer, but the images are post-processed heavily and turn out unnatural. Social media enthusiasts might appreciate the Honor 20i front camera.

Software

The Honor 20i boots the Android Pie operating system-based EMUI 9.0.1 user interface, which is a heavily customised skin with value-added features for ease of use. The phone supports Huawei’s gesture-based navigation, which, different from what the Android offers, is one of the best among Android-based smartphones. Though the software seems optimised and works smoothly, it is important to know that the phone might face troubles getting future OS or security upgrades from Google due to an ongoing tussle between Huawei and the US administration.

Overall, the Honor 20i’s impressive design, quality cameras and optimised operating system make it an all-round package. Stay tuned for the phone’s price, performance, camera samples, gaming performance, on-battery time, and more.