In our latest smartphone review, we’re going to take a look at the Honor 20e. Priced around the £150 here in the United Kingdom, the device is available in two colour choices, Midnight Black and Phantom Blue. We have the Midnight Black smartphone here at droidhorizon headquarters and we’ll give you the full run down as usual. We’ll take a look at the key features, screen, software, camera arrangement and give our opinion after nearly three weeks of daily usage. Because of the current global pandemic I haven’t really travelled far for awesome photos on exotic beaches testing different networks or conditions, this review is based on the average day, go to work, watch some YouTube at lunch, take the kids to the park….. All of which the Honor 20e has handled very very well for an inexpensive handset.
The Honor 20e features a 6.21 inches screen which is LCD and 1080 x 2340 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio (~415 ppi density.) The colour reproduction is vibrant enough and accurate, certainly bright enough indoors too but does struggle outside in direct sunlight. A screen protector is already fitted out-of-the-box, it’s up to you to continue using it or peel it off. Not a super high resolution panel we all can admit in this day and age, again, average and usable is the trend here with most features, remember this a £150 device. Watching car detailing videos on my lunch break is fine, some light games too looked sharp enough and visually appealing.
Taking a quick tour around the device, obviously a glass panel front with a plastic back. The finish around the sides is also plastic. Coming up the right side you’ll find the power button with the volume rocker just above. The keys themselves are plastic, a bit jiggly and not very nice actually. Across the top you’ll find the SIM tray and a small hole which we’d assume is a mic. Nothing down the left side, across the bottom you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack (WOWZERS) another mic hole, a micro USB (WOWZERS X2) port and speaker grille. The devices’ dimensions are 154.8 x 73.6 x 8 mm (6.09 x 2.90 x 0.31 in) and the Honor 20e weights 164 grams. The device feels great in the hand with all buttons easily accessible. The trio camera arrangement protrudes a bit, might be an issue if people use their device flat on the desk in front of them. The fingerprint reader is high on the back, more on that later….
The Honor 20e’s solo speaker isn’t great, although the max volume is fairly loud the sound is tiny and distorted. Sometimes I like to set my phone on the windowsill and play my Spotify playlists when I’m in the shower, the Honor 20e’s mono speaker performs below average in our honest opinion. Out and about we’d certainly recommend a set of earbuds, or if you’re having a barbecue in the garden grab your favourite bluetooth speaker.
Camera arrangement..
| MAIN CAMERA | Triple | 24 MP, f/1.8, PDAF 8 MP, f/2.4, 120˚ (ultrawide) 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth) |
|---|---|---|
| Features | LED flash, HDR, panorama | |
| Video | 1080p@30/60fps |
| SELFIE CAMERA | Single | 8 MP, f/2.0, (wide) |
|---|---|---|
| Features | HDR | |
| Video | 1080p@30fps |
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- This shot was taken with the main front camera. Be aware the camera app defaults to 18MP for some odd reason, you’ll have to keep swapping to 24MP. Colour reproduction and details are fine.
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- This shot was taken using the macro lens. If you click the image to view the full size you’ll notice the lack of detail, fuzzy edges and washed out colours.
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- This shot was taken using the wide angle lens. If you enlarge the image you’ll notice accurate detail in the centre but lacks quality the more you look to the edges. You can also notice fuzzy edges and poor colour.
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- Shot with the main camera. Same again, centre has detail with noise around the outside.
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- Shot with HDR, the surface closet and grey clouds look nice and moody.
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- Nice New England IPA this! Taken with the main camera, certainly an okay camera for posting on Untapped or Facebook
| PLATFORM | OS | Android 9.0 (Pie), EMUI 9.1, Google Play Services |
|---|---|---|
| Chipset | Kirin 710F (12 nm) | |
| CPU | Octa-core (4×2.2 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53) | |
| GPU | Mali-G51 MP4 |
| MEMORY | Card slot | microSDXC (uses shared SIM slot) |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | 64GB 4GB RAM | |
| eMMC 5.1 |
The front facing camera uses the dewdrop style notch. A little outdated for 2020 in our opinion, looking at the photo above the lens doesn’t take up too much screen space. I can’t speak for the rest of the team but I like the notifications on both sides on top of a transparent bar instead of a black bar. There are options in display settings to customise if you’d like to.
We found the Honor 20e’s battery to last all day thanks to the 3400 mAh non removable battery. We like to point out again that Honor stuck with micro USB so expect long charge times. On an average day the phone lasted fine with around 20% battery life left. This is with all services syncing, all social medias, emails and some YouTube at lunch. On flagship devices I can nearly get two days with a quick blast in the morning on the charger. You’ll likely be leaving the 20e overnight just like 2017.
The Honor 20e features all communications that you’d expect. Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS everything works fine with no issues. The onboard 64gb storage is fine for most people but can be expanded up to 512gb using a micro SD card, very nice.
Back to the fingerprint reader, although well placed high up on the back, the reader it’s self is reasonably accurate. If you set face unlock too, the phone will unlock quickly. We did find ourselves moving our finger around a bit to find the sweet spot.
Thankfully the Honor 20e comes with all the Google Play services on top of EMUI 9.1. EMUI wouldn’t really be our favourite operating system though. I personally find the themes and customising to be lacking and slightly garish. We’re not sure if it’s the chipset or OS but plenty of lags and stuttering occur regularly. A £150 smartphone isn’t aimed at customers who need the cutting edge features and performance. The Honor 20e at this price point would make a great device for your mother or someone who is between a big contract flagship device. We’d be happy enough to recommend the Honor 20e.
