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Joining Huawei’s impressive family of smartphone handsets is the company’s P20 model.  With dimensions of 70.8 x 149.2 x 7.65 mm (W x H x D) and weighing 165g (including the non-removable internal battery pack), the P20 handset comes in a range of different colours.  Depending upon your sense of style, you could opt from a choice that includes Morpho Aurora, Pearl White, Twilight Black, Champagne Gold, Pink Gold and Midnight Blue.  My review sample, as supplied by Vodafone, was Twilight Black in colour with mirrored faces front and back mounted on an aluminium frame.

Included in the package with the P20 handset, Huawei provide a pair of earphones with a USB-C type connection, USB-C to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack adaptor for those who prefer to stick with their own favourite headset, two-piece power lead again with a USB-C connection and a pin-prick style tool for opening the SIM card tray.  I suspect there was also meant to be a Quick Start Guide but this had gone missing, at some stage, during the product’s travels.

As usual with a smartphone’s standard design, the front of the P20 handset is dominated by its screen.  In this case the screen is a 5.8 inch LTPS IPS LCD capacity touch screen.  Capable of displaying 16M colours, the screen has a resolution of 1080 x 2240 pixels.  Positioned just below the screen is the handset’s fingerprint reader feature.

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In Huawei’s normal fashion, buttons for volume adjustment and power on/off are situated on the right side of the handset.  Located on the left side of the unit is the SIM card tray that can hold either a single or dual Nano SIM cards depending upon on the model you have.  My review sample was of the dual Nano SIM type.  Speaker outputs and a USB-C port are arranged along the base of the P20.

The Huawei P20 features both front and rear mounted camera units with the latter being a dual-lens model as it combines a 12MP RGB, f/1.8 aperture lens with a 20MP monochrome f/1.6 aperture lens.  These lenses are positioned in the top left corner of the P20’s rear face.  The dual lens partnership can be used to produce detailed results that I found appealing.  Built in AI technology in the camera is used to enable it to detect the type of picture being currently captured and automatically optimising the settings accordingly.  My tests seem to support this claim. 

The P20 rear camera set up can capture 4K content, record slow motion 720p video at 960p plus other video settings of 2160fps@30fps, 1080p@60fps and 1080p@30fps.  Other photographical features include a LED flash, panorama, and excellent low light results.  This camera’s output certainly created a good impression with this reviewer.

Mounted on the front of the P20 is a single 24MP camera with f/2.0 aperture.  This unit supports fixed focal length.  It is there for those users who cannot manage without adding to their collection of Selfies.

The Huawei P20 has, at its heart, a Hisilison Kirin 970 chipset.  Combining four Cortex-A75 cores clocked at 2.4GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.8GHz with a GPU Mali- G72 MP12.  This set up delivers reasonable speed, maybe not at the level of some high-end priced offerings but fast enough to keep many users happy.

Proving the operating power to drive along the smartphone is a 3,400mAh non-removable battery.  Supporting fast charging, this battery should last for just over a day with standard use according to Huawei.  Running my usual continuous movie watching session, with movies being access from a USB To Go connection, I was able to get 7.5 hours of viewing before a low battery message made an appearance.

While some might find the positioning of the handset’s fingerprint reader on the front of the P20 not to their taste, I was happy with is aspect of the product’s design.  Other sensors built into the P2- include Gravity, Ambient Light, Proximity, Gyroscope, Compass, Colour Temperature and Accelerometer.  You also get GPS, NFC, Bluetooth A-2.A2DP. LE, EDR and aptx HD.  There is support for WLAN Wi-Fi 802a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct and hotspots.

Checking out Vodafone’s best selling plan for the Huawei P20 reveal that the smartphone was available for £36 per month following an initial £10 upfront payment.  For this you get 4GB of Data plus unlimited minutes and text.  Also included is Vodafone Global Roaming and three months free trial of Internet security software, namely Vodafone Secure Net.  This latter feature will then be available for £1 per month.  The Huawei P20 is well worth considering.