The first with a subtle front camera in screen

Although it can only be found on phones for a year and a half, the screen notch is almost inseparable from the design of the modern smartphone. Thanks to this notch, modern phones are able to use more surface for the screen. Manufacturers, however, always want more and it seems that the notch will be partly replaced in 2019 by, well, what do we call it? ‘punch hole’ ? its the round section of a corner of the screen that the front camera can photograph through.

The first phone with such a camera hole that is the Honor View 20, the upcoming device from manufacturer Honor. On the Huawei stand at CES a small corner for Honor was reserved where four copies of the View 20 were displayed. Honor is pretty proud of how the camera hole is produced. Simply making a hole in the 6.4 “LCD is not an option, that would make the glass too weak and cause problems with light leakage to the camera. Honor makes only a hole in the light guide, the layer of the screen that the light of the backlight distributes evenly over the screen surface, so the front camera shoots through the LCD, which also ensures that the hole can remain relatively small. “Honor emphasizes that their camera hole is 4.5mm smaller than, for example, the camera hole in the Galaxy A8s from Samsung.

The sensors that used to be above the screen or in the notch are placed at on top of the phone. According to Honor this makes the front of the screen to be 91.8 percent of screen, a claim that is believable. The hole can not be naturally applied to all kinds of smartphones; For example, some manufacturers may choose the notch because they can build a larger speaker and if a phone is equipped with an infrared camera for face unlocking, a small hole in the screen will not be enough.

In use, this solution is not much different than the notch and actually it works even more subtly. The information on the notification bar shifts a little bit and when apps display fullscreen, such as the homescreen, there is only a small part that is covered. And if you watch a video, you usually have black bars on the side because the screen is wider than 16: 9.

The back of Honor’s might be just as interesting as the front because of the separate finish. There is a trend of devices with pretty mirroring backs in which different colors come forward, such as with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro or the Oppo R17. The View 20 also comes with a rear that vertically runs a kind of stripe, where the reflection on the right and left slopes downwards in a v-shape. The lines that appear in the reflections change constantly when you move the phone and looks unique. As with all mirrored housings, you will have to brush a lot to keep it beautiful.

Technically interesting is the camera set up at the back. Honor has chosen a single camera sensor, the IMX586 from Sony, a sensor with a resolution of no less than 48 megapixels. Although at first, it seems that Honor wants to boast about this, the number is certainly proudly mentioned on the information boards the company also understands that huge resolutions from a relatively small sensor do not necessarily lead to a better image. By default, the Honor 20 also takes the photos with a resolution of 12 megapixels.

What is striking is that Honor does little post-processing, the software tries to keep the highlights in check and prevent areas that have been bitten out. Extensive tests should show how good this camera really is in practice, but this first impression emphasizes once again how important image processing algorithms are nowadays for the end result.

A second camera seems to sit next to the camera lens, but this is a time-of-flight sensor. This infrared sensor can calculate the distance to objects in space and thus create a three-dimensional representation of the environment. This can be used, for example, for more accurate augmented reality, but also for better processing of portrait photos where the background is made blurry with software.

Although Honor is somewhat known as the budget phone of Huawei, the View 20 is not hugely cut down on the hardware. For example, it is powered by the same 7nm Kirin 980-soc, which we also find in the expensive Huawei Mate 20 Pro, for example. In addition, the basic model has 6GB of ram and 128GB of storage, while there are also models with 8GB and 256GB. The robust 4000mAh battery supports Honors SuperCharge technology, which is charged with up to 4.5A at 5V.

What all this will cost? In homeland China where the phone is already for sale, it costs 2999 yuan, converted about 438 dollars. this is probably less than the other devices with the same powerful chip.