Huawei may be effectively banned in the US, but China’s leading tech company has officially launched their much-hyped P20 series smartphones in Canada. Huawei (pronounced "Wah-Way") initially launched their premium P20 Pro and the standard P20 back in March at an event in Paris, but they are just hitting shelves across Canada this week.
Huawei’s been winning rave reviews overseas since unveiling it’s new collection of stylish devices. And, there’s good reason. The remarkably well-built P20 series, the P20 Pro in particular, is destined to be one of the year's great Android phones.
All about that camera
The P20 Pro stands out in the crowded and complex Android world thanks to an impressive camera system. While most smartphones these days employ a dual-lens system, Huawei’s flagship smartphone ups the ante with the world-first triple camera setup co-designed with Leica. The rear camera on the P20 Prod consists of a 40-megapixel RGB main lens, a 20-megapixel mono lens and a 8-megapixel telephoto lens. The main camera comes with a variety modes, including a professional mode where you can play with the shutter speed, ISO, exposure value, as well as the focus and white balance. Other features include: 3D panorama, a light painting mode and a slow-motion mode that allows users to take super slow-motion videos at 960 frames per second at 720p. On the front, the 24-megapixel selfie camera takes killer shots and the standard beauty model helps digitally enhance your skin.
It even takes surprisingly good photos in low light. The game-changing night mode option keeps the camera shutter open for a full four seconds, allowing the smartphone to collection enough light. Then the large 1/1.7-inch camera sensor helps reduce blurriness and noise, making nighttime images surprisingly sharp.
The standard P20 has a similar setup — though with two Leica rear cameras and scaled-back specs.
Both the P20 Pro and P20 devices include unprecedented artificial intelligence (AI) stabilization and technology that actually improves the photos that you take. Thanks to AI, the smartphone is able to identify different picture scenarios and automatically adjust its settings to help produce the perfect image. For example: If you are about to take a picture of flowers, a bubble notification will pop up on the screen to indicate that the smartphone’s AI technology has turned on its “flowers” mode, to take a more detailed, vibrant picture.
For those of you keeping track, in the P20 series, AI is able to identify more than 500 scenarios in 19 categories.
Technical specifications, sleek design and gradient colours
Of course, the P20 Pro and P20 are more than just killer cameras. They are pretty powerful devices with outstanding battery life thanks to the Kirin 970 processor (complete with neural processing unit) that can be found in both models. The P20 Pro features a 6.1-inch OLED display, while the P20 features a 5.8-inch LCD display. Both models are super slim, at 7.8mm and 7.65mm respectively. There’s a USB-C port and speakers at the bottom of the phone, but no audio jack (sorry, folks!).
The P20 series is also about style. The sleek design of the P20 series smartphones with their aluminum frame and super glossy glass back immediately demand attention. Fashion-forward consumers will flock towards P20 Pro models with glass backplates featuring one of Huawei’s two innovative gradient colours – dubbed “twilight” and “pink gold.” The shimmering colours change depending on how the light reflects on the glass. Inspired by nature, the “twilight” variant smoothly transitions from purple to blue then to teal while the “pink gold” variant smoothly transitions from gold to pearl to pink.
All that means you get some outstanding specs wrapped in a sleek package.
The Huawei P20 Pro and P20 are available now across Canada at Rogers, Fido, Bell, Bell MTS, Virgin Mobile, Telus, Koodo and Videotron. The entry level Huawei P20 Lite is available at Rogers and Fido.
