Honor 20 Pro review

Design and build

The design and build materials are nothing short of premium. Honor is very proud with the 20 Pro's design and uses glass for the front and back and metal for the side frame. Moreover, the Honor 20 Pro features the so-called Dynamic Holographic glass back design giving you that sense of depth.

Honor was nice to tell us more about the process behind the mesmerizing gradient and the manufacturing. It consists of three layers - one color layer, one standard glass sheet, and a so-called depth layer. The first two are pretty self-explanatory but the latter is made of millions of tiny prisms. They are diamond-shaped and when the light hits them, it gets defracted and it illuminates the neighboring prisms, thus creating that 3D effect.

Honor says the back is so hard to manufacture that the majority of the manufactured glass backs are discarded while only a small portion ends up integrated into actual phones.

And while we are on the subject, the Honor 20 Pro has one considerable advantage over the standard Honor 20 - it has a curved back to the sides. It helps with the grip, lies more comfortably in hand, but it can only do so much with the slippery nature of the glass. Also, there's that big lump for three of the cameras in the upper left corner. The camera module is sticking out enough to make the phone wobble when placed flat on its back. The fourth macro lens along with the LED flash is positioned separately from the rest.

Going to the front side, we get to see almost a full-screen design with the only thing obstructing it being the front-facing camera hole. It's 4.5mm in diameter, just like the one on the Honor View 20, and we found it to be a bit distracting. It is better than the notch subjectively and mathematically speaking but we got spoiled by Samsung's rather more discrete implementation of the camera. That's because the Galaxy S10-series have OLED panels, which are easier to cut. LCD panels require a thicker border around the camera itself to help prevent light from the display's backlight going into the sensor. It's a small niggle really, and certainly not as bad as the Moto One Vision's.

As far as bezels go, however, they are pretty thin. The top and side bezels look identical while the chin is just a tad thicker. The top one is big enough to accommodate the earpiece along with the ambient and proximity sensors. And since there's no room left for the LED notification light, Honor decided to put it under the earpiece grille. It kind of reminds us of the HTC One back in the day, which had the LED peeking from within the earpiece.

As we go around the side frame, we find something unusual at the top. That's an IR blaster so you can control some of your appliances with the smartphone. A pretty neat feature that has become a rare commodity these days. Another rare sighting is the 3.5mm jack, and unfortunately, it remains non-existent in the Honor 20 Pro as well. There's only the USB-C connector, the main microphone and the loudspeaker grille on the bottom.

The SIM card slot is located on the left-hand side. On the right, we find the volume rocker and the fingerprint reader that doubles as a power button. It's positioned perfectly within your thumb's reach, and it's super easy to find without looking.

The scanner is so fast that a gentle touch is all you need to unlock the device. You don't even have to press it down. It's one of the fastest fingerprint readers we've used. After all, Honor had to make up for the lack of the trendy under-display fingerprint reader - something most flagships have already embraced this year.

Another thing that we've noticed is the relatively high weight for the phone's size. For a handset with a 6.26-inch display, the device is rather hefty at 182 grams. Still, it feels good in the hand, and if you have above average hands size, it will also be easy to use with one hand.

All in all, as we already pointed out, the phone's chassis is nothing short of premium, so we have no major complaints here.

Here's a full 360-degree view of the Honor 20 Pro.