Huawei’s lifestyle brand, Honor has announced its latest affordable-flagship amid drama with U.S. sanctions against the company. While the newly unveiled Honor 20 and Honor 20 Pro were already not coming to the U.S. due to the long-in-place hardware ban, the devices have been caught in a crossfire with the American government attempting to strip Huawei of its Google Android software support.
Even so, the Honor 20 and Honor 20 Pro launch appears to have been a success with media favorably covering the event from London. The smartphones include quad-lens camera sets ups among their main features. Honor also showed off its latest Fortnite skins that will be exclusive to the devices.
The Honor 20 Pro features a 6.26-inch FHD LCD display with a 4.5mm punch hole cutout for its 32-megapixel front-facing camera. Its rear camera set up includes a 48-megapixel main lens, an 8-megapixel telephoto lens with 3X optical zoom and 5X hybrid zoom, a 16-megapixel ultrawide lens and a 2-megapixel macro lens. Other features include Huawei’s Kirin 980 chip, 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage, a 4,000mAh battery with USB-C 22.5W SuperCharge (50 percent power improvement in 30 minutes), and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. The device will sell for €599 in Phantom Black (purple) and Phantom Blue (green) color options when available.
The Honor 20 includes many of the same features, however, its camera set up includes a 2-megapixel depth sensor instead of a telephoto lens. Its other features include 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage, and a 3,750mAh battery. The device will sell for €499 in black, blue, and Iridescent White color options when available.
The Honor 20 devices run Android 9 Pie with the Honor Magic UI. They are in the clear for the next three months as the U.S. Department of Commerce has granted Huawei a temporary license to provide its current smartphones with software updates through August.
It remains to be seen how Huawei and its Honor subsidiary will be affected by the U.S. rulings in the long term. Huawei has accused the U.S. government of bullying as the company has become even more of a mainstay in the global electronics market. Honor has not shared specific release dates for its latest devices, though some reports suggest availability between June and July.
