Huawei P20 Unboxing and Hands On Experience

Huawei made quite the news with the Huawei P20 Pro’s triple rear cameras. However, the Huawei P20 is almost just as good at a more affordable price (₱10,000 lower!).

Let’s take the Huawei P20 out of its box and get a hands on experience with its design, basic performance and camera quality.

What’s inside the Huawei P20 box?

The Huawei P20 comes in a neat white box with gold prints. There are three color options for the device – black, blue and gold. We’ve got the black one.

Along with the phone itself, there are several accessories inside the box. These include a Huawei SuperCharge power adaptor, USB Type-C cord, SIM ejector tool, free earphones that plugs to the phone’s USB Type-C port and a USB Type-C to 3.5mm audio jack adaptor.

The device doesn’t have a 3.5mm audio jack. Hence, the adaptor is necessary.

Hands on with the Huawei P20

Look at that gorgeous phone!

I’m a bit of an old school guy who prefers metal clad phones but the Huawei P20 is doing a good job of making me love these new smartphones that use glass for both the front and back.

The glossy black body of the Huawei P20 exudes a premium look (after smudges are wiped off). It’s even made more sophisticated by the perfectly lined-up cameras and logos at the back. There is a metal frame around phone’s sides which is gently curved to seamlessly match the 2.5D front and back glass panels.

Turning on the phone immediately shows one of its defining features – a notched display. This allows the screen to go almost all the way up the front panel leaving narrow bezels on the two sides and at the top. Thankfully, the notch is smaller than the one on the iPhone X and can even be hidden in the Settings.

Hiding the notch…

Huawei decided to put a home button with a fingerprint sensor under the phone’s screen. I prefer a rear mounted fingerprint sensor though. The more affordable Huawei P20 Lite has this.

Since it runs on Huawei’s top of the line processor, the Huawei P20 performs smoothly in any app or game. I’ll have an in-depth review of the device soon but the initial performance is what you’d expect for a flagship device.

AI-powered Cameras

The dual rear cameras of the Huawei P20.

Aside from the design and initial performance, I also immediately checked the cameras of the Huawei P20. The AI features are more prominent compared to last year’s Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro since it automatically chooses the camera mode.

The resulting pictures are impressive. No wonder it got one of the highest scores on DxOMark! I’m even more impressed by the phone’s Night camera mode which makes effortlessly amazing pictures in low light scenes.

Here’s a couple of initial sample pictures:

Huawei P20 sample picture 1.

Huawei P20 sample picture 2.

UP NEXT: Huawei P20 Full Review!